The Ground Beneath Her Feet

After a stack of short books it was kind of a shock to read a 500-odd page one.  The Ground Beneath Her Feet was a great choice of long book to get back into long books with, though.  Salman Rushdie tells epic tales that twist and wind along unexpected paths and, despite the book’s length, barely a word is wasted.  Even the philosophic ruminations are necessary, light on plot as they are.  The book tells the tale of the two leads of super group VTO through the eyes of their childhood friend-cum-devotee, Rai.  It’s essentially a story of love and loss and it’s wonderful.  I haven’t read any Rushdie in ages, and I’ve missed him quite a bit.

The plot is a relatively simple one.  Vina Apsara and Ormus Cama are the two parts of bigger-than- The-Beatles rock band VTO and the book plots their lives from birth to their deaths.  It charts their love for one another which remains undimmed despites years of separation and (on Vina’s part) infidelity as well as their musical success and the lives and loves of their families.  Of course being by Salman Rushdie, it’s not actually that simple.  Ormus is a musical prophet who, until his career actually begins, is read songs of the future by his still born twin brother Gayo.  After a car accident, his brother escapes him and is replaced by views of another world that inspire his song writing and lead him to madness.  There are serial killers and abandonment issues for both going running through the novel too, of course.  I’m pretty sure all musicians have some kind of family issues.  Oh and the entire book’s pretty much an extended re-telling of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice.  Other than all that, pretty simple.

The world the book takes place in is odd as well.  It is so close to being the same as ours, that the differences seem arbitrary for the majority of the tale.  It is a world in which JFK is not assassinated and in Dallas and the Watergate scandal is just a film.  The rest of the world is easy to recognise and few other events that are not directly linked to the plot itself are changed.  Songs are sung by the wrong artist, but the world is recognisable.  And then, near the end it makes sense.  I want to go on about this part of the book so much more, but I’m worried about spoiling it.  There’s one of those moments, later on, that make you re-evaluate everything you’ve read up until that point and I don’t want to ruin it for people.  It’ like how knowing Bruce Willis is a ghost from the start of The Sixth Sense made it more difficult to enjoy.  I can’t imagine having seen that film without knowing the twist, but I imagine it would have been better.

As I said before, The Ground Beneath Her Feet is a tale of love and of loss.  The love/ hate relationship Rushdie’s characters have for their past and for India is incredible.  Rushdie acknowledges that as the characters change, their way back to whom and here they were before is blocked even though they are mostly insistent on always moving forwards.  Character growth is irreparable.  Or, as Rushdie says (far more eloquently), “we’re not all shallow proteans, forever shifting shape… It’s like when coal becomes a diamond.  It doesn’t afterwards retain the possibility of change.”  This creates the odd heart-breaking whack of nostalgia in a story full of characters that refuse to look back.

This blog is impossible to write.  Looking back through the book I keep finding more thing I loved and I just can’t work them all in; I haven’t even started on Rai, the book’s narrator.  The Ground Beneath Her Feet is extraordinary and it’s not even Rushdie’s best book.  I find it so difficult to write about how much I love Salman Rushdie.  His style is so dense.  It overflows with ideas and connections that I can’t imagine that anyone else could make work.  So few people would think to link Greek mythology, rock music and Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle.  Even fewer could make it work.

Next time is Dead Air by Iain Banks.