Quichotte, Salman Rushdie’s most recent book is chock full of India-Indian Americans who seem as at home and doomed, with lives as empty as any American whose family has lived here for decades, or even centuries. Why are we here, not in America, but on this planet? Why are we intent on destroying the planet that is our home? What do we want? What does it all mean? We seem, in Rushdie’s tale as aimless as five dice in a Yahtzee cup.
Thematically Rushdie covers a lot of territory. Immigration or at least transplantation is in there, as are journeys, tilting at windmills, nostalgia, despair, guilt, hate, love, forgiveness, human failings, cultural failings, Planet B, apocalypse, dystopia and more, sort of an I Ching of modern pathologies.
This is a story loosely based on the Don Quixote story and Quichotte (Key-shot) is on a journey from Motel 6’s to Red Roof Inns across America peddling meds for his distant relation, Dr. Smile. Our Quichotte is a man with a big hole in his memory, a retrieval problem. He follows meteor showers from one magical western rock formation to another as he distributes his samples. Dr. Smile and his wife Happy Smile don’t think of themselves as drug dealers, but they are – so is Quichotte although he can barely be considered as capable of peddling anything.
Dr. Smile has created a new form of fentanyl to help cancer patients with breakthrough pain. It is sprayed under the tongue killing pain instantly. But it is very seductive and dangerous, the perfect pairing to make it beloved by those who abuse drugs. It is opioids on mega-steroids. Of course the drug escapes the medical boundaries of its designers and gets prescribed to just about anyone who wants it.
Quichotte does not know he is a drug dealer. He is just working for his relative and fortunately he gets fired before his job becomes an issue, fortunate because he has many other issues, one of them being that he is in love. Dr. Smile and Quichotte cross paths again though.
If you have seen a mirror that reflects the same scene back to a vanishing point, mirror after mirror, then you have some idea of Rushdie’s story structure. Or perhaps it’s like a set on nesting dolls. We have brothers, sons, fathers, sisters, all over the place, all estranged, all seeking to reconcile. Everyone is questing to bind wounds from the past. Everyone is looking for love, mostly of the sibling variety, except for Quichotte who has fallen in love inappropriately with a young TV star, and has created a son (Sancho) from a fervent wish on a meteor shower. Also, the world is starting to flicker around the edges like an old film that is fading in spots or dying from overexposure to light or heat in others.
I always say that India and America are soul mates but it is perhaps more likely that the people of our two nations are the actual soul mates. Thanks for the trip Salman Rushdie. I hope this story, Quichotte, which seemed to say farewell, will be followed by more Salman Rushdie productions in the future. Maybe despair is our present and our future, but maybe not. Perhaps we can turn our own planet into Planet B and soon, before we destroy each other along with the planet.
My September booklist is a bit late this month. No apologies because I am into reading Frederick Douglas: Prophet of Freedom by David W. Blight and, although it is not at all difficult to read, it is long and I have not had as much time to read (because I subscribed to Netflix, very naughty). I have been tempted away from print media for a while. But I will be back and I already have other books clamoring for my attention. Salman Rushdie has a new book and it is calling to me along with all the new fiction on the Amazon list this month. The New York Times Book Review has changed it’s format and I will have to get used to the new setup, so I did not include those books on this month’s list. I will have to get with the new program.
Amazon
Literature and Fiction
Dominicana: A Novel by Angie Cruz *
Quichotte by Salman Rushdie *
The Secrets We Kept: A Novel by Lara Prescott *
Gun Island: A Novel by Amitov Ghosh *
The World That We Knew: A Novel by Alice Hoffman *
The Water Dancer: A Novel by Ta-Nehisi Coates *
The Grammarians: A Novel by Cathleen Schine *
The Dutch House: A Novel by Ann Patchett *
Red at the Bone: A Novel by Jacqueline Woodson *
Opioid, Indiana: A Novel by Brian Allen Carr *
Mysteries and Thrillers
The Nanny: A Novel by Gilly Macmillan
The Institute by Stephen King
A Better Man (a Chief Inspector Gamache Novel) by Louise Penny
Land of Wolves (Walt Longmire Mystery) by Craig Johnson
The Secrets We Kept: A Novel by Lara Prescott
Mycroft and Sherlock: The Empty Birdcage by Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Anna Waterhouse
The Glass Woman: A Novel by Caroline Lea
Cold Storage: A Novel by David Koepp
The Chestnut Man: A Novel by Sören Sviestrup
The Girl Who Lived Twice by David Lagercrantz
Biographies and Memoirs
Make it Scream, Make it Burn (Essays) by Leslie Jamison
Over the Top: A Raw Journey of Self Love by Jonathan Van Ness
The Soul of Care: The Moral Education of a Husband and a Doctor by Arthur Kleinman
High School by Sara Quin, Tegan Quin
The Ride of a Lifetime: Lesson Learned from 15 Years as CEO of Walt Disney Company by Robert Iger
Year of the Monkey by Patti Smith
Call Sign Chaos: Learning to Lead by Jim Mattis, Bing West
Permanent Record by Edward Snowden
Sontag: Her Life and Work by Benjamin Moser
Prisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control by Stephanie Kinzer
Nonfiction
We Are the Weather: Saving the Planet Begins at Breakfast by Jonathan Safran Foer
Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know by Malcolm Gladwell
She Said: Breaking the Sexual Harassment Story that Helped Ignite a Movement by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey
How to Raise a Reader by Pamela Paul and Maria Russo
How to: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems by Randall Munroe
Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? Big Questions from Tiny Mortals About Death by Caitlin Doughty, Dianné Ruz
Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life by Nir Eyal
The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11 by Garett M. Graff
Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime by Sean Carroll
Super Pumped: The Battle of Uber by Mike Isaac
Science Fiction and Fantasy
Last Ones Left Alive: A Novel by Sarah Davis-Goff
The Testaments: The Sequel to the Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
A Little Hatred (The Age of Madness) by Joe Abercrombie
A Song for a New Day by Sarah Pinsker
The Nightjar by Deborah Hewitt
Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow
Publisher’s Weekly
Aug. 5th
Without a Prayer: The Death of Lucas Leonard and How One Church Became a Cult by Susan Ashline – NF
King of the Court by Travis Dandro – Memoir
Haben: The Deafblind Woman Who Conquered Harvard Law by Haben Girma – Memoir
The Wolf Wants In by Laura McHugh – Thriller
Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silva Moreno-Garcia – F
City of Windows by Robert Pobi – Thriller
The Right Swipe (Modern Love #1 by Alicia Rei – F
Say You Still Love Me by K A Tucker – F
The Turn of the Key by Ruth Ware – Thriller
The Remainder by Alia Trabucco Zerán trans. From Sp. By Sophie Hughes
Aug. 12
Rule of Capture by Christopher Brown – Science Fiction Thriller
The Last Ocean: A Journey through Memory and Forgetting by Nicci Gerrard (dementia) NF *
Gods with a Little g by Tupelo Hassman – F *
Unbreak Me by Michelle Hazen – F – Romance
The Downstairs Girl by Stacey Lee – YA *
Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America by Christopher Leonard – NF *
The Perfect Son by Lauren North – F
Inland by Téa Obreht
The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa trans. from Japanese by Stephen Snyder – F
Texas Flood: The Inside Story of Stevie Ray Vaughan by Alan Paul and Andy Aledort – NF
The Plateau by Maggie Paxson NF
The Retreat by Sherri Smith – Thriller
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk trans. from the Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones – F
Catfish Lullaby by A C Wise – Horror novella
Aug. 19
The Cruel Stars by John Birmingham – Science Fiction
The Second Biggest Nothing by Colin Cotterill – F
Coventry: Essays by Rachel Cusk – Essays
A Good Provider is One Who Leaves: One Family and Migration in the 21stCentury by Jason De Parle – NF or based on a true story
Going Dutch by James Gregor – F
Tidelands by Phillippa Gregory – F
The Warehouse by Rob Hart – F
Meet Me in the Future by Kameron Hurley – Short Stories
The Whisper Man by Alex North – Thriller
The World Doesn’t Require You by Rion Amilcar Scott – Short Stories
Machine by Susan Steinberg – Thriller
This Poison Will Remain by Fred Vargas trans. from Frenchy by Siân Reynolds – Mystery
Aug. 23
Everything Inside by Edwidge Danticat – Short Stores
From the Shadows by Juan José Millas trans. from Sp. By Thomas Bunstead and Daniel Hahn – F
A Better Man by Louise Penny – Mystery
The Ventriloquists by E R Ramzipoor – F
Gender and Our Brains: How New Neuroscience Explodes the Myths of Male and Female Minds by Gina Rippon – NF
Aug. 30
Unbreakable: The Woman Who Defied the Nazis in the World’s Most Dangerous Horse Race by Richard Askwith – NF
We the Survivors by Tash Aw – F
Women War Photographers from Lee Miller to Anja Niedringhaus by Anne-Marie Beckmann and Felicity Korn – NF
Dominicana by Angie Cruz – F *
Quichotte by Salman Rushdie – F *
The Art of Statistics: How to Learn From Data By David Spiegelhalter – NF
The Bone Fire by S D Sykes – Whodunit
Fashionopolis: The Price of Fast Fashion and the Future of Clothes by Dana Thomas – NF
So Many Books, Choose Wisely 