Rushdie, Salman. The Ground Beneath Her Feet. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1999.
May was deemed National Music Month by someone out there so, in honor of that tidbit I chose The Ground Beneath Her Feet as my “music book.” This was my first time reading Salman Rushdie & I have to confess, if all his other books are so lengthy and detail driven, I am going to have a hard time getting through them. This one was a whopping 575 pages long and and and! I knew the ending in the first chapter!
The Ground Beneath Her Feet is an epic rock and roll love story. Spanning several lifetimes Rushdie tells the love story of Ormus and Vina, two musicians from Bombay. Their story is like a gigantic flood, catching up and describing in detail: cultures, mythologies, histories, industries (agriculture (goats!), music and beyond), the landscapes of India, England and America, their societies, religions, ancestries of families, personalities, births, deaths, emotions, tragedies, triumphs, anything and everything from the mid 1950s until the early 1990s. This is a sweeping story that cannot be pigeon-holed into a romance, mystery, or comedy. It is all these things and thensome. Suicides and secrets, miscarriages and murders, wealth and poverty, sane and strange, greedy and generous, brothers and sisters, twins and torture, and of course, sex, drugs and rock and roll.
My favorite quotes circled and scrutinized love:
“In love one advances by retreating” (p 15).
“when it comes to love there’s no telling what people will convince themselves of” (p 30).
“But as the years passed we became each other’s bad habit” (215).
And one quote about my fave, the drums: “It is as if the drums have been yearning to speak to him, and he to them. Finally, he thinks: at long last, here are friends” (p 287).
BookLust Twist: From Book Lust in the chapter “Music and Musicians” (p 164).
~*LunaSea*~ 
HELP!!!! URGENT!!!
I’m looking for the continuing (next 5-6 sentences) of the quote: When it comes to love there’s no telling what people will convince themselves of. In spite of all the evidence that life is discontinuous, a valley of rifts, and that random chance plays a greater part in our fates, we go on believing in the continuity of things, in causation and meaning.
This sentence is followed by some words in connection with broken mirror, i really really need to have those sentences.
Hey, I don’t know if this is still relevant, but I happened to have the book with me. So here are the next lines.
“When it comes to love there’s no telling what people will convince themselves of. In spite of all the evidence that life is discontinuous, a valley of rifts, and that random chance pays a great part in our fates, we go on believing in the continuity of things, in causation and meaning. But we live on a broken mirror, and fresh cracks appear in its surface every day. People (like Virus Cama) may slip through those cracks and be lost. Or, like my parents, they may be thrown by chance into each other’s arms, and fall in love. In direct contradiction of their predominantly rational philosophies of life, however, my father and mother always believed that they were drawn together by Destiny, which was so determined to unite them that it manifested itself in no less than four different forms: that is to say, social, genealogical, gastronomical and Sister John.”
page 30-31 in the copy with ISBN: 9780805053081.
In the future you can try doing a Google Books search which will often give you the rest of the quote.
Thanks. This illustrates my academic librarian attitude completely (we academics try to get people to figure things out for themselves while public librarians are so much more helpful by just saying “here it is!”).
page 30 of the citation for the book.
i dont have the book :((( Could you please copy the sentences for me here?
Sorry, I don’t own the book either. I borrowed my copy from the local library.