4 Stars
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 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.
