The Satanic Verses

I have had a copy of Salman Rushdie's "The Satanic Verses" for more than forty years.  Prompted by the physical attack on Rushdie, I am finally reading it.

I'm not enjoying it. I can see that Rushdie is a good writer, with a good (if more than comfortably foreign) vocabulary, and a solidly creative turn of mind.  But the examination of important issues is fairly lightweight, from my perspective.  And, most of the book is of the modern style of novel: a great deal of activity without very much point to any of it.  It is what many of a generation slightly older than mine would have called much of a muchness: a lot of activity, much of it frenetic, with periods of observation of very ordinary activities, and if there is any point to it all, the point is not very important.

I am, however, now reading the final section of the book, and a description of the death of the father of one of the characters.  I am reading this in the aftermath of Gloria's death, and during my own grief and bereavement.  I am also thinking back to my own father's death, with possibly more emotion than I felt at the time over my father's death (possibly because of my additional emotional sensitivity over Gloria's death).

I am not saying that this last section redeems a rather enormous volume of what I feel is mostly pointless writing.  But I do feel that this last section is much better, and written with more feeling, and perhaps more insight, then a great deal of the rest of the tome.