Reading Rainbow: Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

Nonplussed.

That is the word that best sums up my feelings when I think about why I actually bothered finishing this book.

From the beginning, it was a chore.  Rushdie's train of thought never ended up matching up with mine.  Elements of his style struck me as both irksome and pretentious--namely his lack of comma-usage when listing of things in a series.  The cultural chasm between me and Rushdie's post-Independence India seemed hopelessly untraversable.

More importantly, though, it felt like I had kind of been there already.  Between having read Middlesex and One Hundred Years of Solitude fairly recently, the multi-generational magical realism on display didn't feel especially fresh.  Granted, Middlesex came about 20 years after Midnight's Children, but that's not the way I came to it, and One Hundred Years of Solitude was penned 14 years prior to Midnight's Children being published.

Mostly, though, the book never grabbed me.  I appreciate that it was trying to use its narrative to serve as an allegory for the burgeoning Indian Republic, but it didn't make me give a shit about it at any point.  Most of the characters were irritating more than anything else, including Saleem Sinai, the narrator, and the construct by which Saleem has omniscience seems a little too precious.

If anyone feels differently about the book, I'll gladly respond to comments.  I was definitely underwhelmed.