I found this one at a discount book store on a beach trip (making me realize how many of my books are acquired in this way) and could not resist, considering Salman Rushdie's stature (and appearance in "Seinfeld").
Taking themes of nationalism, politics, love, gender identity, religion, organized crime, and mental instability head on, Rushdie spares no words in the jam-packed "The Golden House."
"These are the times we live in, in which men hide their truths, perhaps even from themselves, and live in lies, until the lies reveal those truths in ways impossible to foretell. And now that so much is hidden, now that we live in surfaces, in presentations and falsifications of ourselves, the seeker after truth must pick up his shovel, break the surface and look for the blood beneath."
Narrated by the untrustworthy auteur Rene, this novel races at breakneck speed through a flurry of tragedies, emerging as a commentary on grief and loss. For bonus points, Rushie eviscerates Trumpism within the flow of the story.
" ... All the discontent of a furiously divided country, everyone believing they were right, their cause was just, their pain was unique, attention must be paid, attention must finally be paid to them and only them, and I began to wonder if we were moral beings at all or simply savages who defined their private bigotries as necessary ethics, as the only ways to be."
"In that bubble, razor-tipped playing cards were funny, and lapel flowers that sprayed acid into people's faces were funny, and wishing you could have sex with your daughter was funny, and sarcasm was funny even when what was called sarcasm was not sarcastic, and lying was funny, and hatred was funny, and bigotry was funny, and bullying was funny, and the date was, or almost was, or might soon be, if the jokes worked out as they should, nineteen eighty-four."
"Sometimes the bad guys win and what does one do when the world one believes in turns out to be a paper moon and a dark planet rises and says, No, I am the world. How does one live amongst one's fellow countrymen and countrywomen when you don't know which of them is numbered amongst the sixty-million-plus who brought the horror to power, when you can't tell who should be counted among the ninety-million-plus who shrugged and stayed home, or when your fellow Americans tell you that knowing things is elitist and they hate elites, and all you have ever had is your mind and you were brought up to believe in the loveliness of knowledge, not that knowledge-is-power nonsense but knowledge is beauty, and then all of that, education, art, music, film, becomes a reason for being loathed, and the create out of Spiritus Mundi rises up and and slouches toward Washington, D.C., to be born."
The antagonist, Nero Golden, is complicated -- run through with horrific deeds, yet he becomes a de facto parent to Rene and teaches him how to be a man. Along the way, Rene has a terrifying and intoxicating tryst with Nero's gold-digging wife, Vasilisa.
Rushdie loves his polymath, obscure references, which can occasionally stymie the flow of the narrative. However, the end result is well worth the effort, with "The Golden House" offering a look at what devastating loss does to our perception of the world around us -- hidden amidst a plot about how the sins of the past never stop chasing the present.
" ... I learned the final lesson, the learning of which separates us from innocence. That there is no safe space, that the monster was always at the gates, and a little of the monster was within us too, we were the monsters we had always feared, and no matter what beauty enfolded us, no matter how lucky we were in life or money or family or talent or love, at the end of the road the fire was burning, and it would consume us all."
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