Moor's Last Sigh
by Salman Rushdie
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Book Summary Information
Author: Salman RushdieEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1998-01-03
ISBN: 009959241X
Number of pages: 448
Publisher: Vintage
Book Reviews of Moor's Last Sigh
Book Review: Still not a fan.
Summary: 2 Stars
Reading it on the recommendation of a fan of Rushdie's calling whom a voracious reader would be a vast understatement--a conservative estimate would be to say that the books in her house outweigh all her other possessions by a few factors (perhaps, betraying my experience in reporting research here?). This is the second Rushdie I am reading after Midnight's Children which I read as part of a course almost a decade back curious to see if my opinion would be different reading it outside a classroom so many years after forming my first impression. I am not a big fan of that novel. My main problem with it is the high density of incidents packed into every square inch of every page of the book exacerbated by its, what's got to be, magic-realistic genre. My memories of reading books of the genre can be summarized as ultimately unsuccessful attempts at maintaining my willing suspension of disbelief. The coincidences mount and as the novel progresses the twists seem more and more arbitrary, whimsical, and ultimately nonsensical. In Rushdie's case, as is being confirmed with this novel, I give-in to disbelief somewhat earlier than say a Marquez.
I feel Rushdie would be more successful as a short story writer--I think the next time I read something by him, and if the trend is maintained that should happen sometime in 2017, it'll be one of his short story collections. In fact, even with Moor's Last Sigh I was actually enjoying Rushdie's virtuosity, his humor, his way with words, his depiction of `Hinglish' and the intricate sentences for about the first 30 pages before I experienced my first cringe. His description of the division of a house between the families of two brothers listing out in detail the specific articles that went to each side concluded with a phrase to the effect that the division was so ruthless that even the lizards of the house were divided. For me that phrase did not have its obviously intended effect of being funny. Instead, it felt like a relic from the first draft which should have been removed by the author's own better judgment. It's not my intention to write a review of the novel here. I think people who liked Midnight's Children will probably like this one too and going by my own reaction the converse should also be true. Despite strong hopes I have not become a fan of Rushdie's.
Summary of Moor's Last Sigh
What do we do when the world's walls - its family structures, its value-systems, it political forms - crumble? The central character of this novel, 'Moor' Zogoiby, only son of a wealthy, artistic-bohemian Bombay family, finds himself in such a moment of crisis. His mother, a famous painter and an emotional despot, worships beauty, but Moor is ugly, he has a deformed hand. Moor falls in love, with a married woman; when their secret is revealed, both are expelled; a suicide pact is proposed, but only the woman dies. Moor chooses to accept his fate, plunges into a life of depravity in Bombay, then becomes embroiled in a major financial scandal. The novel ends in Spain, in the studio of a painter who was a lover of Moor's mother: in a violent climax Moor has, one more, to decide whether to save the life of his lover by sacrificing his own.In The Moor's Last Sigh Salman Rushdie revisits some of the same ground he covered in his greatest novel, Midnight's Children. This book is narrated by Moraes Zogoiby, aka Moor, who speaks to us from a gravestone in Spain. Like Moor, Rushdie knows about a life spent in banishment from normal society--Rushdie because of the death sentence that followed The Satanic Verses, Moor because he ages at twice the rate of normal humans. Yet Moor's story of travail is bigger than Rushdie's; it encompasses a grand struggle between good and evil while Moor himself stands as allegory for Rushdie's home country of India. Filled with wordplay and ripe with humor, it is an epic work, and Rushdie has the tools to pull it off. He earned a 1995 Whitbread Prize for his efforts.
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