Review | The Golden House by Salman Rushdie

Publisher: Random House UK
Release date: September 5th, 2017
Genres: Literary Fiction, General Fiction, Adult
Pages: 384
Rating: 🌸🌸🌸🌸 (4.00)
Goodreads rating:  3.69

Goodreads summary:

When powerful real-estate tycoon Nero Golden immigrates to the States under mysterious circumstances, he and his three adult children assume new identities and reinvent themselves as Roman emperors living in a lavish house 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 powerful 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.

My Review

This  is the second Salman Rushdie book I’ve read, the first being The Satanic Verses, which is probably his most popular book.  

The Golden House tells the story of a powerful and wealthy family that immigrated to America from a (to the reader for the first few chapters of the book unbeknownst) foreign country. It’s centered around Nero Golden and his three sons, Petya, Abu and D. The curious thing about it, though, is that it is told not by one of them, but by their new neighbour and wannabe-filmmaker René.

This book was filled with all things American and many relevant topics and issues were addressed; there’s a bit about everything, really: from Black Lives Matter and gender questions to wealth and poverty to mental health and illness to terror attacks and gun control – really, everything you ever thought about, it’s in this book. In the center of everything, though, is the question of identity.

There are three aspects which make me say that, yes, The Golden House is a highly important novel. The first aspect I have broached already: there are many important issues Salman Rushdie raised and discussed, the insights we got through various characters; this book was filled with tragedy and crisis and at the same time it was a portrait of America as we see it today.

Second, the characters. René, unreliable and honest at the same time, our narrator and our eyes and ears in this book. The Golden family, Nero and his sons, all deeply flawed, all dealing with problems of various kinds. And many others: Riya, Suchitra, Vasilisa – what a wide range of characters Rushdie created in this book! They were all exceptionally written and filled the story with life.

And lastly, of course, Salman Rushdie’s writing. His writing style is different to anything else I’ve ever read. Some sentences take up almost the whole page, and there’s a metaphor here and a reference there and it’s just like being thrown right into the narrator’s head and hearing his every thought. But I really liked that. It made the whole story seem kind of raw; although I am sure that not one word was added just for the sake of it and everything was very thought-through, it felt different. At times the passages were almost hurried and that’s just what makes Rushdie such a good story-teller: while reading, I felt like I was right there amidst Nero and Petya and Apu and D and René (of course).

Yet, there’s more. Throughout the book, the structure of the writing itself changes: there were times, when novel turned into drama, into screenplay. This, I thought, was especially clever, since the narrator is a filmmaker in spe (or as he calls himself, a “would-be writer of films”).

And still, there is a reason why I, personally, can’t give this book five stars. There was such an amount of information, such a huge input of knowledge, it could get confusing at times. Other people might not have this problem, but there were moments when I found myself overwhelmed. There were metaphors I didn’t get, references to movies and books I haven’t watched or read, and events I hadn’t heard of before were talked about at length. As I said before, this is a personal problem and yet I feel like it’d be unfair to give a star more.

To conclude, I can say that, although I had my difficulties with it at times, this book is a very important read. I’m sure that The Golden House will stay with me for a long time. And isn’t this what makes a book a good book?

I want to thank the publisher, Random House UK, and NetGalley, who provided me with an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.