‘Midnight’s Children’ by Salman Rushdie #BookReview

Born at the stroke of midnight at the exact moment of India’s independence, Saleem Sinai is a special child. However, this coincidence of birth has consequences he is not prepared for: telepathic powers connect him with 1,000 other ‘midnight’s children’ all of whom are endowed with unusual gifts. Inextricably linked to his nation, Saleem’s story is a whirlwind of disasters and triumphs that mirrors the course of modern India at its most impossible and glorious.

It feels a bit ridiculous that I’ve got to the ripe of age of fifty-three without having read any books by Salman Rushdie. I have had this one in my bookcase for about five years! And I decided that 2023 would be the year I would finally read it.

Well, it certainly got the year off to an excellent start. This is one of those books that, when you read reviews on Amazon, you wonder what the people who have given it less than five stars are reading. I know everyone is entitled to an opinion, and that reading can be subjective, but the moment I opened this book I was completely and utterly captivated.

The writing is breathtaking, absolutely on another level to almost everything I’ve read before. That this won the Booker of Bookers is no surprise. Every page, indeed, every paragraph, contains something that makes you stop in your tracks (at least if you are a nerdy, book obsessed person like me).

Saleem, with his huge, dripping ‘cucumber’ nose and amazing sense of smell is such an unusual narrator – if you want a masterclass in how to write an unreliable narrator, then this is the place to find it. Do these things really happen to him? Is he telepathic? Is he linked to the other ‘midnight’s children’? Or is he weaving a tale to make his life seem more interesting, as he recounts these events to Padma, delighting in surprising and shocking her as he does.

The parallels of his life to the changes in India after independence and through partition are beautifully woven throughout. I learned more about the history of India than I ever did at school. If you want to get the most from this book, you will need to not mind looking up things as you go – but it is really well worth it.

The writing is unconventional, and breaks all the rules – but this is a writer who knows how to break those rules, and certainly doesn’t do so for the sake of it. The narrative is carefully and beautifully constructed, metaphors, similes, imagery, vocabulary all working seamlessly together to create a wonderful story.

The people that populate this extraordinary novel are gorgeously drawn – like ayah Mary Pereira, who infuses her pickles with all her bitterness, hurt and love; Parvati-the-witch, who loves Saleem; Naseem, who really begins it all; and gorgeous Aunty Pia; Picture Singh the world’s most charming man; Uncle Hanif, film director; Shiva, Saleem’s huge-kneed rival, the novel is bursting with life and all the human emotions you can think of – love, hate, jealousy, empathy, cowardice, fear, sadness, joy, the list goes on and on.

I was genuinely sorry to get to the end – and very sorry I had taken so long to read it. I’m also very glad that I have a whole back catalogue of Rushdie to enjoy.