I failed. Miserably. I gave up on this book. After almost three months of lugging it around with me everywhere I went, trying to bribe myself into reading a page or two every day, and still only being half done, I couldn't stand the sight of it. I couldn't read another page. I didn't want to renew it again for the third ... or was it fourth?... time at the library.
I actually think Salman Rushdie failed me. This book was boring and moved way too slowly. When the main character -- the first person narrator! -- hadn't even been born yet a hundred or so pages in, I knew I was in trouble. I didn't particularly like any of the characters or care what was going to happen to them.
The novel is written as the fictional autobiography of a boy who was born at the stroke of midnight August 14, 1947 when India gained independence from British colonial rule. "Midnight's Children" is a reference to all of the children born at that time, with the theory that they all shared a cosmic link both with each other and with the nationhood of India. The novel is the first-person story of this boy comprised of anecdotal tales of his family and childhood against the backdrop of Indian history, sort of following him and India growing up together, with heavy doses of magic realism thrown in. Mostly, though, it was just boring.
I read just over half the book and had 242 pages to go -- 242 pages too many, if you ask me. Maybe I'm a failure for giving up on him, but I'm putting Salman Rushdie on the failboat for writing something that didn't make me want to read.
No comments:
Post a Comment