Rating: 
Summary: A Great Rushdie Introduction
Review: "Fury" was my first encounter of a Salman Rushdie novel, and I was very impressed. This my friends, is great contemporary literature!
The novel is a multi leveled incursion into the life of a middle aged creative soul who is tormented by his past, trying to find salvation in the complex post modern world. You are put on a journey of exploring human relationships in and out of marriage, in and out of friendships and in and out of reality.
The story unfolds more like a web site than a traditional chronological history in written form. The reader is transported with the main character, Malik Solanka, throughout different parts of his life in the same manner as hitting links on a web page but always coming back to the home page of his present life.
On these web pages structured as literature, you will find mystery, science fiction, love, politics, social commentary, anguish, murder, sexual tension and many surprises, all in the quest of finding the authentic Self.
I also enjoyed the play and examination of the modern American (Western) culture, its hold on materialism and the quest for fame and power all the while being juxtaposed against the backdrop of traditional (Eastern) culture in India.
For me, "Fury" was a great introduction to Salman Rushdie and I look forward to stepping into the lives of his earlier works to again find his magic with the written word.
Rating: 
Summary: So many clues, so little to find
Review: As I read the book, yes, I picked up on a lot (I think) of the clues, the double-triple meanings, the silly initials that match up with important characters and places later, the idea of puppets and puppeteers and dolls. But I still felt like I was wading through this book, slowly, with gritted teeth, waiting for it all to mean something. Waiting to care.This book is beneath Rushdie, who usually snaps me in his jaws and keeps me captive until I can breathlessly finish the book. I am not the same for days after a Rushdie book. But all in all, this book is about Rushdie showing off. It feels like a complicated puzzle with interesting bits and pieces, but really, when all is said and done, I didn't care to see the finished picture, if there was one. I didn't believe Malik and Neela were in love. (Why would Neela love him? What did he love about her besides her beauty?) I didn't believe in the Neela effect. I didn't believe that Little Brain was a roaring pop success. I didn't believe that some kids from the city and a man rotting with anger and loneliness and selfishness would come up with a second instant roaring pop success. I didn't like the fact that characters were introduced and then dropped. I almost stopped reading when Rushdie brought all three of Solanka's women into his bedroom in the middle of the night to confront him. How contrived, how daytime soap. But this is Rushdie. And even his bad novels, I keep reading.
Rating: 
Summary: Not as fanciful as his others, but very timely
Review: As others have written, this is not as robust a book as some of Rushdie's other novels, but I was very moved by the intimacy you felt with this book. It was equally as vivid a capture of its charachters and their internal dilemas. Perhaps even better. It's also a particularly eerie book to read post-September 11th. All in all, I really appreciated Fury. It was dark and sad, but not just for its own sake.
Rating:
Summary: A Bollywood version of "Herzog"?
Review: Forgive me, Mr. Rushdie, for such a tacky title. It gave me a giggle though.
I have quite a bushel of complaints about this and his other "lesser" novel, "The Ground Beneath Her Feet" but I still enjoyed this more than many books I've read lately.
Despite the story line which suddenly seemed terribly contrived from about page 100 on, that first hundred was sweet. I felt like I had met someone who actually understood my take on the complexities and absurdities of American life. And that is rare.
And in case anybody is concerned, I don't see the book as being hateful of or opposed to America. He certainly does express his contempt for some of the same things I also feel, as a native. Fluent and fervent, after reading my second book of his, his literary gift sometimes appears to be invective toward America. But I don't believe he hates America, any more than anything else that comes under his sharp wit. And his other literary gift appears to be about the appreciation for beautiful women, particularly Indian women. Worthy subject, methinks.
Well, I was just having fun criticizing, as I really envy this guy's storytelling skills. And besides, I don't know that much about Mr. Rushdie. So perhaps what I am seeing is simply a style to which I don't yet know how to respond. Perhaps I will learn when I pick up his next book, which I will.
Rating:
Summary: A postmodern New York Tale
Review: Fury is my second foray into Rushdie....and what a delightful foray it was. In a scant novel, Rushdie has managed to convey a complete disdain for American Pop Culture; a writer-protagonist who lives for the backstory, while suppressing his own; a quasi-paranoia of the Furies of Greek Mythology fame (one of the original 'woman scorned' figures); and so much more. Malik Solanka, professor, husband, father, and creater of the icon figure of 'Little Brain', who shot from off-time BBC kiddie show to cult figure and pop phenomenon in no time, has taken his considerable wealth, his fear of bringing harm to his wife and child (after finding himself standing over them with a knife while they slept), and his restlessness and fled home for New York City. While immersing himself in 21st century over-indulgence, Solanka says goodbye to Little Brain, as he loses creative control over her development. Drowning his sorrows and fears in alcohol, Solanka fears that he is the elusive 'Concrete Killer' at large in New York, who has murdered three socialite girls. His blackouts becoming more frequent, his actions unaccounted for, Solanka seeks to alienate himself from the world and remain in as much isolation and anonymity as possible. But the fame of being Little Brain's creator follows him and brings him into a dangerous affair with Mila Milo, a fanatical admirer of Brain and Solanka himself. Bordering on obsession, Mila's interest in Solanka grows, as does his self-doubt, and his certainty that he has brought down an ancient wrath upon himself that will plague him for the rest of his life. Through his friend Jack, Solanka meets and is enamored of a woman beautiful enough to stop traffic, Neela....who comes to him in need of a confidante to reveal that she thinks Jack may have some tie to the Concrete Killer. Solanka is a fascinating protagonist, due to his loss of memories during his drinking binges; his supposed mid-life crisis; his meticulous attention to backstory detail (again, as he buries his own backstory in his subconscious) and his ever-growing 'fury' at the world around him. Though the novel takes some very 'soap opera-esque' twists and turns, in today's world, some of the best-selling authors around are those who create the quick gratification thrillers that offer exactly the same kind of plot twists. But Rushdie does it with style and plausability. Other reviews have stated that this is not a great Rushdie offering, but I disagree with the notion that being so 'Pop American' this is an excellent starting point to give Rushdie a try, as it is so accessible to anyone familiar with American culture. His writing style, wit, and use of irony are top-notch.
Rating:
Summary: Response to Peter Wild--i think you've missed the pt.
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: Contrived and disappointing
Review: I was excited to pick up Fury, having read other books by Rushdie and also based on the premise of the book. I was so disappointed, I almost didn't finish it, and I bet I could have guessed the ending had I cared enough to try. I felt like I was being hit over the head with all of the obvious analogies and, since the book is entitled "Fury," there's really no need to keep referring to the fury within, the Furies, fury of the city, fury of lust/passion/pain. We get it! And yes, we all know that America in the 21st century is a vast wasteland--move on and get to the point of the story. Assuming there is one.
Rating:
Summary: Rushdie at his brilliant best
Review: I've long enjoyed and admired the works of Salman Rushdie, but with reservations. The greatest frustration is his fondness for the flashback, which he uses and abuses in each and every book. At least half of his works (ie. Midnight's Children, Satanic Verses, Ground Beneath Her Feet) have the same structure: Start with dramatic event/situation, usually cataclysmic, spend first 2/3 of book in flashback to events leading up to said event, and last third detailing aftermath and resolution of the event. Another problem, pointed out by the person who recommended Fury to me, is the preponderance of humor inside to India and Pakistani politics and the South Asian diaspora. Fury is a brilliant example of Rushdie's powerful, elegant, and forthright writing without being mired in the flashback ping-pong, the insider baseball, and the over-the-top surrealism and allegory of his earlier work. It showcases his growing into a more mature, universal writer. He's purged the, well, furies of his AngloIndian past that haunt his earlier works and moved on to something more universal. Fury paints a poigent portrait of many things. It captures the mad, brash bustle of New York City at its grandest, its most omnipotent and incontrovertible in the heady days before the little pop and big bang of the dot-com bust and 9/11. It also skewers, masticates, digests and defecates America in its turn of the millenium Golden Age of plenty, revealing how the end of that era, such a seeming surprise, had its warnings in how we responded to our spiraling greatness with increasing pettiness. In its depiction of the era just past, in America as represented by NYC, as seen the foreign eyes, Fury is great to read accompanied by U2's "All that you can't leave behind" on the stereo. The book also portrays the human soul, its illogical longings and the frustrations that build up under the surface into a boiling, raging Fury far greater for their original source. In a culture fonder of wallowing in its problems than dealing with them, Fury is a timely call to arms...and to honesty.
Rating:
Summary: More like 3.5 stars, but worth reading
Review: Knowing Rushdie's rep, I figured I'd give it a whirl, since it sounded interesting and promised to bring alive my favorite city. Well, it did to an extent--Rushdie's ruminations on what it means to be American and alive in the 21st Century are often right on target, and usually interesting. His portrait of Malik Solanka, ex-professor, famous dollmaker and generally screwed-up guy is also very rich--he was written very well, and I thoroughly enjoyed watching him interact with his environment. With that said, this book has its definite faults. For one thing: The beginning of the book is kind've a set-up, in which Rushdie is really sketching out Solanka and his environment, and this was really my favorite part. However, one gets the impression it's going to be a setup for a dynamic, gripping story that packs an emotional punch. In the end, it does pack this punch, but there are sections--large sections--that just drag. Partially, this is due to Rushdie's tendencies towards wordplay and referencing cultural icons from Wall Street to Mount Olympus. At times it's interesting to read the stuff this guy can reel off; other times, I began to wonder if he was trying a little too hard to impress readers. While it is a bit gratuitous, his cultural referencing is always fiercely intelligent, at least. I was a touch disappointed when I saw the direction he was taking things (perhaps after the first hundred pges my expectations were too high). There were a couple times when I lost interest in a big way, but kept reading, and I'm pretty much glad I did. There are some big flaws in this work, but by the end of the book all things become a bit clearer, both in Solanka's behavior and Rushdie's ideas, and my appreciation grew. All in all, I thought it was interesting enough to read, although it might take some work at times. Remember, this book is more of a "think piece" rather than a driving narrative. I'd recommend it to people who would appreciate that type of writing, as it's not for everybody.
Rating:
Summary: Should I stay or sould I go...
Review: Somewhat autobiographical, somewhat boring, somewhat exciting, somewhat sad, somewhat funny, somewhat intelectual, somewhat modern, somwhat all, this book has it all... or, should I say, this book whould have all if it wasn't for few bad choices that Rushdie made when writing.
What we have here is a standard Rushidean protagonist, fleeing intelectual whose origins are place well within India...it really does not matter does he flees from himself or from any kind of oppresion, what is imporatant is that he fled and dnow he tries to find himself in new life... what is not standard 'Rushidean' is development of motive the main character has... I sat for hours trying to think what lacks in this book, and how to name it and I finally found it... It lacks courage... It is like Rushdie was afraid to write it, when reading, you get the feeling of invoulntarines of writers actions, you get the feeling that every page is written in agony, and it kinda repulses the reader... though intelectualy provoking whith many of the references of modern world, authors and the ancient ones, this books lacks the most important thing that book should have... it doesen't have the writers heart...
|
