The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie. After a few weeks in a row in non fiction, decided it was time to dip back into the made up. And the book I settled on was at times beautiful and lyrical - as the author is so good at being, but ultimately frustrating.
It's an alternative history of sorts, and in re-writing the already scandalous and visceral political beings of Florence and the Medicis and all its swirly eddies of intrigue, it loses something. It belittles the work of Machiavelli by making his life's most remembered work an echo of an Indian fairytale of the impossible, the deluded and the incestuous. Why on earth he thought it a good idea to include the four musketeers? Anyone's guess.
And so in places it becomes too flowery, too magical and ultimately too much.
I was fascinated and entranced by The Ground Beneath Her Feet, which is the same approach with modern and distinctly unmagical times and events. But translating this fairytale approach to a romanticised almost fairytale time and it it cancels each other out and you're left feeling manipluated and confused, like some one has betrayed your readers trust in a story. And so you feel betrayed by this until you do not and this is why you love it.
Ok thats a bit of poetic licence, but that Oprah Winfrey book club feel ruined it for me.
Still like his writing - just not this one.
Next? Charlie Brooker's Book (Try saying that drunk...)
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