The Golden House
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4.0 • 18 Ratings
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
**New York Times bestseller**
'One of the most vivid and convincing portraits of contemporary America I've read' Observer
When powerful real-estate tycoon Nero Golden immigrates to the States under mysterious circumstances, he and his three adult children assume new identities, taking 'Roman' names, and move into a grand mansion in downtown Manhattan. Arriving shortly after the inauguration of Barack Obama, he and his sons, each extraordinary in his own right, quickly establish themselves at the apex of New York society.
The story of the Golden family is told from the point of view of their Manhattanite neighbour and confidant, René, an aspiring filmmaker who finds in the Goldens the perfect subject. René chronicles the undoing of the house of Golden: the high life of money, of art and fashion, a sibling quarrel, an unexpected metamorphosis, the arrival of a beautiful woman, betrayal and murder, and far away, in their abandoned homeland, some decent intelligence work.
In a new world order of alternative truths, Salman Rushdie has written the ultimate novel about identity, truth, terror and lies. A brilliant, heart-breaking realist novel that is not only uncannily prescient but shows one of the world's greatest storytellers working at the height of his powers.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Rushdie's ambitious and rewarding novel, a mysterious billionaire and his three adult sons change their names and move to New York City in an attempt to reinvent themselves after tragedy. Spanning the years from the Obama inauguration to the current political moment, the main story is narrated by Ren , an aspiring filmmaker who resides in the Gardens, the same fictional downtown Manhattan neighborhood as the pseudonymous "Golden" family of the book's title. Each of the Golden sons is introduced in turn the intellectual Petya, the artistically inclined Apu, their searching half-brother "D" as Ren gradually comes to understand their origins and implicate himself in their dramas. After the patriarch, Nero, marries a much younger woman named Vasilia, her increasingly intimate relationship with Ren drags the Goldens' history violently into the present. Replete with allusions to literature, film, mythology, and politics, the novel simultaneously channels the calamities of Greek drama and the information overload of the internet. The result is a distinctively rich epic of the immigrant experience in modern America, where no amount of money or self-abnegation can truly free a family from the sins of the past.
Customer Reviews
The Golden House
Another great story from a master storyteller.
The Golden House
Pompous, pretentious pr**k! How many references can one author provide to prove how arcanely knowledgeable he is? Characters are not really attempted to be drawn but maybe the use of a narrator means that we only get third person descriptions of them so there is no emotional attachment. The very gratitudes introduction of “the Joker” who is never an actual character, is just a ploy to allow the spewing of hate towards Donald Trump but has no impact on the story.
The flow of the story is lost in the melange of verbiage, multitudinous allusions and unnecessary political rants.