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I'm surprised with the hatred I feel towards this book. I mean, it's Salman frickin' Rushdie, right? Isn't he some kind of literary god? I'm going to have to read his other books to see, because this one was trash. I've read sexist books before. There are plenty of them out there, but usually I can glide over the sexist bits because overall the plot/characters/writing are good enough that I choose to ignore the fact that the women are horribly written (looking at you, Robert Jordan). But in this...
As a neophyte of Salman Rushdie's work, I was not fully prepared for The Enchantress of Florence, although I should have been. Rushdie possesses an uncanny ability to manipulate perspective. In his stories, the flow of time is always questionable, and subject to change--if it flows at all. And his characters are larger-than-life, capricious archetypes that embody the virtues and flaws of humanity.In this novel, Rushdie runs two stories parallel to each other: that of Emperor Akbar's court, the e...
I'm a little over halfway through this and so far almost every single female character is a prostitute or a slave. Three women have committed suicide because of a man. Also there's a female character who is literally a figment of a male character's imagination and she's more dynamic than any of the (few) real women in this fucking book. Ugh. Most likely will not finish.
This would have been far better served by being a Silk type novella, an incantation that weaves its charms around us for the duration of one sitting- just long enough for the magic to work, not long enough for anyone to even think of wanting to look behind the curtain. The longer it went on, and the more tied to the reality of the world it became, the less it worked. So much of this could have been left to the readers to dream and imagine afterwards. So many subplots about hookers and pages of r...
In The Enchantress of Florence, Salman Rushdie mixes history with fiction in order to create a tale of adventure, power, and romance. I enjoyed most of the book, but I found it to be a bit disjointed in places. There were so many names in the book that it was hard to keep them all straight at times. Some of the primary characters in the novel are a mysterious golden haired adventurer, an all powerful emperor, an imaginary queen, and a princess who has been erased from history. Toward the end of
On occasion a novel receives harsh treatment from critics not based on the actual work, but rather because it is not what the critics want it to be; this then is the only explanation I can find to explain the harsh, often shrill, reviews received by Rushdie's equisite "The Enchantress of Florence." Having read several of these negative assessments I find the same sub-text runs through them all, namely the complaint that "Enchantress" is neither Rushdie's masterwork "Midnight's Children" nor that...
When this book was chosen for my real life bookclub, I was a little nervous about it. I'd never read anything of Salman Rushdie's before, and I wouldn't have chosen this one to start with (if ever). I'll be honest, the premise looks kind of boring. But then I started reading it. And I was completely surprised by not only how much I liked it, but by how funny it was. Irreverent, and witty, and whimsical and a little weird, with more than a dash of gutter-humor funny that had me giggling like a fi...
Filled with lush emptiness. There is more love-at-first-sight in the Enchantress than all other stories put together. Entire cities fall in love at first sight. And the level of subtlety rarely rises above this. After a promising first 80 pages or so, it begins to resemble a cartoon (in a bad way). Even the blasphemies in this book—-which seemed to be produced by Rushdie perfunctorily, like a band that always makes sure to play its most popular song—-are wooden and innocuous. It’s too bad this b...
My first read for Rushdie …well , I was confused how to rate this book . This does not mean that I hardly liked it.No ,it is just that there were parts deserved 5 starts for me while other parts simply irritated me!!! still ...I do recommend it , and I highly appreciate the work that has been done in this novel, I totally understand the declaration that it took him years to write this one .Even as reader he pushed me searching and thirsty for more about the subject!"the enchantress of Florence "...
This book is very bland. I feel like I'm supposed to be having these deep epiphanies and I'm not thinking deeply enough or something . Absolutely nothing is coming to me. I've had a major disconnect with the author, and I'm just not sure why. I really enjoyed the storyline until the book jumped in time. Then I completely lost my equilibrium.
While every review seems a need to state the basic plot of the yellow-haired stranger appearing in Akbar's court I will quickly skip over this and go straight to what I thought. I felt that the book was very uneven, there where parts that were just wonderful and deserving a full five stars, in particular the story of the illuminator who disappeared into his own artwork and the concept of Jhoda, and others that were so very boring that the average became a two. The main problem I had was that it
I will leave plot synopsis to others. I enjoyed his lyricism and way with words. Several times I found myself re-reading or copying down a sentence just to appreciate it's beauty and wisdom. What I enjoyed far less was the very meandering nature of the book; like Russian nesting dolls, there is a story within a story and its hard to see the relevance until the end. With short stories taking the place of a longer, more constructed narrative, it's easy to get lost in the cast of characters. I als
Welcome to realm where Story reigns, courtesy of the master of ceremony Salman Rushdie.In a somptuous palace of red stone dwells the absolute ruler of the world, the great Mughal Emperor Akbar the Great - warrior, philosopher, despot and lover. A setting worthy of the Arabian Nights, and according to those tenets here comes a traveler / con-artist / magician calling himself the Mughal of Love, He will have to redeem his life like Scheherezade through stories : improbable stories, fantastic stori...
To me, the enchantress seems like one of the most charming female characters ever. Magical, a bit scary, unforgettable. Her story is totally worth reading.
He gradually, quietly, in an oriental way insidiously enters your reader's soul, first you see a pretty snobby mixture of glamour with exoticism, I had it with "The Earth under her feet", then you think: "Well, they gave him a Booker Booker for something" -, you read "Children of Midnight", you say to yourself: "Yes, it's a thing, I understand now, but not my writer, I won't read anymore." Naive, I forgot that the claw got stuck - the whole bird is lost, and the oriental tales of Salman Rushdie
This is the second time now I have abandoned a Rushdie novel, so in all likelihood I won't bother reading him again. The fact I managed to get beyond the halfway point made me feel like I deserved a nice pat on the back. He is simply not a writer I hold in high regard anyway, and this twaddle just confirms that even stronger, as it's blatantly sexist, and an insult to women. Things started out quite promising, before I drastically lost interest. and couldn't care less about any of it's character...
Reading this is like eating a bowl of creamy ice cream. Luscious words that seem to slide down and enervate but tastefully lingers to remind you it's not as light as you first thought. Reading Rushdie is like a spark of recognition with a fellow traveler and I tip my hat in greeting, to say hello! it was lovely walking with you for awhile, thank you for reminding me what it is to connect with someone, hope to bump into you again further down the road, and may you have a good journey.
So far, this book is enjoyable, and well-written as Rushdie always is, but I can't help thinking that it's not as good as some of the others, the ones that I love (Shame, Midnight's Children, the Satanic Verses, and of course Haroun and the Sea of Stories). I think three things are maybe the difference.1. The title led me to expect a lot more from the female characters, or rather a lot more from how they are portrayed. There's just the tiniest whiff of women being valuable mostly for being beaut...
The curse of the human race is not that we are so different from one another, but that we are so alike. I have an ambivalent relationship with Salman Rushdie – admire his writing/am impatient with his books; appreciate his artistry/sense I wouldn't like him in person – and The Enchantress of Florence was unsurprising in both its engaging craftsmanship and its eyeroll-inducing pretentiousness. Between Midnight's Children and The Satanic Verses, Rushdie has probably already said everything impo
This story has all the ingredients that should make it wonderful : Akbar, one of the most intriguing of Mughal emperors and his mysterious Fatehpur Sikri, Renaissance Florence in all its colorful glory under the Medicis, Machiavelli, Jannisarries, grim Ottoman sultans, epic battles, and even a murder or two. But somehow all these elements fail to gel into a cohesive story. The exotic locales and historical figures are ably rendered in lush, sometimes breathless prose, but they lack character tha...