This is Rushdie at his most freeform-poetic. It's a long ride through a rewrite of rock history showcasing the rise and fall of the supergroup VTO, headed by the audacious musicians Ormus Cama and Vina Apsara. Familiar to Rushdie's novels is the density of material, disengagement from reality, complex characters, and what-the-fuck witticism. This one stands out in my mind as having the best quick sentences out of any of his books, placed perfectly at the end of meticulously brilliant paragraphs. As a writer it's probably his best work, but the story itself isn't as captivating as some of his others. Part of my issue with this book, and all of his books really, is that none of the characters were emotionally engaging (even when he decides to cast a morally sound, unselfish character, something hideous always happens to them). Ormus and Vina's quirky psychoses did keep the pages turning for me, yet their romance was really dry and I didn't buy into it. He writes about love like it were lust and I think he confuses the two, so I'm more inclined to recommend this to sex addicts (God help you!) than to romance fans. The narrator's secular cynicism was mildly annoying, but I appreciated all his artistic speculations during the breakdowns of reality. Oh, and Rushdie takes an implicit shot at Madonna for some reason... Not that that isn't amusing.
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