The Ground Beneath Her Feet: A Novel
by Salman Rushdie
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Book Summary Information
Author: Salman RushdieEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2000-03-16
ISBN: 0312254997
Number of pages: 592
Publisher: Picador
Book Reviews of The Ground Beneath Her Feet: A Novel
Book Review: not good; bad
Summary: 2 Stars
this book conveyed the atmosphere of some pbs documentary about the rock era, from someone who's clearly never been there. or to a real rock concert today, in the underground i mean, or to a rave or something. his portrayal of the um... craziness of it all still seems sanitized, even when he tries to be shocking.
the characters make no sense. i understand he is trying to do a version of that one greek myth or whatever (cause he says it like a million times outright, just like he over-explains every other reference to the point where even if you would have found it amusing you don't) but he misunderstands rock music fundamentally, i think. if he had made human characters and put them in the place of the characters in a greek myth, that would have shown an interesting contrast, and i think it would've fit the rock star "experience". but he made them gods, not humans. and there have been no gods in the 20th century, all the rock artists were very human. he also seems to think that by making them so godlike, he doesn't have to actually describe their characters, except to say that they were like, the best looking people ever and the most talented people ever etc. like it would be impossible or something to ever describe them so he didn't try. like i never understood why vina was supposed to be so attractive. i get that she is good looking and that she can sing good, but he didn't say really what the singing sounded like or what she looked like, at least not enough to make me believe she was the most attractive woman in the world. they were in love for what reason? becuase they were both just so perfect that they couldn't help it? they weren't nice to eachother or anything, not in any practical way. i felt that rock and roll people would never fall in love like that, that they would be more um... realist, he didn't seem to understand that rock and roll is realism. he kept talking about how they symbolized love for all people and all, but it was completely dysfunctional, and not in a way that represents the flaws of humanity or anything instructional, just in a way that it seemed they were constantly miserable.
plus the actual descriptions of the band and the lyrics he gave made me think that if it was an actual band it would have sucked.
the fact that a lot of people have described this as "a great book about the rock n roll era" demonstrates, i guess, the manner in which our culture has abandoned most of the information about the past. the confusing parts, the parts that demand something? the people don't even dance at rock concerts anymore. i imagine people who go to concerts where nobody dances may enjoy this. otherways read electric kool aid acid test if you want to read about the rock era, or read some kundera if you want to see music incorporated beautifully into a novel.
i will read some of his other books of course, i can see how he desired rock and roll to be this metaphor for him and he couldn't really do it. but is it possible that the only reason that people like him so much is that they can't tell how shallow his books about india are? are they also filled with meaningless references and puns that americans take for being meaningful becuase we can't understand them?
Summary of The Ground Beneath Her Feet: A Novel
In this remaking of the myth of Orpheus, Rushdie tells the story of Vina Apsara, a pop star, and Ormus Cama, an extraordinary songwriter and musician, who captivate and change the world through their music and their romance. Beginning in Bombay in the fifties, moving to London in the sixties, and New York for the last quarter century, the novel pulsates with a half-century of music and celebrates the power rock 'n' roll.
The ground shifts repeatedly beneath the reader's feet during the course of Salman Rushdie's sixth novel, a riff on the Orpheus and Eurydice myth set in the high-octane world of rock & roll. Readers get their first clues early on that the universe Rushdie is creating here is not quite the one we know: Jesse Aron Parker, for example, wrote "Heartbreak Hotel"; Carly Simon and Guinevere Garfunkel sang "Bridge over Troubled Water"; and Shirley Jones and Gordon McRae starred in "South Pacific." And as the novel progresses, Rushdie adds unmistakable elements of science fiction to his already patented magical realism, with occasionally uneven results.
Rushdie's cunning musician is Ormus Cana, the Bombay-born founder of the most popular group in the world. Ormus's Eurydice (and lead singer) is Vina Apsara, the daughter of a Greek American woman and an Indian father who abandoned the family. What these two share, besides amazing musical talent, is a decidedly twisted family life: Ormus's twin brother died at birth and communicates to him from "the other side"; his older brothers, also twins, are, respectively, brain-damaged and a serial killer. Vina, on the other hand, grew up in rural West Virginia where she returned home one day to find her stepfather and sisters shot to death and her mother hanging from a rafter in the barn. No wonder these two believe they were made for each other.
Narrated by Rai Merchant, a childhood friend of both Vina and Ormus, The Ground Beneath Her Feet begins with a terrible earthquake in 1989 that swallows Vina whole, then moves back in time to chronicle the tangled histories of all the main characters and a host of minor ones as well. Rushdie's canvas is huge, stretching from India to London to New York and beyond--and there's plenty of room for him to punctuate this epic tale with pointed commentary on his own situation: Muslim-born Rai, for example, remarks that "my parents gave me the gift of irreligion, of growing up without bothering to ask people what gods they held dear.... You may argue that the gift was a poisoned chalice, but even if so, that's a cup from which I'd happily drink again." Despite earthquakes, heartbreaks, and a rip in the time-space continuum, The Ground Beneath Her Feet may be the most optimistic, accessible novel Rushdie has yet written. --Alix Wilber
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