Review: Midnight's Children

Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

As a work of magical realism, which I've sometimes found so magical to the point of being a chore to make sense of (looking at you Hundred Years of Solitude), this book feels more grounded in reality (perhaps too grounded at times... could've used more episodes of the Midnight Children). But the fantastical elements still play a significant role here.

I wish I had more background on India-Pakistan history to pick up on all of the references and historical tie-ins in this book, as I feel it would've shed light on a lot of the underlying meanings and clearly symbolic imagery. I had a passing familiarity with the story of the Nehru-Gandhi family (Indira Gandhi in particular features heavily in the background of the last 3rd of the book) which helped, and this book really puts into light some of downsides of their government as seen from the perspective of the lowest echelons of society.

It takes a while for things to really pick up, as Saleem the narrator gradually introduces you to a wide array of characters that become difficult to keep track of (3+ of them change names partway through and he makes it a point to remind you of their name fluidity while sometimes still referring to them by their old monikers) and episodes that make you wonder, huh, what is this all for anyway? The backseat driving commentary from Saleem's partner reinforcing this point is hilarious though.

One other online commenter I found mentioned that reading Rushdie "feels like having a stroke," and I'm not gonna lie, between this and the surrealist nightmare that is The Satanic Verses I'm inclined to agree with them. (But of course Rushdie doesn't deserve the hate he's gotten cause of that book.)

But then there are moments where everything comes together. All of the buildup; the esoteric familial connections; the characters you stopped caring about because they faded into the background except not fully cause of an offhand maybe-foreshadowing comment from 200 pages ago; the apologies from a narrator who you can't trust because every other chapter he admits he intentionally misled you for reasons; the fantastical bits that don't stay for too long because you forget these kids are only 11 and susceptible to 11-year-old mishaps in a country too starved for imagination to realize their potential; and then the wars happen and you get a glimpse of the bigger picture just when all of the punctuation disappears and it's run-on after run-on after run-on and oh my god what just the **** just happened.

This book is equal parts family saga, birth of a nation, tragicomedy, fantastical nonsense, and those one-off, indescribable moments that I live for in literary fiction and I am for all of it. Highly recommended if you have the patience for it.