Rushdie, Salman. Midnight’s Children. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995.
There are a few things you need to do when reading Midnight’s Children. First, you need to lose your logical mind. Nothing happens in chronological order so don’t even try to keep even a chaotic timeline in your head. Second, don’t try to get to know every single characters. There are so many different people, a nation of characters coming and going in the story you would need to draw up a family tree and a community profile to keep them all straight. Third, look past all the repetition. In the first 50 pages Rushdie is obsessed with a nose and a perforated bed sheet. So much so you will feel as if you have read the same sentences more than a few times. Finally, say goodbye to the real world. If you are a fan of magical realism, Midnight’s Children is the book for you. For those of us grounded in sensible reality, my best advice is to read it as “loosely” as possible.
Despite all the seemingly negative comments above this is a book you should be reading. The language is spectacular.The journey is sublime. You won’t regret giving it a chance. So, here’s the story in a nutshell: 1,001 children are born in India at the very moment India gained its independence from British rule. All 1,001 children are born with magical powers yet those born closest to the midnight hour have the strongest powers. Two such children are Saleem Sinai and Shiva. Swapped at birth they are destined to be enemies. Saleem, born of poor Hindu parents, is raised by a wealthy Muslim family while Shiva ends up with the impoverished Hindu clan. The struggle between these children mirrors the larger issues of India: religion, culture, and of course, politics.
Favorite line, “She waxed anaemic in the summer and bronchial in the winter” (p 28). I have no idea what that means, bit I liked it.
Author Fact: Rushdie won Booker Prize in 1981 for Midnight’s Children, his second book.
Book Trivia: Midnight’s Children is destined to become a movie one of these days.
BookLust Twist: Talk about redundancy! Midnight’s Children was mentioned a whopping five times in Nancy Pearl’s Book Lust. Yes, it fit into all five categories, but I think it was unnecessary to include it so many times. It is listed in the following chapters, in pagination order, the introduction (p xi), “Magical Realism” (p 149), “My Own Private Dui” (p 166), “100 Good Reads, Decade by Decade (1980)” (p 179), and “Passage to India” (p 181).
~*LunaSea*~ 