My third Rushdie book - it's good, but of course different from Midnight's Children or The Satanic Verses.
The Ground Beneath Her Feet in reviews is always touted as the first novel by Rushdie written about America. The book jacket describes it as a "gift" to America. Not to be one to look a gift horse in the mouth, but I wonder if the blurb writer who wrote that actually ever read the book. I would use the word "critique" rather than "gift". But it's a "critique" that, not surprisingly, was better received than the "gift" of The Satanic Verses to the Muslem world. In other words, there's perhaps a bit less to get insulted about... or perhaps a bit more.
The novel follows the intersecting lives of three characters: two lovers who form a rock band that becomes even bigger than the Beatles or the Stones, and their childhood friend, a photographer who captures not only their images, but also the standard images of the photojournalist covering news (i.e. catastrophes and wars) around the world. The story is about their love story, but it's also about culture, it's about revising history (political, rock & roll, even literary), and also a critique/celebration of the immigrant experience and international politics. It's also about the upheavals in our lives (embodied in the earthquakes of the novel) that forever change our lives.
Told by a photographer, the novel is surprisingly scant in visual trompe d'oeil, or cinematic scenes, though there are a few. His secrets, his involvement in the story, and the history that he describes - similar yet different from our own - make him a highly unreliable narrator, and the ending thus seems just a bit too pat. I found myself wondering what he was hiding.
I found the first hundred or so pages a bit rough going... and was unimpressed with the ending, but in between, the skill of a the writer and his play with cultural referents and how we use them to make meaning are absolutely delightful. They are so plentiful that no one will get them all, but that's okay, it's clear the writer is playing and when you're reading it's easy to be convinced to go along for the ride.