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The Golden House

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The Golden House

By: Salman Rushdie
Narrated by: Vikas Adams
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

When powerful real-estate tycoon Nero Golden immigrates to the States under mysterious circumstances, he and his three adult children assume new identities, taking 'Roman' names, and move into a grand mansion in downtown Manhattan. Arriving shortly after the inauguration of Barack Obama, he and his sons, each extraordinary in his own right, quickly establish themselves at the apex of New York society.

The story of the Golden family is told from the point of view of their Manhattanite neighbour and confidant, René, an aspiring filmmaker who finds in the Goldens the perfect subject. René chronicles the undoing of the house of Golden: the high life of money, of art and fashion, a sibling quarrel, an unexpected metamorphosis, the arrival of a beautiful woman, betrayal and murder, and far away, in their abandoned homeland, some decent intelligence work.

In a new world order of alternative truths, Salman Rushdie has written the ultimate novel about identity, truth, terror and lies. A brilliant, heart-breaking realist novel that is not only uncannily prescient but shows one of the world's greatest storytellers working at the height of his powers.

'One of the most vivid and convincing portraits of contemporary America I've read' Observer

©2017 Salman Rushdie (P)2017 Random House Audiobooks Family Life Fiction Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Literary Fiction Urban World Literature New York City

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I’m not sure what the point of this was. It’s a scrambled, decorated sprawl. It was also a lot of time to spend with characters I didn’t care for. It had lots of brilliant flourishes, and I did keep going until the end.

A lot of time with characters I didn’t really care for

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If you could sum up The Golden House in three words, what would they be?

No going back

What other book might you compare The Golden House to, and why?

Compared to Midnight's Children this book lacks bite. One senses the author isn't drawn to New York - he hasn't really settled but lives out his time there. And so with the Golden family. Rushdie plays games with the reader, slowly building the personal architecture of the Golden household in satirical manner, then deliberately shocking.

Have you listened to any of Vikas Adams’s other performances? How does this one compare?

Vikas Adams could not be bettered

Did you have an emotional reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

Anodyne. His writing has become like white jazz, intellectual, emotionally flippant/disengaged to avoid the pain of looking too closely.

Rushdie sends up NYC

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I wonder who, apart from critics, will make it to the end of this novel. It is so littered with allusions and proper nouns, in virtually every other sentence, it becomes an endurance test to grasp them all and follow the plot at the same time. I rate Rushdie highly but feel he has strayed too far into pretentiousness here. By chapter 8, I had still not encountered a single character I could care less about. Despite an excellent narrator, I feel this would be a book better read than listened to.

Not for the faint-hearted.

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Loved the story, deep and a thoughtful look at society and individual motivations. To what end do we seek power?

Stick with the beginning it’s shocking and yet insightful.

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An intense multi layered look at modern America and India overflowing with themes and ideas about the world we live in today. It's about politics,gangsters,money, corruption, love,betrayal, confession, families, terrorism , identity, morality, life and death - possibly everything about being human. It is contemporary but universal playing out like a Greek tragedy with many allusions to films and comic strip characters as well as the ancient Greeks and Romans and the literature greats. The narrative questions everything - even as it ends on a note of hope for humanity because there is love and there is change with potential for good born out of bad - are we just watching a film or reading a book with a neatly constructed narrative ? Ultimately it's about making sense of life and a world that seems to have no sense.

Crackling with ideas about contemporary issues

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Utterly brilliant. Narration a tour de force also. Straight to #1 spot on my best reads of 2017.

#2 is Lincoln in the Bardo if you’re interested in checking that out too.

Microcosmic parable of the macrocosim

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Salman Rushdie at his very best, a brilliant plot set in contemporary NYC as post-factual America lurches into the D.C. Comic book world of The Joker being elected to the Whitehouse.... His characters are vivid, his insights into issues and trends of the day are seen through a kaleidoscope of different lenses, just brilliant.

Where imagination meets reality...

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Many characters and hard to know what is reality, much like modern America.
Beautifully worded.

Multi faceted, cinematographic, dynastic thriller

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This felt over elaborate and indulgent. Not sure how much of this book was designed to let us know how well read the author is. This could have been a good book if it was half the length. The confused sexuality of one of the characters was the worst part of this book. The story line was great.

Overdone

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