The Golden House

Thanks to Netgalley for a copy of this ARC!

I've always had Rushdie in my rear-view mirror it seems. He keeps cropping up everywhere and I always meant to read Satanic Verses for the big hubbub it made back in the day. You know, the whole assassination thing. And yet, I never actually got a round to reading him.

And then, out of the blue, I see a chance. Netgalley. I jumped on it and was pleasantly surprised to get it. And then I read my very first Rushdie.

Expectations are a tricky thing. I rather thought I was going to get a heavy literary novel full of references and mythology bubbling beneath the circus, if not surface, of the text. What I got was exactly that, but more-so, because I was engrossed in something so very readable and show more enjoyable that I never once had to really WORK at it. You know?

All the references myth were telegraphed as loudly as a classic Russian novel, the basic themes as loud as Bollywood musical, the pathos and the tragedy as distinctly American as a Mafia film.

Indeed, my own references were carefully considered and a careful reader will know what to expect if they pick this novel up. :)

It was pretty awesome, all told. The search and the apparent finding and confusion of identity is a very major theme, whether told as the story of Nero Golden, the patriarch, or through any of his sons who are as bright as those in Brothers Karamazov, or through the identity of our unreliable narrator, the house-guest and future filmmaker of the House of Golden.

But let me be honest here... I'd have read and enjoyed this novel just for the sequences about the rise of the Joker in politics. :) That stuff was GOLDEN.

And indeed, all of this was clever and fascinating and the looming tragedy of the family always kept me glued to the page as if I was rubbernecking a particularly bad auto accident. And it was beautiful. I don't know what that says about me, but I certainly love a good tragedy. It was lurid and fantastical and gaudy as if we were reading about Gatsby which, indeed, there was made multiple references.

Above all, this is a very modern book full of modern post-truth America and the lies that we see with our right eyes and the distorted truths of our left. I can honestly recommend this as a great and fun read. All those accolades that Rushdie seems to be getting are well deserved. He's one hell of a writer. show less

Salman Rushdie has become another of my favorite authors. His detailed and mysterious characters all have stories too intense, too interesting, and all with splashes of humor. While he has something of a reputation as a writer of dense and obscure fiction, his last ten or so novels were all written with details that leave absolutely nothing left un-said or un-described. His latest novel, The Golden House, maintains his marvelous and intriguing prose style.

As the dust jacket notes, “On the day of Barack Obama’s inauguration, an enigmatic billionaire from an [unidentified] foreign shore and takes up residence in the architectural jewel of ‘the Gardens,’ a cloistered community in New York’s Greenwich Village.” Of course, the show more neighbors are fascinated. His chosen, new world name is Nero Golden, and his three sons have adopted names of other Roman figures, Apu—from Lucius Apuleius, Dionysus prefers, “D,” and Petronius, takes the nickname, Petya. Each of these three men take turns unraveling the mystery of this family.

Rushdie also weaves lots of references to a whole slew of literary and real characters ranging from Anton Chekhov to George Clooney. Here is a sample of what is in store for the intrepid reader. “That night he talked and drank without stopping, and all of us who were there would carry fragments of that talk in our memories for the rest of our lives. What crazy, extraordinary talk it was! No limit to the subjects he reached for and used as punching bags: the British royal family, in particular the lives of Princess Margaret, who used a Caribbean island as her private boudoir, and Prince Charles, who wanted to be his lover’s toy; the philosophy of Spinoza (he liked it); the lyrics of Bob Dylan (he recited the whole of ‘Sad-eyed Lady of the Lowlands,’ as reverently as if it were a companion piece to ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’; the Spassky-Fischer chess match (Fischer had died the year before); Islamic radicalism (he was against it) and wishy-washy liberalism (which appeased Islam, he said, so he was against it too); […] the novels of G.K. Chesterton (he was a fan of The Man Who was Thursday); the unpleasantness of male chest hair; the ‘unjust treatment ‘ of Pluto, recently demoted to the status of ‘dwarf planet’ after a larger body, Eris, was discovered in the Kuiper Belt” (48-49). This is about two-thirds of the list of his topics.

Nero had some unspecified plans for the future. Rushdie writes, “Nero had hired the most powerful members of the city’s tribe of publicists, whose most important task was not to get, but to suppress, publicity; and so what happened in the Golden House very largely stayed in the Golden House” (52). One son is something of a loose cannon. Rushdie writes, “D Golden, when in his brothers’ company, alternated between ingratiation and rage. It was plain that he needed to love and be loved; there was a tide of emotion in him that needed to wash over people and he hoped for a returning tide to wash over him. […] Sometimes he seemed wise beyond his years. At other times he behaved like a four-year-old child” (67).

Salman Rushdie is an amazingly talented writer who can sweep a reader along on fantastic waves of literature, philosophy, history, and politics, while never forgetting to smile. His latest novel, The Golden House has from me, a solid 5 stars

--Chiron, 4/10/18 show less

Prodigious, sweeping tale narrated by a young film-maker, Rushdie’s latest centers around a wealthy family that emigrated to America to escape a nefarious and tragic past. The three sons and current wife of the family patriarch, who has taken the name Nero Golden, are particularly memorable and well-detailed, each dealing with his or her own secrets and conflicts which shape the family dynamics. Set in 2008 to present day, and focusing on the recent political turmoil in the U.S., Golden House touches on a diverse array of topics such as gender identity, autism, crime, art, vengeance, gun control, political correctness, integrity (or lack thereof), the role of fate, death, just to mention a few. It asks the question “Can destiny be show more escaped via reinvention?”

The author liberally inserts cultural, literary, and movie references, which may be unfamiliar to some readers, possibly requiring a bit of research to glean the author’s full intent. I found the first quarter of this book to be a bit slow, but still interesting, as it introduced and fleshed out the characters. I found Golden House both an entertaining mystery and culturally relevant social commentary.

Recommended to readers who enjoy inventive, erudite fiction and an intellectually stimulating writing style. This novel is due to be released in September 2017. Thank you to NetGally and the publisher for providing an advance copy in return for candid feedback. See more of my reviews on Goodreads or www.bookbalcony.com show less

Rushdie's most recent novel seems to be a kind of moral fairy tale about how, in real life, the bad guys (Trump, in this case) always win, and how the only real weapons we have to protect ourselves against the ultimate triumph of evil are love and truth. But, in case we start wondering whether he's got religion in his old age, that's carefully buried under a ton of references to Suetonius, Great Cinema, Shakespeare, Bollywood, Edgar Allan Poe, Chekhov, Flaubert, Matthias Grünewald, and much else.

A father, Nero Golden, and three sons with equally Roman names, arrive to live in a grand house in Greenwich Village at the time of Obama's inauguration. Their neighbour, a young film-maker called René, is intrigued by the absence of any show more information about where they have come from and gradually starts to see them as the subject of an epic movie, with himself, naturally, cast as the narrator. But he can't help getting drawn into the tragic course of the action himself. Meanwhile, in another part of the city, the evil, cackling, green-haired, white-faced figure of the Joker, Nero's rival in the real-estate business... (you can see where this is going).

Rushdie isn't always totally convincing in capturing the voice of his millennial narrator, and he occasionally strains the joke of René's obsessive way of seeing everything in movie terms beyond the plausible elastic limit of 2000% or so, but of course it's still always Rushdie talking and we want to listen to him, so he just about gets away with the hyperbole. show less

Larger than life, the Golden men have become a source of fascination to Rene, the narrator of this story. Nero Golden, the father, obviously has a mysterious past that has enabled him to immigrate to New York from a country he prefers not to name, with endless wealth and sinister undertones. His grown sons, all of whom have assumed Roman names, have weaknesses: one is agoraphobic and autistic; one alcoholic; and one of questionable gender identity. When Rene decides to make this family the subject of his debut film, he becomes immersed in their lives, at the same time he falls in love with a kindred documentary film-maker. With the 2016 presidential as the backdrop, Rushdie describes characters and their actions with forebodings of show more tragic outcomes. While Nero cannot escape the repercussions of his past deeds, Rene also makes choices that he knows he will regret, even while wishing to be the best person he can be. The classic themes of greed, betrayal, love, loyalty, and redemption are made all the richer by allusions to mythology and literature. show less

This novel focuses on the Golden family, a very secretive, very wealthy family living in the most lavish mansion in an exclusive enclave in New York City. Initially little is known about the members of the family. They do not speak about where they came from, and their names are inventions; the patriarch calls himself Nero Golden and his three sons have names from Roman history and mythology. One of their neighbours is René, a young, aspiring film-maker. René decides the mysterious family would be a perfect subject for a film so he befriends them to learn their secrets; he ends up being more involved than he anticipated as he records their rise and fall.

Characterization is definitely a strong element. There are many characters but show more there is no difficulty differentiating them. Each emerges as a unique individual with his/her distinct personality traits, strengths and weaknesses, and interests. Petya, the eldest son, is the intelligent, agoraphobic, alcoholic with Asperger’s Syndrome; Apu, the middle son, is a gifted but attention-seeking artist; and D, the youngest, struggles with his identity. The siren Vasilisa who seduces the much older Nero is one of the most memorable characters; her ruthlessness and amorality match those of her powerful husband and make her one “among the all-time pantheon of designing women.”

René, the narrator, is not a likeable character. He inserts himself within the family and shamelessly uses their confidences for his own purposes. He is a self-centred voyeur waiting for disaster to befall people who treat him kindly. He also proves himself to be such a weak person. Fortunately, he shows some maturity at the end of the novel.

Though the novel is clearly set in the eight years of Obama’s presidency, I at first thought of Nero as a parallel to Donald Trump. He is deeply involved in the construction and development business so the word “GOLDEN, a golden word, colored gold, in brightly illuminated gold neon, and all in capital letters of gold, began to be seen.” This is certainly reminiscent of Trump Tower and Trump’s penchant for gold in his Trump Tower home and the Oval Office. Nero believes that “the only virtue worth caring about was loyalty” and that mirrors the president who dismisses those who are not first and foremost loyal to him. As Nero’s story of his corrupt rise to power emerges, there are obvious parallels with the rise of Trump. Nero’s marriage to a much younger Russian model is similar to Trump’s marriage to the much younger model born in the Socialist Republic of Slovenia. What about Vespa and Barron?

Then Rushdie mentions, “The Joker was on TV, announcing a run for president.” There is no doubt who the Joker is: “In Gotham we knew who the Joker was, and wanted nothing to do with him, or the daughter he lusted after, or the daughter he never mentioned, or the sons who murdered elephants and leopards for sport.” The presidential election “became a contest between the Batwoman and the Joker – Batwoman, who owned her dark side, but used it to fight for good, justice, and the American way.” The descriptions of the Joker are many and scathing so there is no ambiguity about Rushdie’s feelings about the current president. Sometimes, the book seems almost prophetic. As I write this review, the news is full of the investigations into Trump’s ties to Russian businesses and Trump’s unwillingness to denounce white supremacists, so reading references to “Russian oligarchs propping up the Joker’s shady enterprises” and descriptions of the Joker’s skin as “white as a Klansman’s hood” is chilling.

The book asks a number of questions and examines a number of issues. It asks whether it is possible for a person to totally reinvent him/herself? Is it possible to escape one’s past? Can a person be simultaneously good and bad? It discusses how difficult it is to find the truth. Several times it is repeated that truth lies beneath a veneer, that “the truth often lies below the surface,” and that “so much is hidden, now that we live in surfaces, in presentations and falsifications of ourselves, the seeker after truth must pick up his shovel, break the surface and look for the blood beneath.” Rushdie suggests that people lie more often than they tell the truth: “These are the times we live in, in which men hide their truths, perhaps even from themselves, and live in lies.” A character says, “’True is such a twentieth-century concept. The question is, can I get you to believe it, can I get it repeated enough times to make it as good as true.’” When René is not privy to an event, he imagines it and passes on his fiction as a truth, so sometimes it becomes difficult to remember what is reality and what is one of René’s fictions. He often uses the phrase “to tell the truth” to reassure the reader that he isn’t lying so the reader wonders whether at other times the narrator is lying. At one point he admits, “I’m also finishing up my Golden screenplay, my fiction about these men who made fictions of themselves, and the two are blurring into each other until I’m not sure anymore what’s real and what I made up.” Using René, a man whose career is based on the use of fiction, as an unreliable narrator is an ingenious way to emphasize the difficulty to getting to the truth.

Gender identity is also explored, primarily through the struggles of D. The reader, like D, may have to think of gender identity in a new way. Are you gay or straight and cis or trans? D is told, “MTF was male to female, FTM was vice versa. Now she was pouring words over him, gender fluid, bigender, agender, trans with an asterisk: trans*, the difference between woman and female, gender nonconforming, genderqueer, nonbinary, and, from Native American culture, two-spirit.’”

The style of the book would undoubtedly be called “elitist” by some. I agree with the narrator who says, “Americans tell you that knowing things is élitist and they hate élites, and all you have ever had is your mind and you were brought up to believe in the loveliness of knowledge, not the knowledge-is-power nonsense but knowledge is beauty, and then all of that, education, art, music, film, becomes a reason for being loathed.” This sounds like Rushdie’s defense of his intellectual writing style for the book is full of allusions to literature, both ancient and modern, and to cinema. René has an encyclopedic knowledge of films and film-makers and I don’t, so I know I missed a lot; I just didn’t have the time to research all of the references.

Besides feeling somewhat intimidated by the number of cinematic allusions, I sometimes became irritated by the number of rambling tangents. The paucity of dialogue and the lengthy sentences do not make his style accessible. Here’s one sentence that is rather overwhelming: “The person credited with making this profound change in Zamzama’s world view and range of interests was a demagogic preacher named Rahman, founder and secretary of a militant organization based in the city and calling itself the Azhar Academy, dedicated to promoting the thought of a nineteenth-century Indian firebrand, Imam Azhar of Bareilly, the town which gave its name to the Barelvi sect of which the preacher Rahman was the leading light.” Another element of the style that bothered me is the excessive foreshadowing of impending doom with statements like “by the time I’m done, much will be said, much of it horrifying” and “I could have prevented what followed if I had been more vigilant” and “Maybe I could have prevented what happened.”

This novel is very broad in scope. At one point René talks about the type of film he would like to make: “a mighty film, or a Dekalog-style sequence of films, dealing with migration, transformation, fear, danger, rationalism, romanticism, sexual change, the city, cowardice, and courage; nothing less than a panoramic portrait of my times.” All of these subjects are in the novel and there are more besides: gun violence, political corruption in the U.S. and India, mental illness, etc.

The book is well worth reading. It will not be a comfortable fit for everyone, but anyone who likes an erudite book that compels him/her to think and enjoys social, political and cultural commentary will love it. In addition, there is a plot with mystery and strong characterization. Though the book has some stylistic excesses, it has so much to recommend it.

Note: I received an eARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.

Please check out my reader's blog (https://schatjesshelves.blogspot.ca/) and follow me on Twitter (@DCYakabuski). show less

I don't know anyone else who has read all the way through a Rushdie book; they say they are too difficult. I don't get that, especially from people who can read classic Russian literature. Still, he does challenge on several levels. And this book shows the skill of a good writer - there are few who can write a book with nothing but self-centered, narcissistic characters and manage to keep you interested to the last page. In fact, most can't keep you interested past the first page. Rushdie can, and does again here, weaving contemporary events into a fictional narrative of people so lost in themselves they end up losing everyone else.