'Fury' is a book that leaves ambiguity in its wake. I did not like it, nor did I dislike it. Call it dead stimuli, if you will, because it failed to create that spell-binding magic that is typically Rushdie. If you don't believe me, read his 'Midnight's Children', or his two-book YA series, 'The Khalifa Brothers'. His prowess as a writer is unquestionable, and so is the absolute no-show of his brilliance in 'Fury'.

Why three stars then? Because after a very underwhelming start, the book did engage me in the story unfolding in its pages. His language sugar-coated a story that didn't have much of an appeal, nor a set of characters to give a damn about.

As someone who loves Rushdie's works, and buys a book for the simple reason that he has written it, 'Fury' was something that didn't really live up to the standards Rushdie has set for himself.

2.5 sterren

Omdat we beter schrijvers lezen voor ze gewelddadig het zwijgen opgelegd worden wou ik nog eens een Rushdie ter hand nemen. Met dank aan CPNB dat het e-book Woede van Rushdie gratis beschikbaar maakte werd het dit eerder dan werken die al op mijn leeslijst stonden.

Helaas werkte dit boek niet voor mij. Wanneer Rushdie goed is, is hij briljant, maar naast fantastische boeken heeft Rushdie ook heel wat middelmatigs geschreven, en dit past helaas in deze rij. Te weinig karakterevolutie, te veel jonge (uiteraard superaantrekkelijke) vrouwen die vallen voor een gefrustreerde professor op de dool, nevenplots die niet echt iets aan het verhaal toevoegen, ...
Rushdie blijft een belangrijke schrijver, maar lees liever 'Middernachtskinderen' of 'Haroen en de zee van verhalen' als je wil weten hoe hij kan sprankelen.

This is quite a book. A book of delusions and allusions. It looses its way and gains it and then looses it again. The prose in the earlier parts is angry and suddenly it mellows and mellows and mellows. The novel is like a blistering innings gone vapid by defense, but its not a complete failure but a failure indeed. The brilliance is there somewhere hiding. Maybe the whole damn book is a prelude of something grand, but the grandiose is just a vacant bubble somewhere floating in the cosmos. In my mind I had an image of Mr. Rushdie suddenly rushing into an cul de sac of inventiveness (or imagination) and raising his arms and finally saying "That's it folks. Its time to go home". This cock tease of a book is not what you expect from the man who wrote the masterpiece on the idiosyncratic independent India. Having said that it must be noted that I enjoyed the book in parts. The psychosis, the paranoia, the sudden splash of humour and other bits of intellectual snobbery. It was fun and that is my complaint "Why did you let it go sour?".

Salman Rushdie said in one of his interviews that he likes his stories to be as grand as a Carnival. ‘Fury’ sure feels like, it is one. The book seems to have everything; comedy, romance, drama, thriller, a murder mystery, politics, war. Set in New York City, this is the tale of a rich man Malik Solanka aka “Solly” who has separated himself from his family which is in London. Here, he falls in love with a stunning Indian woman and this love finally leads him through some extra-ordinary situations eventually back to this family.

Solly is originally from Bombay. He has studied and worked in London. He is however fascinated with doll making and has enhanced his hobby into a BBC TV Show. This show features a girl puppet named Little Brain, a puppet that’s really close to his heart. After initial success of the show, he loses control over the creative aspect of the show. The Fury builds up in him as he watches his beloved Little Brain get commercialized. This affects his personal life and stretches him to the point where he wants to kill his own family. Solly quickly escapes to New York before he can do something terrible.

In New York, he meets a young girl, Mila who turns out to be a big fan of Little Brain. She and her Computer Geek associates later help him artistically reconnect with his creation by helping him with a website for Little Brain. Malik also meets Neela, a beautiful Indian woman with whom Malik instantly falls in love with, through his friend Jack Rhinehart, who was once a war journalist. Malik and Neela end up falling in love after Rhinehart gets murdered in the hands of young rich men during his initiation into their bizarre club which is involved in killing women and scalping them. Neela is an Indian from a country called Lilliput-Blefuscu goes back to document the revolution by the oppressed Indian-minority. Solly follows here there just in time when the civil war goes out of hand. Eventually, he is rescued after much sacrifice and is returned by the rescuing crew to London where he hopes to reunite with his family.

Immediately, at the first glance, you realize that Solly’s character of a middle aged man filled with fury inside, all away from his family has traces of Rushdie’s own life. Also, you can’t help but compare Neela’s character to Padma Lakshmi. But the comparison ends with their looks. Rushdie’s characters, all hold grudges (Furies) deep in their hearts. Solly is angry about his wife wanting a second child, the deaths of his friends, the corruption of his art, his childhood. Yet, he holds everything inside occasionally letting out steam. Rushdie’s writing style is the highlight of the book, where he brings out these dynamics with absolute perfection. He regulates extravagance, subtlety, comedy, sarcasm throughout the book and at unexpected places. This may not go well with readers who expect the emphasis to be more on the power of the story rather than the act of storytelling. However, Rushdie fans, who are in sync with his way of writing, will definitely be delighted to read the book more than once for exactly that reason.

You'd want to qoute every single line in this novel.

My first Rushdie.

I don't think it's great, by any means, but I was enthralled, and appreciated like the intensity of his language and characters. Pretty much kept me reading up until the end. Felt like there were a lot of psychological observations that felt interesting and on point. Character felt a little larger than life. I can understand why it might garner some negative reviews (for me, the meeting of all three "Furies" felt a little too much) and it felt a little all over the place. But I can't say it didn't have energy, even if some of those energy spikes felt a little misdirected, misplaced.

I 'm new to this goodreads thing and this is my first review so here goes...

I had never read Salman Rushdie (still haven't) but I saw this and the premise was very promising. I felt it would be a good start into an author who I really should read, how wrong I was. It is said that if you have never upset anyone then you've never done anything of value (notable exclusions: miley cyrus) and this guy evoked a fatwa and a decade of self-imposed exile.

I have tried to read this thing about 4-5 times now. It sits on a bookshelf in my guest toilet (alongside DICKENS CHARLES, Will Self, Plato,Joseph Conrad , De Quincey and Palahniuk) as a reminder of my failure. Often, visitors ask me about it and I'm forced to change the subject to the other titles on the shelf. Before writing this I checked out some of your impressions of it and phew! I'm not alone.

The protagonist is an academic who has done a Faustian deal with the media and his 'fury' comes from his feelings of guilt at selling his scholarly soul to light entertainment. I could, no matter how hard I tried, engage with this character and only felt the need to slap him upside the head. I work with academics and I appreciate their punctiliousness and fragility but he has a beautiful and supportive wife, a lovely child and lives without any real-world cares. He is a niche within a niche.

As I said, I have read the first 100 or so pages, a number of times and the only 'fury' I felt was my own. I agree with @Kobita (I haven't discovered how to link to goodreaders yet) the prose is proficient and there is a lot to quote from this book but beyond the premise and the soundbites it offers very little. I have not been tempted to pick up another of Rushdie's titles and that, I think, is a shame for the reasons I mentioned in my opener.

Maybe, if Self or Palahniuk took the premise, it would be an astounding read but Mr. Rushdie, sir you need to get out more.

Thank you for reading, I'm now off to review a title I can be kinder to, karma.

DNF

Just finishing my second read... While it starts slowly, this is a wonderful book... Rushdie is extraordinary at writing about a specific place and time, and the place and time of this novel--the September 10th United States--is a fascinating one.

Neither a good book nor anywhere near as bad as its detractors suggest, this was a self-involved stopgap, a roman a clef by a man whose own life is almost as interesting as he thinks.

I read this a while back, and I did not love it the way I have loved Rushdie's other work. Perhaps it's brilliant, but I just don't get it.

First, there was the autobiography of a dirty middle-aged man aspect. It turns out much of the book was semi-factual, and Rushdie really did leave his loyal wife who stuck by him through his exile and hiding for a hot young thing (with a scar on her arm - sheesh, we're pushing "semi-autobiographical" here). Well, good for you, but don't act like you're somehow different than ALL OTHER MIDDLE-AGED MEN. Or like this book is somehow different than ALL THE OTHER SAGAS OF MIDDLE-AGED MALE BETRAYAL. Ahem.

All of the talk of "fury" is supposed to symbolize some kind of postmodern anomie, but it reads like the usual middle-aged-male-discontent to me. Eventually, the main character's overwhelming fury is sated by what ... divorce and a hot young thing? Puleeeez. That's not postmodern anomie.

And then there was the rapsodizing about the internet boom/bubble, which was just tedious, and so, like, 2000.

The NYC references were cool, and it wasn't a boring book - I wanted to know what happened. But I'm not a big fan.

I am, generally, a Rushdie fan, however. Midnight's Children is still blowing my mind, ten years later. Is that era over now? The critics don't seem to think so, but I wonder.

Not his finest. Rushdie's distinctive storytelling voice, which I enjoy so much in novels like SATANIC VERSES and MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN, is eclipsed by a self-conscious anxiety to prove familiarity with American culture. Malik Solanka's, and probably author Rushdie's, view of New York City is limited to the privileged neighborhood he frequents - and the understanding of American culture feels compressed, a digest of America via CNN and the Entertainment Channel. Intellectually, we are being fed fast food here. The observations of American life are facile: the USA does not consider the consequences of its policies; capitalism is a fanatical religion; men are afraid of women's sensuality; America has race issues.

The novel sets up a confrontation with a deep, mysterious anger - an eternal human rage - that disappears in an unsatisfactory perfume of sentimentality. "Love conquers all," and so we are left to chew on a rather strained fantasy about a fictional civil war, and an uninteresting remnant of Solanka's science-fiction story.

(I adapted much of this from a review I wrote on Amazon.com in 2001.)