You can read this post with images on my blog: http://avalinahsbooks.space/golden-house-salman-rushdie/
Well... You never feel great when you are about to give a not-so-glowing review to a really well known, acclaimed writer's work. But the review's gotta be honest. So honest it will be.
Maybe it was wrong to request an ARC by Salman Rushdie when I've never read his work before (although I have another book of his, so I will be giving him another chance), but I was also so excited, particularly because I've never read his books. Now I'm just wondering – was it this one, or is it just his style I don't really like..? Anyway, here's what the book is about:

Despite most rich people being somewhat weird, the ones inhabiting The Golden House are even weirder. It's not that they've taken great care to hide where they've come from. The funniest thing about their secretiveness happens to be that they've given themselves complete Roman patrician names and pretty much believe themselves to be such. It's a complicated act which involved them believing it to become who they are. But our main character really wants to get to the bottom of it, and even make a movie about them. So he gets involved into their family tragedy, and probably a little deeper than he wanted to. And so the story rolls on...

The Golden House is crafted like a good, well-written classical tragedy – perhaps that's what I'd say if I knew my literary sciences. Which I don't, so I can just present a hunch that that's how it is. It kind of weaves together with their Roman "roots" and pretenses. However, I felt it extremely long winded. The biggest drawback for me in this book was its particular structure, which is more or less like this:

0-40%: main character introduces the entire neighbourhood and the Golden family. Nothing but epic foreshadowing is happening.
40-60%: enter some new characters. Drop some more hints. Nothing real is still going on.
60-80%: the book suddenly explodes with stuff going on and it finally engages me! This is where most of the tragedy happens.
80-100%: nothing... continues happening. There is a resolution, but it's very transparent and I feel like it didn't even need telling.
Basically? I felt like half the book was essentially about nothing.

However, some positive facts have to be mentioned. The book deals with the questions of identity, of gender and sex, understanding who you are, can and want to be. I felt like it was well dealt with, as it distills the essence of why some of us can't understand that physical sex and gender are not the same (or rather, we only try to think of it as the same because of our culture and tradition, but it's not the only culture or tradition in history). I really liked these diversity talks – it also helped me understand the sometimes complicated logic of all of that stuff, the whys and hows, and answer some questions about it for myself. Apart from that, there's the genius comparison of the current state of political affairs to what we all understand so well – pop culture – by referring to it as The United States of Joker. Where scalpel playing cards and lapel flowers squirting acid are fun. Isn't it genius? If anything, that's the one part the book is truly worth a read for!

[Harley Quinn GIF]

In a nutshell? The Golden House is a modern history of a family's demise, almost in the classical tragedy tradition. However, it also seemed like a jumble of modern, interesting, smart ideas, but no reason to even have them there. Maybe I'm just not post-modern enough? Or literary enough? I always maintain that it's something I've missed, but I feel like The Golden House could have taken 40% of the pages and still said just as much. Most of the time it kind of bored me, to be honest. I'll be happy to read other people's reviews to see what they managed to find in it! My final verdict:

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I thank Random House and Salman Rushdie for providing a digital review copy through NetGalley in exchange to an honest review. And while this book was not quite for me, maybe it is for you!

I have had a rough time with Rushdie in the past. I had heard about the controversy around The Satanic Verses but didn't know enough about it to truly register it. And then at university I was made to read Shame and as we all know, being made to read something significantly diminishes the chance you'll enjoy it. So Rushdie and I parted ways for a long time after that, until I saw The Golden House. And my interest was peaked again. Thanks to Random House and Netgalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

The Golden House is a truly modern book, a book that delights in the 21st century. Rushdie's characters live in the New York of now and throughout the novel he infuses the narrative with references to 21st century politics, pop culture and more. There is art, there is music, literature, the 2016 election, movies, clowns in the streets, so much makes an appearance in The Golden House that it is almost overwhelming. I personally adore social commentary in novels. I feel like it is one of literature's duties to reflect upon its own time and to draw lessons from it for readers. Think of how Les Miserables or War and Peace comment on Russia and France, and how both are obsessed with Napoleon. These novels told me more about the influence of Napoleon than my history teacher ever did. And so when I find a novel like The Golden House, which plunges itself headfirst into one of the oddest few decades to date, I can't help but love how topical and relevant is it. Will it feel dated in a decade or so? Perhaps, but it will always be a product of its time, a kind of ode to the optimism of the early years and the downward spiral of the latter years.

Despite having an initial dislike for Shame, I have come to majorly appreciate it for the way in which Rushdie consistently manages to weave together myth and fact, legend and reality. His take on Magical Realism consistently astounds me \and he does so again in The Golden House. On the one hand it is deeply rooted in the modern world, and yet it is also magical. Baba Yaga personified makes an appearance, there is a magic childhood, and myth and legend suffuses everything. What perhaps topped my fascination with the Magical Realism in the novel, is how incredibly meta this book is. At the heart is a young filmmaker who dubs himself René, leaving it up to the reader to guess whether that is his real name. In a meandering style he tells us of the Golden patriarch and his three sons as they move into his neighbourhood in New York. He doesn't just tell us their story, René shapes it into an idea for a movie. He considers how to best present the different people, what symbolism lies in their lives and how exactly this story will even end. As he uncovers more and more about the Goldens he gets more and more drawn into their lives, until he is a key part of the story he is crafting. This set-up is mind boggling, in ways, as the readder is constantly questioning what exactly is the truth, but then truth is one of the themes at the heart of the novel. The Golden House is a glorious puzzle that is well worth undertaking despite its countless pieces.

Rushdie really doesn't need me praising his writing style, and yet I will do so anyway. The Golden House is beautiful, how it blends together past and present, how its sentences run on and on and yet never lose their strength, how it doesn't forget itself in the middle of its social commentary. The style of this novel is flamboyant and effluent, and yet concise and meaningful at the same time. It always feel as if each of these words is supposed to be there, is necessary. Much like a Bach piece, take on word out and the whole thing may collapse. The Golden House is the kind of novel that comments upon the human condition, and that sounds more frightful than it is. With flawed yet human characters, plot lines that are too ridiculous not to be true, Rushdie poses the questions that lie at the core of our minds. What is good and evil? Can one be both at the same time? And what does that say about us?

I absolutely loved The Golden House and devoured it way quicker than I expected. This novel has something of everything and paints a truly human picture of the last few decades. Are any of the characters likeable? I couldn't really say, but their story will teach you something about yourself. I'd recommend this to anyone interested in Literary Fiction.

Dazzling, inventive, thoughtfully & beautifully written - The Golden House has everything you'd expect from Salman Rushdie at his very best. Breath-takingly good.

The Great American Novel?
A great American novel?
I don't know.
I'll leave that up to the Dwight Garners of the world.
They know who they are.
I do know "The Golden House" gave me great enjoyment, so much so it's the most captivating novel of 2017 and among the best of the 21st century because of its riches: The tale, the pace, the setting, the narrator, the other main characters, the drama, the humor and the cultural references.

Made my brain hurt.

This was an intriguing, yet pedantic and tedious, telling of the lives of a family of uber-rich, modern immigrants, the Goldens, who take up residence in New York’s Greenwich Village. The intricately-woven tales of these quirky, colorful and quite dysfunctional relatives are relayed to the reader from the perspective of their young neighbor, Rene', who fosters a passion for filmmaking. By casting the Goldens as the subject of his latest film creation, Rene' inadvertently casts himself as an annexed member of the family and becomes embroiled in their ever-present quibbles, enmeshed in their infidelities and entangled in their nefarious deeds.

Imbued with barely-concealed, nonsectarian political censure and littered with obscure film, book and music references, the prose oft times became draining and tiresome to slog through. But, what was glaringly obvious was Rushdie's blatant spotlight on the fact that we are a broken, dissociative society, over-indulgent in our hedonism and blind to our illusory, reality TV-infused existence.

*I received a complimentary ARC of this story from NetGalley & Random House Publishing Group - Random House in order to read and provide a voluntary, unbiased and honest review, should I choose to do so.

The publisher writes that this book is the first fictional book of the Trump administration seemingly taking it on. The book starts with the introduction of Nero Golden and his three sons coming to America at the beginning of the 44th Presidents term, as described when ISIS was an Egyptian Goddess.
Rushdie spends the first half of the book describing the Golden's, Nero, his three sons and how they came to New York. The eve of Obama winning his first term and the feelings expressed by the narrator are the feelings many young people can relate to. While my look was a little more optimistic the hope was there for change. We did get change and now are in a place of uncertainty with Orange 45.
Through the book we are given almost too much information about each character. It leads to a descriptive narrative about a influential family who are more or less outsiders. While I can appreciate the writing and the description of the characters I was not crazy about the book and felt many parts dragged on and I found myself pushing myself to continue. I must finish was the mantra instead of I want more. I also became tired of the "movie" writing. "Here we have" "Now we can introduce" etc and stage directions. I felt like it read not like a film but as a choppy novel.

I have tried several times to get into this book but I just can't do it. I wanted to read this because the concept of a foreign family moving to the US and taking on new identities was interesting sounding to me. I think that the characters and the book can turn into something that might be intriguing but this read requires nothing less than your complete attention. I just personally was not able to stay with the story long enough for it to pick up. I would like to thank NetGalley and Random House for the advance reader copy. All opinions expressed are my own.

This is an epic book that is sure to resonate with many Americans. It encompasses the immigrant experience, political theater, and our obsession with wealth and power.

The tale of the Golden family is a saga on par with no less than the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. With the larger than life character of Nero Golden, you see a man who is trying to act, after years of criminal activity, like a legitimate, wealthy businessman. He is surrounded by his three grown sons (who each have crosses to bear, despite their privileges) and a scheming trophy wife, yet he is alone in his adopted country of America.


This novel not only chronicles the downfall of a powerful man, but also of the United States, as both transform from the envy of the world into caricatures of crass reality-television based drama and politics.


What I Liked:

Narrative device:

The narrator, René, acts (mostly) as a fly on the wall, witnessing the story as though he is writing a movie script of the Goldens. Author Salman Rushdie uses this device to show what voice overs might occur in various scenes, allowing the reader to hear the inner dialogue of the characters.


René is also drawn into the family's story by the seductive nature of wealth and power. He is symbolic of all of us who swear we will never watch The Kardashians or The Bachelor, yet are curious of the spectacle. We watch one episode and we are hooked! Like anyone, René can't stop watching the ensuing drama and leaps into the fray. His guilt is the collective guilt of a population of Americans who say they want civility and cooperation, but engage in the opposite behavior when no one is looking.


New York State of Mind:

Reading this book reminds me of a Woody Allen movie. With his advanced education and professor parents, René represents the elite that the far right rally against. All of the characters constantly analyze themselves and each other. The home of the Goldens and other families surround The Garden. This idealized patch of land is where wealthy neighbors let their young children play, released from the concerns of the outer world. Much like reality television, this close proximity also sets up each resident's life to be viewed for the consumption and entertainment of their neighbors. There are many references to Hitchcock's Rear Window, which now seems like an omen warning of the easy voyeurism our society now indulges in.


Characters:

Nero's sons are each very conflicted. The oldest, Petya, struggles with high-functioning Autism. While some of Petya's habits are stereotypical, the author does show the social anxiety of people on the autism spectrum, and the ways these individuals can harness these traits to find success.


Apu seems to be the most well-adjusted, yet he is plagued by the ghosts of the people his father trod upon to reach the top. He is an artist who takes what he wants (like his father), even when it hurts Petya. His guilt over his privilege causes him to behave recklessly, which leads him to his ruin.


D (short for Dionysus), is trying to come to grips with his/her gender identity. Born male, she identifies as a woman, but is terrified of the surgery that would align her body with her identity. I found this one of the most fascinating aspects of the novel. The author very succinctly explains the bewilderment that many older Americans feel over Identity. Younger people easily accept ideas such as gender fluidity, and multiple kinds of pronouns. But many well-meaning people (who want to be supportive) have a hard time understanding the difference between what is a choice, and what is inborn in a person. D's character allows the author to explore these issues without judging the characters on their confusion.


Social Commentary:

Without naming names, Rushdie takes jabs at the recent presidential elections. He uses the analogy of Bat Woman and the Joker to represent Hillary and The Donald. The surreal feeling of the election season mirrors the dark turn America has taken during the Obama years. Racist, sexist, and misogynistic opinions that would have been unacceptable to express just a few years ago, are proudly yelled from the rooftops. As mass shootings become more common, solutions to gun violence, such as keeping firearms from mentally disturbed people, are blocked just because one side doesn't want the other to score a victory.


What I Was Mixed About:

Female Characters:

Most of the women in this book are deeply flawed. They are portrayed as manipulative, scheming people who use men to further their own interests. Most of the women who become involved with the main male characters shy away from commitment, and want nothing to do with bearing children. Once they do become close to men, they immediately try to emasculate them by constant criticism and absurd power plays. Aren't there any good women in this world? Perhaps this was the mindset that men unconsciously attached to Hillary? Could this be why she wasn't elected?

I couldn't put this book down! I have always wanted to read Rushdie, but was a bit intimidated, thinking his stories might be too complex.
Yes, this is a complex, sprawling novel, but oh so addictive, and highly readable.
Told through the lens of an aspiring film director, we are also led to see the narrative as a movie.
Rushdie is a born story teller who can weave political and social commentary on the U.S. with descriptions of life in the criminal underbelly of Mumbai and create a cohesive whole.
Highly recommended.?

I received an advance review copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. While this book is a bit of a tangled mess of melodrama, that was part of its charm. Shamelessly gothic enough to remind me of my childhood love of Dark Shadows, with a huge homage to Greco-Roman and Shakespearean tragedies. The narrative device of having a fledgling filmmaker who wants to do a documentary on the neighbors really worked well. It helped to tie the numerous flashbacks and side plots together through the narrator's discovery process.

The Golden House is a word nerd's treasure trove. When the narrative trickery isn't quite enough to make sense of all of the random craziness, I still found myself reveling in the beauty of the sentences. There is plenty of satire to go around, landing particularly hard on New York real estate magnates, mob bosses, and politicians. It takes a bit of plodding to find all the hidden gems, and it's worth the effort.

Salman Rushdie’s The Golden House is a compelling, mythic novel of a slim slice of contemporary New York City. Rushdie sets The Golden House City primarily in Greenwich Village’s famously beautiful, exclusive, and expensive MacDougal and Sullivan Streets private garden and townhouses (https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/29/fashion/new-york-secret-garden-anna-wintour-bob-dylan.html?_r=0), with brief side trips to India.

At its core, The Golden House is a novel of transitions, mutations, and transformations. A wealthy pater familias and his three sons leave their country and city behind and move to a Greenwich Village mansion, refusing to acknowledge their origins. The pater familias rebirths himself as one Nero Golden (yes, with a violin and a fire), with sons named Petronius (Petya), Apuleius (Apu), and Dionysus (D), with the later add-on of Vespasian. Presto change-o, a shady Indian businessman and mob money launderer transforms himself into a rich New York City real estate developer. One son grapples with sexual identity and unsuccessfully tries to morph from male. Another son grapples with agoraphobia and romantic betrayal. A third son scales the heights of the trendy New York art salons. The narrator, casting himself as a family friend, is I truth a keen observer and an undercover auteur, who ultimately becomes a main character in the Goldens’ family drama of deaths, disappearances, and betrayals. Through it all, the aging father does his best to simultaneously hold his fractious clan together and to satisfy his aging body’s sexual needs.

Rushdie packs multiple themes and memes into The Golden House. The themes overlap and intertwine, making for a complex, rich, and occasionally confusing mix. Rushdie seeks verisimilitude with numerous nods to current American cultural memes and events (even bringing to bear Stephen Colbert’s “truthiness”: the 2016 presidential election, the 2015 upper New York State jailbreak relocated to Minnesota (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2015_Clinton_Correctional_Facility_escape), and name-checks of various cinephile favorites.

It’s difficult for me to think about The Golden House without comparing it to Midnight’s Children and The Moor’s Last Sigh, my favorites among those Rushdie novels that I’ve read. While neither as complex nor as sweeping as either, The Golden House nonetheless contains Rushdie’s signature combination of family, myth, and history.

NetGalley generously provided the ARC upon which this review is based.

“I was brought up to believe in the loveliness of knowledge.”

This is a very lovely book. The voice of the story, call him “René”, is the narrator of the life of the family Golden, and of our times. The lines between those two stories is often blurred and indistinct. This is an extra-literary tale, and there are many lines that will remain with me. Salman Rushdie’s “The Golden House” is a book for our time, and a book to be read again and again in its timelessness.

Apologies to the publisher, who graciously granted me an ARC but I just could not engage with this novel. I honestly think Rushdie is a love it or hate it author. While this is the most accessible of his novels (certainly more so than Satanic Verses), I still found myself exhausted by everything- the language, the characters, trying to find the plot line. I appreciate what he was trying to do with the Golden family and politics, but gosh, I didn't find a character to hitch onto. I know others have said this picks up after the first third but I did not finish.

By far one of the best novel that Rushdie wrote recently and one of the best stories I read this year, comparable only to 4321 by Paul Auster. The epic story of the Golden family told by a neighbor, director and screenplay writer wannabee, that since from the start gets involved in this Indian's family affairs, very obscure affairs: love, death and everything in between for the tale of the rise and the fall of a legendary man who decided to call himself Nero.

Uno dei migliori romanzi di Rushdie e sicuramente una delle storie migliori lette ultimamente, paragonabile soltanto al 4321 di Paul Auster. L'epica storia della famiglia Golden, immigrata dall'India, raccontata dal loro vicino di casa, scrittore di copioni e regista in erba, che perde da subito la sua imparzialitá, per venire condotto sempre piú a fondo nelle drammatiche vicende familiari, oscure e perverse. L'amore, la morte e tutto quello che sta nel mezzo per raccontare l'ascesa e la caduta di un uomo che aveva scelto di chiamarsi Nerone

This is the tale of an immigrant family, the Goldens, who come to America in 2008 and buy a mansion in a gated community of Art Deco homes. The backyards of the homes of the MacDougal-Sullivan Gardens Historic District form a park-like setting--"a private, magic little place in the middle of downtown NY."

They arrive in the city just as President Obama is being inaugurated, which ushers in a period of hope for the country. The head of the family calls himself Nero Julius Golden and his three adult sons are Petronius, Apuleius, and Dionysus--obviously adopted names. Where have they come from and what is their history? How had they become so wealthy? And what has happened to their mother? These are all mysteries to be debated by the curious neighbors.

One such neighbor, Rene Unterlinden, a young would-be auteur, is the story's narrator. He decides to do a film about the family and, during the next ten years, befriends them, observes them and plans the scenes he will use for his debut work he will call The Golden House.

Things begin to fall apart for the family, as each son has a fatal flaw and the father's sins begin to catch up with him. Is this karma at work? Kismet? Fate? In that way, this story is a morality tale. And Rushdie pictures America's future falling apart too as a new 'king' is elected--a clown he refers to as 'the Joker.'

Thank you to NetGalley, the publisher and author for allowing me access to an arc of Rushdie's latest book. So thrilled to be given the opportunity!

Thanks to Random House and Netgalley for the advanced reader copy. Despite having multiple Salman Rushdie titles on my to-read list, this is the first of his books that I've read. I really enjoyed it although it was such a dark story. Along the lines of a Greek tragedy for sure. The writing kept the suspense up all throughout. You know from the very start that bad things are going to happen but the plotting was so good, I generally couldn't figure out what it was in advance. Add to that the wonderful political commentary and it was a winner for me.

Thanks to NetGalley and Random House for an ARC of this book in return for an honest review. I've been really wanting to read a Salman Rushdie book for ages. I've read snippets before and always liked his style of writing. This book did not disappoint although it did take me a little while to get into it. The book reminded me a little of The Great Gatsby in that the narrator is barely the main character. We do get some of his story but the rest of the story is mired in his observing the trials and tribulations of his ultra rich neighbors the Goldens who mysteriously appeared in his neighborhood the year that Obama was elected. Great Shakespearean-type tragedy.

Honestly, I requested this book on the author's name alone, without reading any detail from the synopsis, so pronounced is the good name of this writer. It seems I was rewarded for doing so.

This is a fascinatingly complex novel, rich in description and comprised of multiple layers of interest. The reader is provided with a textured and sensational insight to the Gold family and their larger social circle, who provide an honest (and sometimes scathing) vision of the contemporary political climate. Every single sentence had a wisdom to impart to the reader and spoke of truths that made this both shocking controversial and a sharply witty satire of our present. Clever, clever writing!

The plot evolves around the Golden Family who relocate from India to affluent Manhatten in mysterious, possibly criminal circumstances. Their story is told through the eyes of their neighbour, an aspiring movie maker.
This is my first Rushdie book and did not know what to expect. Unfortunately I did not finish this book, a rarity for me.
I struggled through the first third of the book. I found it quite dull and dry despite the host of cultural references contained. Perhaps this was the issue. Pages tended to drift by when sentences would have sufficed. The plethora of references just appeared to be a device to show the reader how clever the author was when all it did for me was to stop the story from flowing. Maybe it's just me and I'm not a Rushdie man.
I may return to the novel ,the character of Nero Golden was intriguing I'd like to know how he develops.
For me, all a bit of a slog and a bit self indulgent. 2.5 stars.
I received this an ARC from NetGalley in return for an honest review.