I wasn't sure what to think about this book when I finished. While it was beautifully written, the plot was sometimes hard to understand. Yet, weeks later as I think about it, I appreciate more the intricate story of the twins Rahel and Estha, and what happened when their cousin Sophie Mol visited one summer.

This is a novel where I both laughed & cried. The plot is about loss, the loss of many things, but Ms. Roy has a sense of the ridiculous (for example she describes a Hindu religious ceremony that has been shortened in order to accommodate those people with short attention spans). She introduced me to a side of India I never knew & will never forget.

Beautifully written. An excellent read.

Wowzers in my trousers, the writing style was fantastic. However, much of the four out of five is because of that; I was interested in the characters, particularly Estha, but I didn't really care for them much. This reminded me a lot of One Hundred Years of Solitude - somewhat cold, removed; a worthy observation of humanity but not entirely human itself.

Id have missed a lot in my life as a human being if i missed this book..I had a treat of emotions reading it..i don't think anyone can get bored reading portions of it from time to time because of the powerful feelings it exudes out of the reader..tragic yet beautiful..what a pure delight!

In some ways, this book didn't really seem to go anywhere. All of the characters stayed sad and petty and wrapped up in how people are prejudiced against them without recognizing how prejudiced they are against everyone else. All of the characters are so self-absorbed it is impossible for them to form meaningful connections with others.
It was a pretty good read regardless of all of that. Maybe because it rings true to a certain extent- maybe people really are that absurd- but I also liked the culture clash between the rich and the poor, the England and America imitators and the Indians, the Indians and the Nepalese.
Overall, I thought this book was interesting, a different portrait of Indian life, and very depressing.

Started 3 Aug 2007

Finished 4 Aug 2007

Midnight's Children is Rushdie at his finest. The book is surrealist fiction that deals with the history of India from 1910 to the declaration of the emergency in 1976 through the eyes (and nose) of Saleem Sinai, born on the stroke of Midnight August 15, 1947. Midnight's Children, like most of Rushdie's writing, does have political overtones, yet the fog of larger events is never permitted to detract from the more personal experiences of all the multi-faceted characters in the novel. This is perhaps why this form of "magical realism" is so effective in a novel that is at once the history of a sub-continent, the story of a boy's coming to age, the saga of a family and the off-key liberation-song of a people.

From "Midnight's Children":
Reality is a question of perspective; the further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems - but as you approach the present, it inevitably seems more and more incredible. Suppose yourself in a large cinema, sitting at first in the back row, and gradually moving up, row by row, until your nose is almost pressed against the screen. Gradually the stars' faces dissolve into dancing grain; tiny details assume grotesque proportions; the illusion dissolves - or rather, it becomes clear that the illusion itself is reality.

Salman Rushdie won the Booker prize for Midnight's Children in 1981. Midnight's Children won the James Tait Black Prize, and was judged to be the "Booker of Bookers" (the best book to be awarded the Booker in the first 25 years) in 1993.

Midnight's Children was came in at 25 on a poll conducted by the Guardian newspaper, listing the 100 best books of the 20th century.

The rating merely reflects if I consider the book worth reading, not how well it was written. It was written very well, but the style didn't hold any appeal to me for almost 600 pages. The background of the story (Partition of India) was very interesting, but there was just something about it I didn't like. I think it was the narrator. I'm interested in reading more of Rushdie's work to see if I'd like it better than this.

Loved it. Great picture of the poor in India and the difference between the rich and the poor.

Great novel...easy read...love the style writen from the point of view of a letter being written. Easy to identify with the main character.

Born in a village in heartland India, the son of a rickshaw puller, Balram is taken out of school by his family and put to work in a teashop. As he crushes coals and wipes tables, he nurses a dream of escape - of breaking away from the banks of Mother Ganga, into whose depths have seeped the remains of a hundred generations.

The White Tiger is a tale of two Indias. Balram’s journey from darkness of village life to the light of entrepreneurial success is utterly amoral, brilliantly irreverent, deeply endearing and altogether unforgettable.

White Tiger was funny and touching. I enjoyed the characters and a look into the way modern Indians might look at things.