etc.

A couple of firsts for me: my first Rushdie and my first audiobook. Good experiences, both.

This is a book about fury: the fury of Malik Solanka, the 55-year old millionaire dollmaker protagonist, the fury of New York city, the fury of living in a hyper-capitalist, hyper-sensitive, hyper-modern 21st Century world. The book begins with Solanka having recently fled his North London house after having come close to submitting to the fury of a drunken moment and killing his wife with a carving knife. He sets up in a decent sublet in New York city and the rest of the book is about how he wrestles with his personal and familial demons, comes to terms with living in a city that is too postmodern for its own good, and relearns the meaning of social contracts. Rushdie’s prose is wonderfully descriptive and he’s obviously a fan of the backstory because this book is littered with tangential offshoots that often (but not always) fill in key details. If I were holding this book in my hand I might have been tempted to read ahead, but Rushdie’s masterful narration (he can really An-Nun-Ci-Ate) held me in rapt wonderment for all nine hours and 15 minutes.