Title: Midnight’s Children
Rating: 2 Stars
I’m going to say right off the top that this is an unfair rating. Midnight’s Children is considered one of the best novels of the twentieth century. Whether it’s the Modern Library Top 100 Books or the Time magazine All Time 100 Novels, you’ll find Midnight’s Children. Not only did it win the Booker prize but it won The Best of the Booker twice (in 1993 and 2008, in celebration of Booker prize anniversaries). It is a mammoth, beautifully written book.
Having said all of that, it really didn’t do it for me. I’m absolutely willing to accept that this is my shortcoming. A work of this complexity requires a significant amount of work and dedication. It could very well be true that a second, more careful reading will change my mind.
This is the story of one family in India during the twentieth century. From a strictly historical perspective, there’s a lot going on during this time in India. Indian soldiers fight in World War I. India as a nation has to fight to become free and then manage its own postcolonial future. While this is happening, there is religious violence that ultimately sparks a partition splitting India and Pakistan, and then later, Bangladesh from Pakistan. Wars are fought between India and Pakistan. National leaders are assassinated.
In the midst of this are the three generations of an Indian family. The first generation is Aadam Aziz, an Indian but German trained doctor navigating Western / Eastern cultures. He marries Naseem Ghani. She gives birth to five children, three girls and two boys. One of the girls, Amina, marries Ahmed Sinai. They have a son and a daughter. The son, Saleem, is born at midnight on the day of Indian independence.
The story is told by Saleem. It’s his life story. He is reciting it to his companion, Padma.
All children born in India during the midnight hour of their independence day have somehow become endowed with special powers. A girl is so beautiful that everyone immediately falls in love with her. Another can effortlessly change sex. Yet another can travel through time. A boy has such prodigious knees that he becomes a great warrior. For some reason, Saleem’s gift does not manifest itself until he gets into an accident. From that point forward, he can see into anyone’s mind.
Armed with this gift, he proceeds to organize these special children (aka Midnight Children) via his telepathy. It’s not exactly clear what he’s planning to do (he’s not sure himself). It’s all moot anyway because, against his will, he undergoes nasal surgery. A physical characteristic of Saleem is that he has a prodigiously sized nose that is constantly running. His surgery clears up his nasal congestion, but in so doing, for some reason he loses his telepathic capability.
Onward and upward to further adventures. He spends time in the contested Kashmir region. A Muslim, he and his family are, at one point, driven to Pakistan. He later ends up back in India.
Major events happen in India and Pakistan. For example, there are wars, military takeovers, and assassinations. Saleem seems to always be on the scene of these disasters or somehow feels responsible for them. One of the wars between India and Pakistan led to the dropping of bombs. In his retelling, the bombs only landed in areas that killed all of his family except himself.
By the end of the novel, all of the midnight children are either dead or have been sterilized and had their gift somehow surgically removed. Saleem is married to Padma but is immediately separated from her and then ground to dust by thronging millions, many of them being characters that have previously appeared in Saleem’s story.
The novel is quite complex. There is the weaving (and re-imagining) of historical events in India into Saleem’s personal narrative. There is the magic realism of the midnight children’s gifts, as well as actual magicians, visions, ghosts, witches, and even the appearance of a succubus or two. There are several postmodern elements. Saleem comments on his narration as he recites (metafiction). At various times, he says things that are proven to be factually untrue (unreliable narrator).
There are so many characters in the novel that I would lose track. One would pop up and then reemerge a couple of hundred pages later and I’d be struggling to remember the context in which they originally appeared.
Saleem went on such a wide set of wanderings that it was hard for me to stay engaged. At one point, because of his nose, he served in the army as the dog in a dog unit. Another point, he quit talking and seemed to become a modern Buddha. He had a finger chopped off in an accident.
These plot threads would just kind of peter out. What was the purpose of the midnight children? Why were they created? We aren’t told and we’ll never find out. One day Saleem could organize them and then one day he couldn’t. Was this supposed to be a metaphor for India losing its mystic way? It’s not clear. Saleem’s mother had a lifelong affair with a poet named Nadir. To quash it, Saleem arranged for a cuckolded husband to find out that his wife was having an affair. In a rage, the husband wounded his wife and killed her lover. Learning of it convinces Saleem’s mother to end her affair with Nadir. OK?
With such a large number of characters and so many divergent plot branches (I haven’t even mentioned The Most Charming Man In The World and his struggles when he finds a claimant to his throne), it was hard for me to buckle down and read it.
This was a book that I had to drag myself over the finish line to complete. Who knows, maybe in a couple of years, I’ll be motivated to re-read it with a much closer eye and a happier result.
dorkenstein 