Shame

I’m not sure how I feel about Shame.  It contains a lot of elements found in many of Salman Rushdie’s books that I usually quite like; things like a not quite linear narrative and all that magical realism jazz.  But I wasn’t wild for Shame.  And the reasons that I didn’t like it are things that have cropped up time and time again in the blog.  I didn’t like the (supposed) main character and it’s about a subject that Rushdie presupposes knowledge of but that I, in reality, know virtually nothing about.

The novel begins with a focus on the life of Omar Khayyam, a three-mothered rich boy named after the famous poet.  Although he is raised in virtual confinement, at age 12 he bargains away his shame to be allowed to attend school.  While studying to become a doctor, Omar meets Iskander Harappa- the country’s future Prime Minister.  Omar goes on to marry the much younger Sufiya Zinobia, daughter of Iskander’s hated rival Raza Hyder.  In contrast to Omar, Sufiya is a character doomed to carry the unfelt shame of others.  Naturally, this causes problems within the marriage.

As I mentioned earlier, I didn’t like this book in part because I could not stand Omar.  A character without shame can quickly become one with questionable morals; and they’re always difficult to engage with.  During his years of isolation, Omar learns hypnotism.  As a teenager he quickly goes on to use this to rape and impregnate the girl he is trying to woo.  She is then forced to marry another, much older, man, leave her home and upon her solo return to live her life in solitude.  Omar suffers no repercussions for his actions.  This happens fairly early on in the book and, I know I’m not really meant to like Omar as a character, but things like this mean that I can’t stand him.  After the raping, I don’t want to spend another 200 pages in his company.  As much as he is pushed to the side in his narrative, he’s still there. 

The plot that takes over from Omar’s storyline is an analogy for the history of Pakistan.  Or at least an incident in the history of Pakistan.  The figures of Iskander and Raza are (according to the internet) representative of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq respectively.  As I said, I don’t really know anything about the history or the politics of it all and I think Rushdie does assume that his reader has some kind of knowledge of everything.  It makes it kind of difficult to get into the book at times.  Allegories definitely lose something when you’re not sure of the actual original story.

So, long story short, I did not love Shame.  There are bits of it I do love and it’s all the magical realism.  Omar has three mothers; unsure of his biological one as the other two had simultaneous sympathetic pregnancies.  Unfortunately, this is my favourite part of the novel and it’s over about 20 pages in.  I don’t think that it’s a bad book, in all, it’s just not as good as a lot of Rushdie’s other stuff.  It’s kind of a come down compared to the last of his books I read, TheGround Beneath Her Feet.  I think that this might be the last of his books I have to read on The List and I’m a bit sad that it wasn’t a better one.  There are a lot of better books by Rushdie to end on.

Next time’s blog is In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan.  I read it all in one day and I’m still not sure what watermelon sugar is.