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Rushdie's cunning musician is Ormus Cana, the Bombay-born founder of the most popular group in the world. Ormus's Eurydice (and lead singer) is Vina Apsara, the daughter of a Greek American woman and an Indian father who abandoned the family. What these two share, besides amazing musical talent, is a decidedly twisted family life: Ormus's twin brother died at birth and communicates to him from "the other side"; his older brothers, also twins, are, respectively, brain-damaged and a serial killer. Vina, on the other hand, grew up in rural West Virginia where she returned home one day to find her stepfather and sisters shot to death and her mother hanging from a rafter in the barn. No wonder these two believe they were made for each other.
Narrated by Rai Merchant, a childhood friend of both Vina and Ormus, The Ground Beneath Her Feet begins with a terrible earthquake in 1989 that swallows Vina whole, then moves back in time to chronicle the tangled histories of all the main characters and a host of minor ones as well. Rushdie's canvas is huge, stretching from India to London to New York and beyond--and there's plenty of room for him to punctuate this epic tale with pointed commentary on his own situation: Muslim-born Rai, for example, remarks that "my parents gave me the gift of irreligion, of growing up without bothering to ask people what gods they held dear.... You may argue that the gift was a poisoned chalice, but even if so, that's a cup from which I'd happily drink again." Despite earthquakes, heartbreaks, and a rip in the time-space continuum, The Ground Beneath Her Feet may be the most optimistic, accessible novel Rushdie has yet written. --Alix Wilber --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
You talk too much, you worry me to death!,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Ground Beneath Her Feet: A Novel (Paperback)
The difference between "Midnight's Children" and "The Ground Beneath Her Feet" is the difference between a long, fantastic novel that pulls you in and keeps you intoxicated throughout (MC) and a long, fantastic novel that doesn't know when to stop and wears you out long before it's finished (TGBHF). Since Rushdie uses some of the world of the former to populate and illustrate the latter, it's not an inappropriate comparison. The deft storytelling talents of Rushdie are still to be seen within the hackneyed plot, though, and that's what kept me reading t'il the end. But even then it's hard to give much of a rip about either Ormus Cama or Vina Apsara. This isn't 1972 and the notion of rock stars as tormented demigods went out with Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars. Say it's an entertaining read in spite of itself and go get "Haroun" or "Shame" for more potent examples of Rushdies considerable writing talents.Oh, yeah, it's way, way, way, way, WAY too long!
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Tiresome, Self-Indulgent, Pretentious Dud,
By A Customer
This review is from: The Ground Beneath Her Feet: A Novel (Paperback)
This one helps us understand the difference between proficiency in language and mastery of writing, between mechanical wit and humor, between being a smartypants and being wise. Rushdie definitely knows how to speak English, and he desperately wants us to know he knows. (Is this part of the Indian Anglophilia to which he often refers in the novel?) He is so enchanted by the sound of his own voice, and so impressed by his accumulated store of random facts, that he reminds us of a child who is so pleased with himself for having mastered tying his shoelaces that he can't stop accosting people on the street to display his prowess. Or of the girl who always sat in the front row and constantly raised her hand urgently, begging for the opportunity to answer every question. This novel has "Look at me! Look at me! Aren't I clever?" written all over it.No, I'm not intimidated by long books, or by literary (or musical) allusions, or by experimental prose forms, but I'm bored to tears with big, fat books that got that way because the self-indulgent author has a bad case of verbal diarrhea and the editor doesn't dare tell him so. Constantly rambling off on tangents that do nothing to advance the story or even entertain us, Rushdie takes perhaps two hundred pages to settle into making some attempt to tell us the story his sometime-narrator (that is, the character who is supposedly telling us the story but couldn't possibly have acquired any knowledge of most of it) keeps informing us he's going to tell us, after he tells us lots of stuff that we don't much care about. By that time, we're more than ready for a great story, but Rushdie doesn't have a great story to tell, just a lot of lampooning of various types of people he evidently doesn't much like, salted with allusions to popular music that I guess are designed to let us know how much the author thinks he knows about the subject. There are some diverting minor characters in The Ground Beneath Her Feet, but the two major ones are bizarre amalgams of psychoses that Rushdie apparently imagines are typical of rock stars. Neither Vina nor Ormus are recognizably human, let alone motivated by human impulses, making it impossible to care about what they do or what happens to them. If you want to read a novel that combines fabulous use of the language with a story that you'll remember for the rest of your life, try Cormac McCarthy, or Mark Helprin's one good book, Soldier of the Great War. I'm sure there are many others. This one's a dud.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Editor Abandons Party Political Broadside,
By P. C. (Ipswich, UK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Ground Beneath Her Feet: A Novel (Paperback)
As a musician for more than 20 years I looked forward to reading this one. A feast had been promised; a gentleman from The Times was quoted on the back cover (of the paperback) as saying this was "The first great rock 'n' roll novel in the English language". He should get out more; this work was out of tune almost from the opening riff. Imagine a book crying out for an editor. Imagine an author who lets his writing and writing technique get in the way of his story. Imagine a story with two main characters so obnoxious, shallow and lacking in humanity that it is almost impossible to either sympathise or empathise; a badly-drawn boy and girl. Imagine a so-called 'rock 'n' roll novel that fails to convey the raunchy, ball-busting, sweat stained, 'shout at the moon' essence of what rock 'n' roll is about.Imagine an author splattering his story with party political broadsides against corruption in India, but who conversely, and with some pride, takes us on occasional but unnecessary tours of Bombay - through the eyes of the story's narrator. The development of Vina and Ormus from obscurity to fame is tenuous, and involves none of the emotional impact you would expect when a couple of unknowns hit the big time. I wanted to be there with them; share the emotion; feel the vibe; but I couldn't get close. Despite the fact that we learn of Vina's fate in the first few pages, it gradually becomes apparent that Vina and Ormus never had a chance really; that the author had modelled them on the legendary and tragic Orpheus and Eurydice; that he had in fact abandoned them to destruction. And if the author doesn't care for his creations, then why should the reader? Overall, a major disappointment whose only saving grace is that U2 took the words of "The Ground Beneath Her Feet" from the novel and produced a great rock 'n' roll song on their "All That You Can't Leave Behind" album; and what a song it is; from the subtle drum intro to the swelling synth-backed bridge to Bono's honeyed vocals and the Edge's sweet and dangerous solo at the end. Hear it once, and die.
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