Ireally disliked this book to the point that I had to abandon this halfway through. I have read a number of novels by Salman Rushdie and really enjoyed them - many are based on both spiritual and fantasy themes but this book took fantasy too far to the point of being unintelligble
Unfortunately I found the novel so irritating I abandoned it halfway through. I hope this is just a glitch in Salman Rushdie's storytelling!

For an author who I've heard of spoken in such reverent tones for so long before finally acclimating myself to, my first exposure to Salman Rushdie's work was not at all revelatory. In retrospect, starting with Rushdie's first novel, Grimus, and one the author himself has spoken ill of, may not have been the most prudent way to experience the work of a storied novelist. And, truth be told, literary fiction as read voluntarily is kind of a new engagement for me though my initial choice to try Grimus (as opposed to, say, Midnight's Children) was based on the fact that Grimus is marketed as science fiction, the sort of genre book I gravitate toward. But that first couple of pages nearly stopped me before I'd really begun.

I'll say these negative things up front, to get them out of the way: Form-wise and mechanically, I think the choices made in Grimus (which I understand now may be much more common in this vein of novel than I realized) are pompous and unnecessary. The eschewing of standard quotation marks in favor of initializing dashes and then mixing narrative with dialogue, the flipping of perspective and point of view without consideration, the excessive use of the semicolon—all probably nothing more in the end than stylistic choices but ones which I feel detract far more than they add to the prose. The lyrical nature of the writing and the deft hand at description suffice (eventually) to reveal that this is not an unaccomplished writer struggling with basic composition but rather someone altogether too bored with convention to be concerned with trifles like readability. That's both a criticism and a praise, because the truth is that Rushdie does display great skill in crafting this novel, but his willingness to force readers to work harder than they should in order to identify this skill is little more than ego-stroking.

Yet, Grimus did eventually win me over. The story chronicles Flapping Eagle, an outcast from his people because of circumstances beyond his control surrounding his birth. He becomes immortal. He spends a lot of time sailing, living, man-whoring, eventually deciding he wants to die. He arrives via inter-dimensional travel in a place called Calf Island and meets two ugly people, living in a hut near the sea. He disturbs their lives, and is lead to the town of K, where other immortals congregate. He disturbs the town there, as well. It's difficult to summarize the plot exactly because Grimus is less about what happens as it is about the people it happens to and the reactions of all the other characters to the spectre of Flapping Eagle as he moves destructively in and through their lives.

At its core the novel is symbolic, high-minded and a book to make you consider things. Things like death, things like certainty, things like obsession. Rushdie plays with language, plays with names, plays with constructs of time and perspective. There is fun in the book, with notions of pan-dimensional stone frogs called Gorfs who play a game with order, with fleeting romances and quests that seem sort of heroic but really aren't. There is plenty of tragedy in Grimus, because there is tragedy in Flapping Eagle, and tragedy in K, and tragedy in immortality. There is a worrisome amount of sex, too, elevated at times into an enduring and unified force which seems to contain power and motive and a destructive power that nearly rivals Flapping Eagle's existence. Perhaps Rushdie is trying to say something about the weight, the heft we lend to sex. Perhaps he just likes writing about people getting it on.

And that's the mesmerizing thing about Grimus: You don't really know which parts are significant and which are insignificant and which are just there. It's, in a way, like Waiting For Godot, trafficking in literary negative space enough that you can find meaning in small passages or decide that moments which seem to be pivotal to the plot are disposable. As much as I disliked the way Rushdie's mechanical style forced effort on my part to parse the text, I loved that his writing forced effort to discern what was being said behind what was being described. Is he saying something about modern society when he describes the way the citizens of K use obsession to drown out the maddening din of the Grimus effect? Is the Grimus effect a symbol for information overload? For technology? For spirituality? I think the answers to all are both "yes" as well as "no."

The heaviest complaint I have with Grimus is that its ending is weak and entirely too convenient. Not convenient in the sense that the characters all get off scot free (quite the opposite in fact) but in that it provides a nice little bookend, and everyone kind of accidentally gets what they want. It's not "and it was all a dream," because it neither re-casts the narrative in the light of irrelevancy nor tries to shock the reader, but it's almost as bad in the way it takes all the interesting ideas and symbolic food-for-thought and suddenly makes them mere constructs, un-symbols that are now literal facets, of and exclusive to the world that Grimus creates. And Rushdie takes those elements which are no longer applicable to the real world the reader inhabits and tucks them away on a shelf and seems to simply ask, "Did you like the story?" Which, to me, misses the point entirely.

No. Just no. Rushdie never lacked for imagination, and it is ample evidence here. But sometimes, all that imagination can go absolutely nowhere. This book not only feels like a fever dream, but also makes as much sense. Which is to say, not at all.

Flapping Eagle is an (Amer)Indian, who has been given a potion for immortality doesn't drink it. Then he does. Then he wanders around aimlessly for seven hundred years, during which he comes across a mysterious figure wielding a stone wand. Nothing happens. Then he meets this figure again, and he gets thrown to Calf Island, which seems to be in a different dimension. Its denizens have the habit of speaking very pedantically about something completely different than was asked of them. And it's obvious Eagle's presence there is a catalyst for all manner of mayhem, all of which is directly related to a being that may or may not exist, called Grimus.

Everything goes obviously, because this is a badly written fantasy. Things are convoluted to the maximum degree possible. Flapping Eagle is a craven and nasty piece of work, so there's no inclination whatsoever to see him succeed. In fact, it's so horribly foreshadowed, that I don't believe what happened in the end. There is no reason to suppose that Eagle has the willpower or the morality to resist the power of Grimus. The other characters were just as hard to relate to. In fact, I was hoping for all of them to boil their heads. Which they do after a fashion.

This is a mess. It's hard to believe the very next book this author wrote was the splendid Midnight's Children. Just as well he had India to turn to for inspiration. Out of all of Rushdie's novels that I've read, Rushdie's worst books (Grimus, Fury) are the ones that did not overtly reference the subcontinent. Two stars, because I did not detest it, and I cannot deny his language.

Having read a couple of Rushdie's most acclaimed books before this one I expected "the usual" Rushdie style. It was nothing like this. The book is early, and his writing - undecided, not fully grown up. And that's precisely what I liked about it. I mean the story is crazy, and I like crazy. But the words, the writing style (someone might say: inmature) I would call open (yet). The sentences are rough, but the story - clear. Normally I would rate it 3 stars, but this early language, that leaves a space for surprise (if Rushdie decides to go young-crazy again, maybe, in the future, despite of his mature now life and style). I keep my fingers crossed. After all, life is full of surprises.

«Гримус» - дебютный роман Рушди. Его главный герой - Взлетающий Орел, индеец из племени аскона - выпивает эликсир бессмертия. Снадобье раздобыла сестра Взлетающего Орла, Птицепес. К эликсиру бессмертия прилагалась и бутылка с эликсиром смерти, но её по ошибке выпьет другой человек...

В самом начале кажется, что книга будет о том, что делал Взлетающий Орел все 777 лет, но нет. Хотя конечно об этом тоже, но очень коротко. Основная же часть повествования о том, что он делал, чтобы добиться смерти.

Этот роман - не только фантазийное действо с карнавальными персонажами и элементами магического реализма, но и роман взросления, и сказка, и фантастика, и, главное, философская притча, как потом будет почти всегда у Рушди. Уже в первом романе он задается очень сложными вопросами о жизни и смерти. О том, что такое бессмертие - дар или проклятие? Если это дар, то знаем ли мы на самом деле, что с ним делать? Способен ли человек самостоятельно осознать, что делать с данной ему властью, с огромными возможностями, выходящими за все мыслимые человеку границы? Может ли быть смерть лучше жизни?

Несмотря на то, что читать очень интересно, и что здесь уже безусловно считывается фирменный стиль Рушди, все равно очень чувствуется, что это дебютный роман. Здесь гораздо больше абсурдного, фантасмагоричного, чем хотелось бы. Как почти всегда бывает с дебютными романами, есть ощущение, что автор очень хочет удивить, торопится рассказать сразу всё, что придумал.

Нисколько не жалею, что прочитала, но рекомендовать могу только фанатам Рушди, чтоб, так сказать, разобраться с тем "как все начиналось".

I usually love Salman Rushdie's books - Shalimar the Clown is one of my favorite books. But I have to say, this was a swing and a miss, and am a little surprised it got published. I realize he uses a lot of symbolism and writes in the fantasy-adjacent magical realism style, but I found it a bit baffling and not nearly as insightful as his other works. I think it just proves the maxim that you should write about what you know, and his books dealing with India and Pakistan and Kashmir all deal with topics he knows very well.

In sum, I'd strongly recommend reading Salman's work, but maybe don't pick this one first.

The first book from Rushdie is a magical voyage that successfully merges the magical realism of Marquez with Rushdie's own distillation of Indian mythology and tradition. It was a valiant first effort and is an exhilarating read. I think one should jump right into Midnight's Children, but if its length is too imposing, you could try Grimus or Shame to get your feet wet.

I’m glad my introduction to Salman Rushdie was “Midnight’s Children” followed by several other of his great novels. Had I started with “Grimus” I don’t think I would have come to love this author.

Početak je baš obećavao ali do kraja sam se mnogo razočarala.

Mostly fun, inventive, weird, at times bit too weird also. It's a crazy leap from this as debut to Midnight's Children as the next book, but many of the Rushdie elements, (the puns, the Wordplay, references to classics and mythologies) are already there.
Some choices are the choices of a new writer trying to be 'edgy' and those are mostly meh.
Quite readable on the whole.

one of the best-written terrible books i’ve read, which makes it all the more frustrating. this could’ve been a marquez. but it’s marquez’s misogyny dialed to like. 15.

moments of true undeniable brilliance bogged by groan-worthy grossness.

Audio book.