I really wanted to like this novel but I have to be honest: I did not enjoy it at all. It was very difficult to get through and I almost gave up multiple times. It starts off in a very boring way with nothing going on. That doesn't stop the narrator from narrating everything in a very melodramatic way, which serves no purpose whatsoever. I really did not like the narrator at all; his voice tried to hard to mark its importance and there were just too many pop culture references for my liking. It's clear that the author is a master in the art of making connections; his comparisons between the politics in the States and the happenings in the Golden family were apt and brilliant. However, getting to these moments was a challenge and it stopped impressing me after a time because of the way the author presented it. Maybe I'm not intelligent enough to appreciate the nuances and the arguments the author is trying to make ... but at the end of the day, I didn't enjoy reading this story. Overall, this was not the greatest novel I've read.... but I think I will give the author another chance to wow me!

A masterfully told tale of crime, passion, familial ties, immigration, and the classic battle of good versus evil. At the center of this novel is the disfunctional Golden family: the larger-than-life expatriated father Nero and his three sons, the agorophobic Petya, the haunted artist Apu, and the youngest, D, struggling against the ties of his birth gender. Rushdie mimics Fitzgerald's Nick Carraway in an arguably even more effective way, wherein the speaker ("call me René") is observing the Golden family from the outside as he plans to write and produce a film about their lives, yet he himself is dragged into drama, taking actions that place him firmly within the family history; he remains, however, even at the end, simply "a supporting role" wishing to be "at least for this one scene, the star." Rushdie's story is fiction, but René's is a mix: he includes "real" conversations, short scenes from his play reconstructed with the "truth" embedded in any memoir (and thus limited to the faulty thing we call memory), and moments he admits to making up to increase the drama or simply because he could not have been present during that scene. Rushdie's towering novel can seem a bit bombastic at times, but every sentence, every "supporting role," is ultimately a necessary part of this tale of good versus evil, and whether or not one figure can be both.

One of my favorite scenes in Bridget Jones Diary involves Salman Rushdie.
"You know, its an amazing thing, nobody has ever asked me that question."

The Golden House was my foray into Rushdie's works and it won't be my last. It's melodramatic, it's kind of boring, it's full of satire, it's a little over dramatic....it's brilliant and it's wonderful and it's perfect.

This is a very modern story: the Golden family, three sons lead by their criminal father, who, because of his criminal associations, leave their country of origin and reinvent themselves in Manhattan. They all take very fancy new names, and are eventually punished for their reinvention.

What Rushdie does so well is tie this story with the current matter of the US administration. He's made no secret of what he thinks of the current "leader" and the very significant and timely ties to the status of the U.S. and the goings on at that 'Golden" house are a powerful social commentary.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the opportunity to read and review this book.

I have always wanted to read a book by Salman Rushdie and I finally got my chance! I am so excited! The story is of a rich man and his family who mysteriously move the the US. The three sons are all very different and have distinct personalities as profiled by the very subtle narrator of the story (a young filmmaker who wants to make a movie about the family). Amazing writing and plot, with so much going in the beginning as the family settles in the US when a hopeful Obama is inaugurated, how they slowly rise and then the eventual political change when "The Joker" is elected to office.... Tragic yet smart family drama as the Golden's rise and then fall from grace... Wonderful use of current cultural, literary and movie references through out the story which was not only an entertaining mystery but also a comment on our current society and culture. LOVED this book. Intellectual yet easy to read, a slow-building story told in a very insightful way. Thanks so much for the ARC NetGalley and Random House!!!

Try as I might, I just couldn’t get into this book. That just happens sometimes. It’s not a condemnation of the story or the author. It wasn’t the book for me at this time.

"The Golden House" by Salman Rushdie is truly a remarkable book. You can not read Rushdie's book as a plot driven book. It must be read slowly and read for an appreciation for the way it is written. Rushdie has a true talent for phrasing and rendering "pearls of wisdom". There is so much to this novel that I can not begin to name all the aspects of life that are portrayed. You must just believe me when I say this novel is worth reading and rereading.

I was excited to receive an ARC for THE GOLDEN HOUSE by Salman Rushdie, especially since I had not (sad to admit) read any of his earlier works despite rave reviews from colleagues. Unfortunately, I find myself agreeing with others (see Goodreads reviews) who had not read Rushdie and were puzzled at being underwhelmed by his latest work. The premise, involving modern day politics and an immigrant family, was of interest, but I found the book to be almost entirely full of description with hardly any dialogue. It did not hold my interest despite receiving starred reviews from Booklist, KIrkus, Library Journal and Publishers Weekly.

I read "Midnight's Children" in 2014 and thoroughly enjoyed it. I loved how it was erudite, entertaining and even funny at times. I was expecting to love "The Golden House" because of my previous experience in reading Rushdie.

Oh boy, "The Golden House" was erudite but almost entirely unentertaining. The book was riddled with literary, cultural, political, geographical, and historical references in virtually every paragraph. The book was 400 pages and I think about 100 of those pages were story and the rest were references and allusions. Yes, the references and allusions were clever and there were some great political comments that made me smirk. However, it felt like the author kept abandoning the story in order to squeeze in as many references as humanly possible.

The story was about a middling scriptwriter who befriends....or at least closely observes...the new family that moved into his building complex in NYC. While I enjoyed snippets into each of the family member's lives (each of the family members had distinct personalities so it was actually interesting to follow), it never felt like the plot was going anywhere.

This is a book that I thought I was going to love so I am very disappointed that I couldn't enjoy it.

2.5 stars

I received a DRC copy in exchange for an honest review on Netgalley. I was approved by the publisher to review the book around the same time that my hold came in from the library so I ended up reading a finished copy.

When the new neighbours move in, René immediately declares them his object of study and protagonists of the film he is going to make. The Golden family are simply fascinating, the father Nero and his three sons Petya, Apu and D. Interestingly, all carry ancient Roman names even though they obviously come from India. There must be more they are hiding. Their male idyll is threatened when Vasilisa shows up, the father’s new Russian lover. When René’s parents die in an accident, the Goldens become his replacement family and he moves in with them which gives him the opportunity to study them from much closer. The more time he spends with them, the more secrets are revealed and finally, he himself becomes a part of the family secret. Yet, the past the Goldens wanted to flee from catches up and they have to pay for what they thought they could leave behind them.

Salman Rushdie is well known for his politically loaded novels which never go unnoticed. Again, his latest novel puts the finger in a wound, this time the American and the question which played a major role in the 2016 presidential election: who is a true American and what makes you and American? Apart from this, in “The Golden House” the supervillain The Joker wins the election which is not very promising for the nation.

Even though there is an obvious political message, this hides behind the family story of the Goldens. Here, unfortunately, I had expected much more. Admittedly, the four men are drawn with noteworthy features and fates and to follow their struggles after settling in the USA is far from uninteresting, but it also is not as fascinating and remarkable as I had expected. It is the chronicles of an immigration family, not less, but also not more. Their numerous secrets can create some suspense, however, much of it is too obvious to really excite.

Where Salman Rushdie can definitely score is in the side notes:
“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. The question is, can I lie better than the truth.“ (Pos. 3380) and
“You need to become post-factual. – Is that the same as fictional? – Fiction is élite. Nobody believes it. Post-factual is mass market, information-age, troll generated. It’s what people want. “(Pos. 3390)

These are the times we are living in. Truth is created by the ruling classes and repeated as often as necessary until the people believe it. It is even better than fiction. This should definitely make us think about our consumption of media and question the producers of the news.

I appreciate Rushdie’s capacity of formulating to the point, the masses of references to novels and films are also quite enticing, at least they show that Rushdie himself in fully immersed in the western culture, but, nevertheless, I missed something really captivating in the novel. It was somehow pleasant to read, but not as remarkable as expected.

Salmon Rushdie is an author who can entrap the reader with his story witting. A masterpiece, I highly recommend...but keep the Internet handy to research Greek philosophers and mythology, who the author refers to on many occasions.
A young student, Rene decides to make a movie about the family next door, The neighbour, Mr Golden and his three sons have escaped to America after Mrs.Golden is killed in a bombing in which he was partly responsible. Wanting out of the crime scene, his boss threatens him and lets him know he may leave but is never forgotten. Rene becomes deeply involved in the Golden family affairs, and his movie becomes part of the narrative. An intriguing story.

I got an ARC from NetGalley and Random House a couple of months ago, for which I am very grateful, but I hadn't gotten around to being in the right mood to tackle a Salman Rushdie novel.

At about 400 pages, I would call The Golden House a sweeping tragedy, spanning the entirety of the Obama presidency as well as covering flashbacks from decades before. At the heart of the novel, which is possibly the most post-truth-y work of fiction currently on the market, is the self-styled Golden family. The patriarch, Nero, and his three sons, Petya, Apu, and D have recreated themselves upon their move to America. They arrive in 2008 in the great New York City, which allows them the anonymity that comes with big cities. Our guide into their mysterious lives is their new neighbor, a young man who we may call Rene.

"The family with its narrow privacy and tawdry secrets is the source of all our discontents."

Through Rene's eyes we discover the secrets that made this family run away from the city which they never name and the secrets that they continue to harbor and nurture even while in New York. But much like in real life, secrets have a way of finding their way to the surface. In this case, with tragic consequences.

The events, mostly, are self-brought by the patriarch, which makes for a much more compelling story and tragedy than if they were spurious. Trying to guess and discover the various mysteries kept me turning the pages.

At the center of the novel's themes is that of identity. What is identity? Is it narrowly defined? Do we need to define it? Is there just one identity? Can we make our own identity and if so, what is real? What is truth? These are all pertinent questions for our day and age, drawn very much from the current political climate. In a world of fake news, what is reality? As Rushdie writes: "The question is, can I lie better than the truth?"

Despite what other reviewers have said, I don't think Rushdie has an answer or is trying to push his particular opinion on us. His point is that identity is massive, and maybe we can't never know it completely. He writes as Rene's voice: "We are icebergs. I don't mean that we are cold, only that we are mostly under the surface, and the part of us that is hidden can sink the Titanic."

Some have complained about the heavy political slant of this book, but in this reviewer's humble opinion, fiction is supposed to be informed, inspired by reality. That is what makes fiction so compelling; that we can recognize ourselves, our world, our lives in the words of a fictional story.

Despite the devastating events in the book, one gets the sense that Rushdie is seeking to right wrongs, to create a story where the "bad" guys do get what they deserve in the end, even if relatively innocent bystanders are dragged into the mud too because this is a tragedy. "Look out, you will reap what you sow. You will reap what you sow."

Of course, this is a book of flawed people, the only characters worth reading about, and what was terrifying in reading about such imperfect, morally gray, people was what Rene expressed as a realization that "there was no safe space, that the monster was always at the gates, and a little of the monster was within us too, we were the monsters we had always feared."

There's also some slight hope, both in the ending which I will not spoil, and in the writing. Things don't necessarily have to be the way they've always been, Rushdie seems to say. "It was the way of the world, I thought, and maybe it was, but the world is a bad place, you should look for a better world than the one we have made."

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this book. The prose is beautiful, as you'd expect from an author as acclaimed as Salman Rushdie, the scope of the story is massive yet handled deftly, the plot and characters are compelling, and the story leaves you thinking long after you've finished reading.

I took a star off for pacing, the book could have perhaps been about 30 pages shorter which would have increased the sense of impending doom you get while reading the first part. It took a while setting the stage, introducing the characters, and that made the first part not as readable as the other two, but it was not that big of a problem.

There are many cultural references, both to pop culture and the classics, many of which might require extra research. I would have appreciated some footnotes for that so I didn't have to go into Google to look up a reference I felt I needed to fully grasp a paragraph, which took me out of the book for a moment and made for a less cohesive reading experience.

The juxtaposition of the political, and to a degree the social, unraveling of America with the downward spiral of the Golden family was beautifully done.

Thanks again to NetGalley and Random House for the ARC given to me in exchange for my honest review.

I give up! This book just wasn't meant for me. I appear to be in the minority as everyone seems to love it on Goodreads, but I couldn't get through it. I put it down about 5 or 6 times to pick it up later, thinking it was my frame of mind that was the problem. However, it's mentally exhausting. I was so tired of paying such close attention to everything said in order to figure out what was being told to me. There are so many metaphors to obscure people, places and things, run on sentences, overblown descriptions and pompous characters that never connected.

Nero Golden and his three sons (all with assumed Roman “hero” names) move from an unnamed country (quickly to be found out as India but the mystery remains as to why they so fiercely deny their homeland) into a Manhattan house (house, of course, meaning almost palace!) that is part of a small complex of homes in the Village. Each of them is brilliant and successful and part of the mystery of course is what drove them to this country. They are befriended and observed by their neighbor Rene, a young filmmaker who decides to use the Goldens for his next film (the comparisons to The Great Gatsby are inevitable with Rene as a willing Nick Carraway looking for his entry into this mesmerizing clan).

Rene is struggling with his own demons and is more vulnerable than he knows to the power and ostentatiously displayed wealth of the Goldens. He is drawn into their complicated family dynamics and, although he sees himself as using them is soon their pawn.

Rushdie casts his usual storytelling spell, although I found the first half of the novel more compelling than the second (more intensely plot driven) half. The book is as much about the U.S. culture in the Obama years as it is about the rise to power of Nero Golden and his complicated relationships with his adult sons, each very different from the others.

This is (unlike many of Rushdie’s works) a realistic novel: the magic lies in Rushdie’s brilliant writing and the spell he casts. I was left breathless at the power of the prose, almost as crystalline as poetry. And because of the characters and plot, it is as much a page-turner as the latest best seller. The portrayal of the lives of the wealthy and powerful as well as the world of art-the downtown scene of conceptual work, and the seemingly unstoppable power of the blockbuster movie, along with many other pop culture references was fascinating. I loved the story about Rene and his artist girlfriend as much as the story of the powerful Goldens. Each one powerfully attracts Rene (who is in danger of losing his soul) and draws him into their different world views.

The book addresses the issue of how we decide who we are-as well as how much power we actually have to make that decision and how much is decided for us. There are villains, although not so many heroes, mostly men who are swayed by the rich and powerful and led in ways they would never have chosen on their own. As Nero’s past comes back to haunt him, the novel becomes more lurid, with many bodies strewn along the way.

I found the book breathtaking but ultimately less deep than Rushdie’s other works. However, the ride with the Goldens and the portrait of American life under Obama, as well as the mesmerizing villain (who appeals to the evil in others) was often exhilarating and fascinating.

As always, even a flawed Rushdie is well worth reading.

I would like to thank NetGalley, Salman Rushdie, and Random House Publishing for the free copy of this novel. It was well worth the time (it’s a long novel of more than 300 pages) I invested in its reading.

The Golden House needed a more aggressive editor. Rambling, and pretentious, saved at the end by a few wonderful turns of phrase.

Bombastic, overstuffed, kitchen sink of a novel. In a word, uneven. There are moments of brilliance and moments of tedium.

Peppered liberally (VERY liberally) with references to film, art, music, mythology and literature ranging from the ancient world to pop culture, The Golden House will be a feast for some readers, exhausting for others.

For me, this book is at its best when at its most fanciful, incorporating myths and snippets from epic tales into the narrative. I also enjoyed Nero's nefarious backstory, when finally divulged, but it comes late in the novel and is by necessity, quite rushed.

The story takes place from 2008 to 2016 and touches on (very briefly) some of the most topical issues and events of the decade, including:
- Occupy Wall Street
- Gender identity politics
- Gamer gate
These were and are issues of utmost concern to the people involved with them but Rushdie here presents them merely as curiosities recounted by a disinterested outsider. They become a bit lifeless, like he's describing specimens under glass rather than the living beast. With so much crammed in to one book I guess there just wasn't room to do justice to all of it.

Then there's the 2016 U.S. Presidential campaign, which serves as not much more than colourful set dressing. This garish backdrop is far more interesting than the Gatsby-ish story playing out in the foreground.

Passages of the book are astute, even incisive, in particular the soliloquies on our polarised, post-factual, digital age. But these observations didn't provoke in me much of a reaction beyond "hmm, yes, that's very well observed". It's all about our current moment, a moment which is so fraught, yet the words feel sort of bloodless. Where's the sting in this tale?

This is sounding like a very critical review, but I don't really mean it that way. I really did enjoy the book. But I also felt the ghost of something better in the pages and so my expectations ran high. Really good elements mixing with some disappointment to average out at three stars.

I was truly astounded to discover that this was Rushdie. If you know Rushdie, then you are familiar with his often used style of magic realism - this however, reads more like realism with epic echoes of Greek tragedy. To be sure, we are still asked to stretch our imaginations quite far, as there is quite a lot of grandiosity and hyperbole and our characters repeatedly find themselves in far-fetched situations. But this is not to say that works against the book. If anything it pulls us in further.

Rushdie's vivid response to last year's election and the stunts that followed is visceral and raw, garish and vulgar. There were times when I could not pick my jaw up off of the floor. All of the characters are exceptionally colorful and the inspiration he draws from the seeming collapse of our modern civilization is one of the best responses I've seen yet.

He has remarkably contemporized his voice in a way that is almost unrecognizable but just as compelling when lined up next to his other work. I highly recommend this book. Thank you to NetGalley, Random House, and Salman Rushdie of course for the ARC for review.

I just couldn't get into this book. Typically, I love Rushdie's work, but I think it hits too close to home for me given the current political atmosphere.

It was a good book, but man, Rushdie likes to use big words. Sometimes unnecessarily so.