Could a book be more highly acclaimed? Midnight's Children has won the Booker of Bookers in 1993 and 2008, which makes it the best book ever. Right?
Not so much. I gave up after 400 pages, and it was a serious struggle to get that far. Rushdie obviously has amazing talent as a writer, but it certainly isn't light reading (or fun reading, or interesting reading, or enjoyable reading). The story is different: incorporating chunks of Indian and Pakistani history into Saleem's life story with a bizarre sci-fi-like thread that pops up out of nowhere into:
a Goanese girl with the gift of multiplying fish ... and children with powers of transformation: a werewolf from the Nilgiri Hills, and from the great watershed of the Vindhyas, a boy who could increase or reduce his size at will, and had already (mischeviously) been the cause of wild panic and rumours of the return of Giants ... from Kashmir,...
Overall I found the novel fairly boring and slow, but it did have a habit of sucking me back into the story; so I found my interest in it went through peaks and troughs. Although the writing is of high quality and very 'literary' I was annoyed by the ridiculous use of ellipses: turn to any page in the book and you will count 5 or more. The narrator's interjections and meta-story with Padma were also annoying and continually disrupting the flow of the story, although I concede her voice often brought sanity and an end to the rambling, for which I was grateful.
I will admit to liking some parts of the book - I think my favourite character was Tai the boatman who made a stinky pact as a personal attack on Saleem's grandfather.
0.5 stars.
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