The Ground Beneath Her Feet
By Salman Rushdie
575 pages Hardcover (Magical Realism)
If you keep up with my book reviews you already know that I am a huge fan of Rushdie. I find the way he writes to be a complete joy to read. Even so I was even more enamored with this book.
There are a number of characters in the book, but it mainly focuses of three people Ormus, Vina and Umeed “Rai” Merchant. The book is written from Rai’s point of view, but focuses on Vina and Ormus. It is as if the narrator is sitting down to tell you a story about these people he knew and his story intertwines and occasionally takes over.
The book jumps around in time somewhat, but generally follows the lives of these three people. Early on you get sense that Ormus and Vina are some type of famous rock stars. But that is all gotten to later on. Rai, the narrator, reveals things about himself to show the truth of the story he tells. We are then told about the mysterious birth of Ormus. His twin brother named Gayomart was stillborn and Ormus was not discovered until the doctors were cleaning things up.
When Ormus is in his teens he “hears” songs in his head. He talks about how he can go to a place inside of him where his dead twin lives and Gayomart plays music for him. 1001 night later that music starts to become a hit rock and roll song. He first realizes this when going into a music shop and hearing this world’s version of Elvis play one of his songs. Ormus gets upset when he hears it claiming that he had wrote that song years ago. It is in this same shop that he meets Vina. At this point we realize that the narrator’s world is not the same as the world we are in. A lot of the things are the same, but famous songs are sometimes written by others. Minor things are different from our world.
We also follow this childhood of Vina. She was born in America. Her father dies young. Her mom gives up the life she wanted to settle for a simple life raising goats. She eventually goes crazy and kills her family and herself. Vina was not home when this happened and ends up in New York, but soon after circumstances bring her to India. This is where she first meets Rai. He quickly falls in love with her only to find out that Ormus is also after her affections. Ormus being technically too old for her vows not to touch her until her 16th birthday.
Right after Vina comes of age everyone gets split up. Vina travels the world and sings in America. Ormus’s father dies and his mother moves to England. He moves with, but leaves her and joins a pirate radio station. Rai stays in India and builds his photography career which eventually lands him in New York.
As they are separated Vina occasionally shows up at Rai’s door looking for one night stands and to complain about the world. This all starts when Rai is living in Ormus’ old apartment. Vina comes looking for Ormus and finds Rai instead.
Eventually, Orums and Vina come back together as a couple and soon after a band. This band takes the mystical writings of Ormus and fuses is with the no holds barred angelic voice of Vina and forms a Rock and Rock legacy to which all others are compared. The two lovers go through their normal ups and downs. Ormus craving a final union, Vina scared of love. At last Ormus puts his foot down. He forces Vina to make a date for the wedding. She says in ten years. In response Ormus says he will be celibate until they are married. She choose the time he choose the terms. She replies, don’t expect me to wait. This becomes a part of there appeal. Together on stage this enormous tension being blown out through the speakers. Everyone can’t help but be interested in the Rock Duo.
I found something very interesting about this book. Rushdie is not the easiest author to read. He uses rare words and sometimes tangents to a point that it is hard to keep track. Since his characters are mainly foreign there are also cultural things to understand. The book was engaging but hard to get through. I wasn’t that I didn’t like it; I just needed to take my time to keep up and understand what was going on. In fact overall the difficulty of the book was higher than what I typically read. Even more so than Rushdie’s other books I have read. (The Satanic Verses was too difficult for me in high school, but I will tackle that soon.) On to what was interesting. It seemed that as the characters fame increased the momentum of the book increased. It was easier to read. That may have been me getting used to the style, but I think it was a part of the book almost as if the story wanted you to get into it as it went or it flowed smoother as it went on.
3 Emotional – The book focuses on the lives and loves of the three main characters. Their love triangle is what pushes the story along.
4 Intellectual – Rushdie’s writing style is what makes reading him so great. He takes a normal scene and fills it with comparisons and wordings that entrance the reader makes all of his books very intellectually entertaining.
3 Long Term – Many of Rushdie’s fans rate this as the best of his work. I am not denying its impact, but for me I felt other works such as Midnight’s Children and The Moor’s Last Sigh to have more long term appeal.
A total of 10. A great read and well worth it for any Rushdie fan. If not a die hard I would check out one of his other books first get used to his style and then give this a read.
As always Keep Turning Pages
