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Community comment are the opinions of contributing users. These comment do not represent the opinions of Fraser Valley Regional Library.
Jun 23, 2012buirechain rated this title 4 out of 5 stars
Midnight's Children Starts out as one of those books that is so good, that I can't really explain why. In many ways, it defies story telling conventions and yet manages to be extraordinarily captivating. I just want to hear all the vignettes about the Aziz-Sinai family. I am charmed by the self conscious use of language and story telling. The problem is that for a large stretch of the second half of the book, I wasn't captivated. I didn't care as much. I have a few ideas why. Maybe this is the kind of book that needs to be read slowly (it is a long! book), taken section by section. Maybe I suffered from overload. On the other hand, I get the feeling that Rushdie might have gotten fatigued; he was writing a long book and wanted to get to the end (where it once again became enthralling), but he couldn't skip over important sections of his main characters biography. Anyway, as there was a hole that defined many of the characters lives, so I felt there was a hole in this book that made it somewhat less than it could have been. And one final thought: I know Rushdie is most known for the controversy he caused with Satanic Verses, but I am impressed by the guts that he showed her, almost begging for controversy with his intense criticism of on again off again prime minister Indira Gandhi, who becomes a fictionalized villain in the story; he goes beyond any allegorical criticism of her regime to actually having her oppress the main character and his friends.