Fury

Rating:
Summary: Sorry but it's a failure for a superb writer like Rushdie
Review: I have eagerly enjoyed all of Mr. Rushdie's previous books. Some were excellent, some were simply good or at least worth reading. This is simply bad. I'm sorry to say this, for I really think Rushdie is an outstanding writer, but this book is sort of a bizarre patchwork that only my loyalty to its author(and the hope that it might improve as I progressed through it, which it did not)prevented me from turning down half way through.
Don't waste your time, read any other of his books instead.

Rating:
Summary: Not up to par with the other Rushdies, but...
Review: ...even that is still a pretty good novel.

The novel is about a professor's quest to find himself, battling his inner demons and helping to design a spectacularly succesful web site. Here, Rushdie's imagination's in full swing. The plot is interesting enough, even though I could have done without some of the creepy erotic scenes and the strange coda on the pacific island (which somehow remided me of the equally strange ending of the much better novel the Moor's Last Sigh).

Rushdie's language is full of imaginative images and sly jokes (I liked his remark about India's failure to be proud of its authors).

And yet there's something missing. Maybe the story isn't as captivating as his best work. Maybe I didn't like the build up to Solanka's childhood traumas and its resolution. Maybe this time the writer's impressive intelligence is a bit too showy.

Certainly I was repulsed by a very visible, Woody - Allen - esque (autobiographical?) subtext about this aging professor of indian descent who is loved by not one but three spectacularly attractive and much younger women. One thing which is pretty good is the cover. But we've learned not to judge a book by that, haven't we ?

Rating:
Summary: Yawn
Review: Back when I was in University in the 80s, I thought Salman Rushdie was the Business. I used to parade around with my "Free Salman Rushdie" button, all political and hip. I was really looking forward to reading this book, and was disappointed. Yes, he's clever; Yes, he's of the moment; Yes, he's satirical ... but so what? I was not gripped, held, pulled into this tale. In fact, quite the opposite - I put this book down 1/3 of the way through. NEXT.

Rating:
Summary: Fury
Review: Definitely this is not Rushdie's best book. I was very enthusiastic about Rushdie after I read Shame and Satanic Verses and I didn't think twice when I first saw the book. I bought it and headed straight to my room to read.

The book is not quite as flowing as the other books. It jumps from one idea to the other in a detached manner.
It is about a certain Indian british philosophy professor who wants to flee from his own self. In order to protect his family from his own dangerous self he went to america with out giving any explanation. He met two women in America. One, Mila wants him to be a substitute to her dead father, who was also her lover. The other woman, Neela was a very beautiful indian woman with whom he fell in love and she helped him defeat his anger and awaken the life in him. Finally his ex-wife with her new lover and Mila came to his room with out notice while he was in bed with Neela. Neela left him without saying anything and he was left alone with his punched jaw by his ex-wife's new lover.
Neela went to her home country to fight alongside her native people against the indeginous tribes who treated them as second class citizens.
When Malik Solanka came looking for Neela, prepared to offer his help for the revolution and win Neela back he was detained by the indian leader. By this time the leader, Babour who was leading the indians against the indeginous tribes ,has turned to be a worse oppressor than the indeginous people so for Neela and other indian fighters the revolution has to be undone.
Neela sacrificed her life to save Malik Solanka and others who were being held hostage by Babour.
And Malik Solanka is finally left with his Fury, without any lover and unable to talk to his beloved son.
Generally it tells about the anger caused by modern life, about truth or might, about the shallowness of America's new culture
about how technology is changing the way we feel and think and also how creation outgrows the creator.The book doesnot flow very well like the other Rushdie books and lacks the depth of characters of satanic verses and the wholeness of Shame.

But it is ok. It is worth reading.

Rating:
Summary: To the unitiated...chose another Rushdie!
Review: 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!

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: This was my first read of Rushdie. I read gushing reviews of this book and thought I'd give him a try. I only got 60 pages in and had to put it down. I thought he was trying to prove how smart and clever he is, and I am convinced. But that doesn't make for an enjoyable read. Maybe the critics get wet reading this type book full of ego-driven intellectual gymnastics, but I'll pass. There has to be some heart, something I can relate to my life, and a break from the sarcasm and chest puffing. I read for enjoyment, not self abuse.

Rating:
Summary: Buy something else
Review: I've never read any other Rushdie and decided to pick this short one up as a way in (it's only 250 pages). It reads pretty quickly and it's funny at times, but it doesn't really work. The plot's contrived, the characters thin and the ending is just weird.

Rating:
Summary: Style, no substance!
Review: A good literary creation is not only clever phrases, it also requires a larger order and symmetry. On these counts, most of Rushdie's books fall short. Fury is one of his worst books.

Rating:
Summary: Ego lit.
Review: August 14, 2002

This was my first time reading Rushdie and I found
'Fury' a bit of an uphill push. The novel exists soundly
within the self-satisfied genre of "Man-Of-Letters
Ego Literature", lacking for plot and sometimes
substituting charicature for character. As in many
contemporary novels, grocery lists of pop culture
references are too often spotlighted as clever satire.

That said, the book contains some truly stirring,
thought-provoking rants, observations, and

arguments about the unsatisfying, schizophrenic
circus that is modern America. Could have made
for a few better short stories or magazine
articles, but perhaps Mr. Rushdie had a book
obligation.

Rating:
Summary: The Doll-Man Cometh
Review: 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.