Customer Reviews

Fury: A Novel

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(20)
2 star:		(13)
1 star:		(13)

 

 

Most critics have described the latest novel of Salman Rushdie as a failure. Very simply, they are right. The contrast with Rushdie's three eighties novels are striking. Midnight's Children, Shame, The Satanic Verses were not only amazingly inventive and ingenious, they were also both deeply moving and very cutting politically. Midnight's Children included a horrifying description of Pakistan's unspeakable brutality against Bangladesh in 1971 as well as the thuggishness of Indira Gandhi's State of Emergency. Shame, of course, was a damning portrait of Pakistani politics, caught between a vicious military and clerical elite and a demagogic populist pseudo-socialism. The Satanic Verses, in turn, was a brilliant attack on British racism and insularity, Islamic fundamentalism and Hindu communalism. And throughout all these books there was the alternative of a secular and leftist politics. After writing The Satanic Verses, of course, Rushdie was forced to spend his life in hiding from the death threat issued by the Iranian government. Although Rushdie has gradually been allowed to be seen more and more in public, he has been isolated from his native India and Pakistan, and from much of the plebian vitality that infused his novel. At the same time Pakistan and Indian politics have become even more hopeless. The possibility of either secularism or a leftism or even a politics seems increasingly remote.

The consequences of this on his fiction are clear. The New York that depressed academic and millionaire Malik Solanka arrives is the gaudy world of celebrity and power, the city as viewed by the writer on hiding on brief vacation. It is not the communities of Jewish, "working-class Catholic," black or Hispanic communities. It is not a city with a society or a history or a politics. The result, not surprisingly, is that his portrait of American consumerism is trite, uninventive, unmemorable, predictable. There are other problems. At times, we are told, Solanka is filled with rage, with venom. Indeed, the reason the 55 year old academic suddenly came to New York was because one night he found himself holding a knife over his sleeping wife. But we get no description of his rage, compared to Celine, or even Mordecai Richeler's Barney's Version, they are the mildest of reproofs. The linguistic inventiveness seems to have almost completely dissipated. There are still the long sentences, and the string of details, but there is no real force or passion behind them. There is nothing here like the throw-away paragraph on the Aliens Show that Rushdie wrote in the Satanic Verses.

During the novel Solanka conducts three love affairs, one with his younger wife, the other two with stunningly beautiful women young enough to be his daughters. Given that Rushdie is Solanka's age and has recently left his own wife, one might consider this an unpleasant self-indulgent fantasy. There is in fact good reason to think so, and the fact that the relationships fail do not remove the bad taste from the reader's mouth. Nor does the incest motif which also complicates one relationship succeed either, since it is almost impossible to write about the sexual abuse of children without appearing meretricious. (Yet this does lead to one of the book's few memorable images: "He [Malik] could barely speak to her [his mother] without provoking a howl of guilty grief. This alienated Malik. He needed a mother, not a waterworks utility like the one on the Monopoly board.")

Solanka has made his fortune, twice, because he has produced a series of dolls which have for reason we need not go into become wildly popular. Yet even here Rushdie's interest is slack. A related subplot about Fijian politics, on an island named Lilliput-Blefuscu in honor of Jonathan Swift, also seems weak and underdeveloped. (There is one good pun about eating eggs, though). So why, may one legitimately ask, does this book get three stars, and not two or one?

The answer is that although Rushdie's portrait is probably unconscious, and although the work is infused with an aesthetic illness that may well prove terminal, something of value is being described. The title is misleading, since what is lacking is fury, passion, a sense of injustice and indignation. (Again, one should note the contrast with Swift.) Solanka himself is not motivated by rage, but by its absence. Indeed, he increasingly lives in a society where such sentiments are inconceivable. If the New York of Fury is a world without politics or history or society, then that is partially because that is the way its rulers wish it, as democracy moves from the consent of the governed to finding ingenious ways of ensuring their acquiesence. If the hero of the Satanic Verses could redeem himself by civic duty and love for his dying father, that is increasingly not an option in today's world. Sheer greed and selfishness masquerade as Anti-Utopian principle, while invoking Orwell is a substitute for intelligence and moral courage. In such a world great sex is always possible for the rich, even for rich 55 year old Indian academics, but love and hope are truly utopian, (and ergo, truly evil in the world of Peretzspeak). In such a society, Solanka's self-pity, his solipsism, his brittle personality is all too realistic. And more like V.S. Naipaul than either author would like to admit.

I dont think Peter Wild has a fundamental enough grasp of Rushdie's work to be called into the "spotlight review" by Amazon though he is a person and entitled to an opinion. The fact is this is *not* the same type of work Rushdie has done in the past--it is not nearly so grand or as "magical"--so I dont think you should be putting it on that same level of comparison. This is an entirely different animal.

"Fury" is an impressive work nonetheless. Rushdie has long been known by himself and others as a "metropolitan intellectual" and his primary concern is with this interaction b/w city environs and the individual and how one's personal identity can be transformed, shifted, literally "translated" from one continent to the next. This is no different. Rushdie's characters have always relied on this premise of *metamorphosis* and building an alchemist's substance into the character as he progresses from one state to the next. This is a fascinating process and it continues to be one of the major aspiring reasons why his work continues to be read.

I don't think it's fair to accuse Rushdie of being some secondhand Roth rip-off. Philip Roth, as much as Salman Rushdie, deals with personal identity issues and the conflicts that ensue against the forces that try to shut them up. In this regard, I actually consider them very much the same in drawing up this process of *self-identity*. It's important, and people want to know this. Rushdie and Roth are both in the same company when it comes to affirming an individual against oppressionist forces, be they conservative Jews or fundamentalist Muslims.

But back to the work, "Fury" is an interesting work, not really for its departure from his previous more grander novels, but for its brevity and realism. The fact that Rushdie uses a larger part of the novel to depict a time, a cultural ethos, a *place*, much as James Joyce or Charles Dickens do, should not come as a shock, or at least not as an unpleasurable one. Rushdie is entitled, as much as any other author of his age, to depict the "realism" of a modern New York and I say he does so in ravishing good taste. The whole point of the fantastical element--the toy figures and fetishizations with dolls-- are, ok, silly at times, if wholly unbelievable, but *that's* the element which allows the imagination its license to work on the reality. Rushdie is not trying to make it all realistic, he's only setting a background out of which surrealistic events and craziness may possibly abound--such is his view that not all of modern life is "real." A lot of it actually is "unreal" and it's this "unreality" that reveals the greater truth about modern living--it just blows your mind sometimes.

Rushdie writes in the tradition of Jorge Borges, or Kafka: the imagination is how you reveal a deeper truth, a quality "more everlasting" than could be conveyed by conventional space and time. Vonnegut was the same. You have to allow Rushdie this license to create surrealism out of the real, or else you've missed the pt. entirely.

"Fury" should be read, not because it's important or pleasurable (though it is often) or because it's from a celeb writer, but for its three/four/five-dimensionality. It is a book that will bend the bounds of conventional thought if you allow it. Just think about the symbology or the characterizations more closely and you might possibly see the collision of two simultaneous worlds--one of the immensely poor and the fancifully rich, the ghetto and the high-class, the carnal sexual desires with a safe, secure marriage-- you will *see* how this conflict arises into fury. You will *see* how this torn-ness can result in escape or a "rip" in the fabric of normalcy. It's important to see how this dynamic works.

I've enjoyed all of Rushdie's other works and I did enjoy this one as well. The fact that it is shorter should be an obvious sign that this is not the same type of story, it's not an epic. It is, however, an enthralling tale that will make the imagination soar. As usual.

Furious. The word means extremely angry or violent, but it can also mean anything involving violence, anger, or speed (such as "Fists of Fury" and the absurd "The Fast and the Furious"). Its roots reach back to Greek mythology, to the three snake-haired, bat-winged, and dog-faced goddesses Tisiphone, Alecto, and Megaera. These three horrible deities were the vengeful hands of the gods, punishing evil and wrongdoing, especially within families.

In FURY, Salman Rushdie uses every variation on these definitions, and the etymology of the word itself, to describe with modern life in America (as represented by New York City) and the fragility of family, relationships, and perhaps even sanity. Rushdie sarcasm cuts sharp and deep. His New York (no, his America) is an empty land, a moral vacuum filled with sensationalism, tawdriness, superficiality, materialism in the extreme, capitalism run rampant, self-serving and incompetent politicians the endless striving for publicity without sense of shame, culture without depth, and, like a drug addiction (note that both his heroes studiously avoid medicines and drugs of any kind), a continuous search for the constantly escalating "fix" that gives the citizenry their latest cheap thrill or sense of meaning. "The whole world was burning on a shorter fuse. There was a knife twisting in every gut, a scourge for every back." Rushdie also conceives three female Furies of his own (Solanka's wife Eleanor Masters, his cyberpunk neighbor and father-figure seeking Mila Milo, and the enchantingly beautiful Neela), and they indeed each exact their form of vengeance on the main character and sinner, Professor Malik Solanka.

Professor Solanka gives up his esteemed seat in philosophy at King's College, University of Cambridge, to develop a television program about the great philosophers using dolls as the main characters. The host/narrator/interviewer, a blonde female doll named Little Brain, travels through time to interview Spinoza, Galileo, and others. Against all odds, the show is highly successful, and Little Brain even more so. The doll takes on a marketing life of her own, becoming one of the world's best-selling toys even as she bears no residual connection whatsoever to philosophy. Wildly financially successful, Solanka is nevertheless unfulfilled. He finds himself prone to sudden, almost inexplicable rages, and they grow in strength until he finds himself one night standing over his wife's bed with a carving knife in his hands. To save his wife and young son from himself, he leaves them without explanation and heads for New York City, the land of continual regeneration and rebirth.

Solanka's appearance alone in New York sets the stage for all manner of adventures, most of which generate satire filled with cynicism about the people, politics, and culture of America. Everyone falls within his sniper's sights - Giuliani and Police Commissioner Safir are glove-puppets, Bush vs. Gore becomes Gush vs. Bore, Ellen DeGeneris delivers her "deeply so-so material" and exclaims to her adoring throng of screaming women, "Praise me, thank you, thank you, praise me some more, hey, look, Anne [Heche], we're an icon! wow!, it's so humbling..." Rushdie mines the current events and culture deeply - Elian Gonzalez, Amadou Diallo, Marc Antony and Marky Mark, El Duque, Halle, Tyra, Kate, Brad, Gwynnie, Meg , Julia, Tom, Jenny, Puffy, Mick, Christie Brinkley, Woody Allen, Donatella Versace, Charlton Heston ("Who let Charlton Heston out of his cage and then asked why children were getting shot?") - just to throw their inanity back in our face. And it works. "Everyone was an American now, or at least Americanized...Even anti-Americanism was Americanism in disguise, conceding, as it did, that America was the only game in town..." Literary allusions abound as well, from Kafka to Jackie Susann, from Joseph Conrad to Stanislaw Lem. Set within Rushdie's telescopic rifle sight, Maya Angelou becomes "the model for millions of young people...O, her dauntlessness in the face of poverty and cruelty! O, her joy when Fate chose her to be one of its Elect!"

Rushdie's story line wanders through the landscape of modern America. A string of gruesome serial murders (which Professor Solanka believes he may even have committed in his blinding, black-out rages) invades the upper crust of New York's young female socialites as 19- and 20-year olds Lauren Klein (a marriage of Ralph and Calvin?), Belinda Booken Candell, and Saskia "Sky" Schuyler die horribly, linked to a thrill-seeking sadomasochistic sex club. Rushdie draws particularly on the role of the Internet in creating further avenues of estrangement and escapism via a host of alternate realities. As ever, these virtual realities take on their own "real life," become marketed as products (Solanka strikes it rich a second time by inventing another set of "virtual dolls" whose story-line and characters actually inspire and invoke a revolution in a South Asian island named Lilliput-Blefuscu, drawn from the warring islands in Gulliver's Travels but modeled loosely on East Timor). Not only does America promote the confusion of real and make-believe, it exports those products around the world for good or bad.

At times chilling, at times hilarious, and at times fantastical and even slapstick (everywhere that Neela went, pratfalls among her male admirers were sure to go), FURY is an outlandish tale of post-millennial, globally networked, American-inspired life. Furious with its own ebullient energy, this story creates and explodes its own myths (Little Brain, Akasz Kronos, creator of the Puppet Kings of Baburia) and then explodes their superficiality in disturbing counterpoint to the depth and meaningfulness of the ancient Greek myths. A manic, hyperventilated, crazy quilt novel this may be, but as ever, Salman Rushdie's scalpel cuts sharply to expose the absurdities and tragedies of modern life. FURY is a joy to read and savor.

"Fury" is the newest-to-date novel by Salman Rushdie, short, neat and compact, and yet incredibly rich in detail, and setup, populated by lovable characters, but at the same time deeply philosophical with enormously influential contents, more often than not disguised within the unsaid, the context you have to be familiar with, the subtext of the grand space in-between of the actually written lines.

Like many other good novels, "Fury" is a treatise on humanity, disguised under the compelling storyline. The book does not consist of a single thesis the author wants to prove, as it is often the case with lesser authors, but instead much is left to our intellect, we are left alone to draw the final conclusion as we wish. What Rushdie does is pursues a set of philosophical inquiries, twists the reality, dumps the subject matter into various cultural pots of dye and solution, analyzing the issues at hand from as many perspectives as possible. Ever since homo sapiens started to meditate on the nature of the world, and the nature of the human being, it has been of utmost importance to determine what drives us to do what we do in our life, why are human actions so contradictory, or why do they seem to be such - what is the true nature of the human being. Philosophers claimed all attainable positions in this regard, and yet no definite answer has ever been posed. The point of philosophy lies in inquiry, in meditation over the profound concepts and forces, despite the fact that from the point of view of traditional physics, such deliberation is fruitless and unnecessary. Definite answers are of more use in everyday life, in business, are valued by people with the immanent nature of the merchant. Yet for all humanoids of culture, these questions and the quest for discovery constitutes the meaning of life. Rushdie theorizes on the human nature, and one by one, gives us his conclusions.

"Life is fury, he'd thought. Fury - sexual, Oedipal, political, magical, brutal - drives us to our finest heights and coarsest depths. Out of furia comes creation, inspiration, originality, passion, but also violence, pain, pure unafraid destruction, the giving and receiving of blows from which we never recover. The Furies pursue us; Shiva dances his furious dance to create and also to destroy. But never mind about gods! Sara ranting at him represented the human spirit in its purest, least socialized form. This is what we are, what we civilize ourselves to disguise - the terrifying human animal in us, the exalted, transcendent, self-destructive, untrammeled lord of creation." p. 30-31

I am enormously pleased to say that this grim view on the human behavioral motives coincides with my own. Although ultimately the good overcomes the evil, although either extremum is rarely achieved by the human race, it's the petty evil that rules the world, dominates our actions, whether unmasked, or hidden deep below many layers of civilization superimposed on us from the birth. All that is valuable in this world is created in passion, propagated by the destructive fire of creation, the fury, the powerful furia of the human spirit. What else is love but fury? In modern times, we civilized peoples learned to stifle the fury, mitigate the burning brain, chain the wild personality. Is that it? Is it all we needed to do - to devise the instrumenta of self-bondage - to put out the furious fire of creation forever? The answer, obviously, is no. All troubles in this world, and all good things in this world as well, for that matter, stem from the fact that the powerful human spirit the destructive god of creation within us - is unbeatable, indestructible, when all is said and done. All kinds of deviations that pollute the civilization are the children of the stifled fury, when the pressure is too high to be sustained and controlled any longer. As a human race, we continue to create and innovate, because the individualistic fury of each creative human being refuses to align itself to the chain of civilization.

Rushdie brilliantly elaborates on this subject, in a delightful series of philosophical inquiries, where the answer is that of a chant, coming to the reader in spasms, in waves of understanding, and all that served within a delicious mixture of prose, philosophy, ethics, and the powerful commentary on the modern age. For you have to know that "Fury" is a multidimensional novel, which is by no means limited to the heavyweight meditations. The fact is, "Fury" is thoroughly enjoyable, the characters and the events are bound to stay with the amused reader for a long time. This novel is pure entertainment. The author seems to be in the strict minority of writers who are still able to use irony and sarcasm as a literary medium. I hail you, Salman. Last but not least, Rushdie's newest novel is best proof that for him as a writer, as a human being of culture, only the sky is the limit. I dare say Rushdie is more European than many of our writers back on the Continent. Rushdie is a Great Caveman, an honorary title assigned to all writers of intellect, courage, culture and cavemanly tradition. Allah Akbar, Salman - may your inspiration never leave you.

This novel consists of the thoughts, impressions, and actions of one Professor Malik Solanka, rich and marginally famous from his invention and marketing of the Little Brain dolls, recent émigré to New York, a middle-aged man fleeing his past life and loves and trapped in an internal argument with his own emotions, living with alcohol and gaps in his memory.

And for the first ninety pages of this book, this portrait of the Professor and his observations about the various ills of the American culture is all we get. There is no action. There is little explication of his earlier life. There are a large number of very facile remarks about the culture, the economy, the generation gap, political non-competence, about the true rulers of the world. And we are treated to the first cornerstone of Rushdie's theme, Solanka's uncontrolled personal fury, striking out at himself and innocent by-standers.

If this was all there was to the book, yet another look at a marginally psychotic, conflicted individual, it really wouldn't have been worth reading. Rushdie is too good a writer to fall into that trap, however, and having gotten in his licks at the American culture as he sees it, the real story can now begin. Starting with a rather unusual affair with the queen of a group gen-Xers, we are treated to an exploration of the mental effects of incest and gather some additional insight into the items that helped formed Solanka's character and his current problems. Unfortunately, incest is treated here as an absolute evil, with no exploration of alternative cultural modalities and relative levels of sin, things which would have improved the point of this section. As an outgrowth of this affair, the Professor is inspired to start a new project, and interactive web-based science fiction story.

As a story-within-a-story, this is no better than grade B pulp from the fifties. As an allegory for later events in the book and as another model for his theme, it serves a significant purpose, and it is quite believable that such a story would become immensely popular, putting the Professor back in the limelight and in contact with people from his earlier life. Here we finally get to look at the whole man, and even if it is not a very pretty picture, it is at least comprehensible.

The last section of the book is yet another level of allegory, forcefully stating in yet one more way Rushdie's theme of fury being the driving force behind creativity, murder, heroes and cowards, world domination and the battle of the sexes.

Rushdie peppers his prose with multiple literary, personality, and event references. While most of the time such references add to the content and ambience of the story, there are places here where I felt it was overdone, to where I felt that Rushdie was showing off, rather than trying to advance or add to the story. Characterization for anyone except Solanka is very sketchy, and occasionally there are characters introduced, given a fair amount of development space, and then effectively dropped from the story.

The various levels of story and allegory bounce against each other, giving more depth to this book than would otherwise have been present, but at the same time I found most of it too obvious, on par with Rushdie's too easy observations and criticisms of American culture, with a net feeling of skating on a lake, thinking the ice is all there is, when the real depth is there below your feet, if you could just get to it. As it is, this story's potential excellence remains locked below the ice, and we are left with the mild entertainment of skating in circles and figure-eights.

Why are people in the prosperous, constantly stimulating, world of material plentitude and endless opportunities that is America in the late 1990's so filled with fury? What happens to artistry in a world of global communications? What happens when a character you've created becomes commodified, commercialized, watered down, and transmogrified into a global icon you hate?

In 259 pages of energetic, sometimes frenetic and breathtaking prose, Rushdie explores these and other questions as he tells us the story of Malik Solanka, an ex-professor turned television scriptwriter who has somewhere along the line turned into a very angry man. He was never a particularly even-tempered fellow--one of his friends reminds him that he once threw someone out of his house for misquoting Philip Larkin--but now his constant, gnawing, soul-sapping fury has driven him to the point where he fears he will become violent. When we first meet Solanka, he has already fled from his family in England to America, fearing for their safety if he stays. America, however, does not prove much of a solution, as he is constantly provoked by the loudness, by American mannerisms, by American culture. Watching TV news coverage of the Elian Gonzalez story is enough to make the red ball of anger in him rise again, as does the American "cultural hypersensitivity, this almost pathological fear of giving offense," as does the cultural inauthenticity of a pseudo-Viennese Kaffeehaus where the counter staff doesn't even recognize the word "Linzertorte."

This novel has passages of linguistic gymnastics and cultural play worthy of the best of Rushdie, and I would certainly recommend reading it. The verbal fun and the acuity of Rushdie's vision of America is dead-on in so many places, and you will find yourself laughing and nodding in recognition as he describes people having loud cell phone discussions about very personal topics in public places, for example, and his riffs on everything from literary academic stars to advertising culture. The doll he created, Little Brain, is also terrific, at least in her original incarnation: Solanka's idea was that she should be sassy time-traveler who would interview the great thinkers of the past. You got to love a woman who gives Galileo flak.

Although there are many reasons to read and love this book, this novel is not quite a first-tier Rushdie. It is surprisingly plot-heavy for such a short book, and some of its sub-plots are a bit hackneyed. Murders of the rich and beautiful, TWO cases of incest, a third-world coup by a megalomaniac leader--while Rushdie gets some good material out of these plot threads, these stories don't have the energy that usually permeates every nook and cranny of a Rushdie novel. I also have some reservations about the conclusion. What exactly has Solanka learned over the course of his adventures, and how is this embodied in his final actions? This ending is far more equivocal and, I think, despairing than those of many of Rushdie's fictions.

While this is not the best novel Rushdie has ever written, it is nonetheless decidedly worth reading. Read it for its (as always) interesting protagonist and its raw, witty insights into life in contemporary America. This is Rushdie's _The Way We Live Now_.

Professor Malik Solanka, the central character in "Fury" lives alone in an apartment close to Central Park in New York City. His main occupation are walks around the city and being not involved. In fact, it seems that Professor Solanka would do a lot to stay uninvolved, but it also seems that he is extremely unsettled (later we can even see that he is much more than that; he is enraged). And this is the starting point of "Fury", a novel surprisingly different from others written by Salman Rushdie.

I actually liked this novel more in its first half, when it concentrated on Professor Solanka's thoughts about... Well, about everything in the society, shortly speaking. Solanka is, basically, irritated by everything and everyone he sees during his walks in the city, or hears on the radio. He is especially fond of overhearing people's phone conversations. He is so submerged in his critical thoughts (which are pretty interesting and originally formulated, albeit, most of the time, not completely original, that he realizes he has some holes in his memory, especially some nights disappear mysteriously and he has no idea what happens to him sometimes. He becomes very worried when the news of the murders of three socialites begin to spread...

Professor Solanka had moved to New York City to escape from his life. Born In Bombay, he attended college and continued his scientific career in England, where he set up a home in Cambridge. Divorced, he remarried and had a son, who is now four, with his second wife. In addition, he made a lot of money inventing a doll, philosophy-quoting Little Brain, which became an instant hit and started to live its own life in the media. This unexpected financial success overwhelmed Solanka and threw his life out of balance. Although obsessed with dolls from the early childhood, he started to hate Little Brain and everything connected with her, including his own life.

In New York, Professor Solanka immerses himself in the modern life (excellent comments on the life at the break of the millennia, the New York is captured and satirized very well). He is acquainted with an array of interesting characters (Jack, the black professional with aspiration to the highest society; Mila Milo, the daughter of a Yugoslavian writer, the head of a street gang, obsessed with the father figure; and the head-turner Neela Mahendra from the fictional country of Liliput-Blefuscu).

The story flows quite well, full of black humor and sharp observations, and the novel is enjoyable until it gets too absurd. The first signs are visible already when Prefessor Solanka, 55-year old, balding, unremarkable, antisocial man with many annoying habits, is pursued and found irresistible by beautiful, young women. Hmmm...
I still liked the story when Solanka's life was described in retrospective, his childhood secrets explaining many of his habits or phobias. It all reminded me, until then, of Woody Allen's movies (very similar atmosphere and humor).

But when the story starts to drift more and more towards Liliput-Blefuscu and its problems, culminating with Solanka's trip there, it becomes obvious that the ending is not very well structured and rather rushed. This was, for me, the most disappointing part of the novel, I expect a lot from Rushdie and this is just not his class. The allusion to the Furies is quite neat, but underdeveloped and left alone at the end. Hopefully it is just one experiment like this...

Not the literary juggernaut of Midnight's Children or The Satanic Verses, Fury is snapshot of pre-9/11 America; one that seems to be slowly resurfacing. Reading less like the epic literature we've come to expect from Rushdie, Fury comes off more like a liberal rant that often employs litaniesread laundry listsof everything wrong with the sub-human, dumbed-down, superficial reality that our protagonist, Malik Solanka, sees as America.

Without much effort, one can find a half-dozen tantrums. And while they might serve as very observant commentary, after the first couple, they get in the way and don't do a whole lot to further the story. And speaking of story, yes there's one tucked in there for good measure and it goes something like this.

Our hyper-educated hero, Malik Solanka is searching. Twice misplaced, from India to England to America, he is also misplaced from his wife, Eleanor, and young son, Asmaanwho surfaces as a sympathetic polar opposite of Solanka, but ultimately serves to anchor Solanka.

In back story, we learn of "Little Brain". LB is a doll created by Solanka. LB, in inception, traveled extensively, holding highbrow conversations with some of history's greatest minds. As LB gained popularity, she morphed into a dumbed-down, big production, moneymaker the likes of which the world had never seen. In short, she became everything Solanka never intended.

Along the way to reaching equilibrium with his intellect and his perceptions, Solanka meets Mila Milo, a fast-talking young lady fan of LB and Solanka. The two grow close through a mutual appreciation as Solanka finds the childlike innocence he misses in Asmaan, and Mila Milo finds her father figure. Before too long, the innocence gives way to a suppressed desire and the two lose themselves in their roles and a physical relationship ensues.

Halfway through the book, Solankaencouraged by Milobegins writing a sci-fi story for the Web. He enjoys a certain amount of success and fulfillment from the project. Rushdie could have spared us the snippets of the story as they seem obtrusive whenever present.

During the online endeavor, Solanka develops another relationship with his dead buddy's old lady. She's described as very sexy, but at this point in the book she had become periphery to the story. In fact, her renewed importance in the story seems to take the whole book in a peripheral direction, one that was not substantially developed enough in the beginning of the book to warrant the direction change.

But hey, it's Rushdie and it's a short book so I figured I'd stick it out.

Toward the end, the story becomes a little, well furious. As characters we've met throughout the book resurface to confront Solanka all at once, the effect is dizzying, but not in the good way that Pynchon can make you dizzy. Rushdie is a better writer than this.

While I won't give away the end, I will say that it seems like this book could have used a few more chapters of relative plot development. Tipping the scales at 259 pages, there was certainly room. Was I disappointed? Yes. But when the name Salman Rushdie is on the cover, you expect a certain level of proficiency, as he has set the bar quite high. Is it better than most contemporary fare? Certainlybut I'm a literature snob, so you can have some salt with that answer. If you haven't checked out Rushdie before, though, you may want to start somewhere else.

Not his best work by far. Although I very much like Rushdie's style, this one just did not properly mesh style with story. The plot is convoluted and contrived and seems shoehorned into some semblance of modernity. Did we really have to be immersed into Rushdie's vision of the "Web World," or to share time with Mila and her "Spyders"? And although the writer is obviously extremely intelligent (sometimes to the extreme!!), his handling of major plot points -- like a third-world revolution or a string of New York society murders -- just seems sloppy and off the mark. And why is it we can never really believe in this unattractive middle-aged man's ability to blunder into bed (and relationships) with fabulously beautiful and smart women?

As a general comment, I think Rushdie is strongest with social commentary and storytelling, but especially here much of his dialogue just doesn't ring true. This book is just not a good showcase for his best talents. In the end though, I must say that, with as much trouble as I had hanging in there through some of the (bad) middle, the ending was magical and made everything else mostly worth while. Not many modern writers have mastered the all-important ending like Rushdie.

If you're new to Salman Rushdie, read Midnight's Children...not FURY!

Look at the reviews and the ratings for this book and you'll notice something instantly - a host of 5 star reviews, and a host of 1-2 star reviews - with the effect that the book currently has an average rating of 3 stars. Seem strange? This is more than your usual mixed bag of reactions, and there's a reason for it.

First of all, Salman Rushdie is without a doubt one of the most skilful and intelligent authors currently writing in the English language. He has justly received much praise and many awards - notably being awarded the "Booker of Bookers" for his novel "Midnight's Children." His prose writing has an easy flair and wit that many would-be novellists in creative writing courses are feverishly trying to learn to emulate. In this book, he pulls out all the stops and lets go with his characteristic style. Hence the five-star ratings.

Unfortunately, Rushdie himself knows all this too well. In fact, it is possible his ego has become rather over-inflated from all his success. This is, in fact, what diminishes one's enjoyment of this book. Set in New York, the protagonist is too unashamedly an alter-ego for the author himself, who views everything with a quick, occasionally cynical, and very witty eye, describes his settings in gritty, fabulous detail, and manages to snag the most attractive women in the world without so much as breaking out in a sweat. While initially thrilling, this unbridled egotism can be a quick turn-off, however, as Rushdie the author puns without restraint, makes classical references and then points them out to us, and tries to astound and baffle us with his erudition. This misguided attempt to show how much more intelligent he is than his readers backfires in the end (for many of us).

If you have not read Rushdie before, I would suggest turning first to "Midnight's Children", which is a marvellous book and much less self-indulgent than this one. If you don't like Rushdie's other books - do not pick this one up, you'll be upset. However, for Rushdie fans who enjoy his style in general, this will definitely please, and you will probably find the ending especially quite brilliant.