Satanic Verses

I feel a little bit bad posting this and pushing Tree's lovely cockroach post down the page, but I suppose she'll appreciate having someone else post something.

The topic is a book, of course - The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie. I liked it; I'd say it ranks second out of the Rushdie books I've read, better than Shame and Midnight's Children, not as good as Haroun and the Sea of Stories which is just phenomenal. Rushdie, as usual, has an amazing ability to do what he wants with the English language, to use it in nontraditional ways that really leap off the page. Unfortunately, as with all his other books except for Haroun, the plot is mostly arbitrary, doesn't make much sense, and seems to serve as only a backdrop for the verbal pyrotechnics.

The device I liked in the Satanic Verses is that the book is told mostly in omniscient third person, with the very occasional first person note from the narrator, who turns out to be Satan and only intervenes occasionally. This strange narrator's presence is important in the book but done very subtly.

If, by chance, you want to know what was going on in this book, why the death threats, but don't want to commit to reading the whole thing, I strongly recommend reading only the section-larger-than-a-chapter titled "Mahound." It is the best part of the book, explains why Muslims might be offended, is more or less self-contained, and does not give away much of the plot, so if you decide later you want to read the whole novel it won't be ruined.