The Enchantress of Florence
CDN$ 20.16
Trying to describe a Salman Rushdie novel is like trying to describe music to someone who has never heard it--you can fumble with a plot summary but you won t be able to convey the wonder of his dazzling prose or the imaginative complexity of his vision. At its heart, The Enchantress of Florence is about the power of story--whether it is the imagined life of a Mughal queen, or the devastating secret held by a silver-tongued Florentine. Rushdie is the true enchanter of this story, conjuring readers into his gilded fairy tale from the very first sentence: In the day s last light the glowing lake below the palace-city looked like a sea of molten gold. At once bawdy, gorgeous, gory, and hilarious, The Enchantress of Florence is a study in contradiction, highlighted in its barbarian philosopher-king who detests his bloodthirsty heritage even while he carries it out. Full of rich sentences running nearly the length of a page, Rushdie s 10th novel blends fact and fable into a challenging but satisfying read. --Daphne Durham
Disappointing - I read this with great anticipation as I know what an artist Rushdie is. Half way through this book I was done with it but persevered until the end. The stalling to tell the secret we are told about on page one goes on to the end of the novel which was extremely tedious not thrilling. I was also uncomfortable with all the magic people possessed which seemed to me to be a convenient way to get past some difficult issues. It s not a work of writing art, perhaps it could be called popular fiction in the fantasy area. All in all I found it very disappointing, not his best plot and storyline and so I would not recommend it to anyone I know.