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This is a book of stories and identity; actual, created, and retold as tales to others. It questions what we think about as truth, especially when it comes to ourselves and others; what is said, hidden, implied, or lied about? Can we ever really know ourselves when we are so immersed and intertwined with other peoples' stories, with what they believe about us or want us to be? In this vortex of truth and lies, is one really more valid than the other?

From the outset it reminded me somewhat of The Virgin Suicides, enshrouded in a specific time, that of vivid modernity, but equally universal in the ways of human behaviour, shadowed by that overwhelming feeling of impeding doom. In case anyone thinks i'm giving something away, please see the choice of Roman/Greek names for the main characters. Rushdie might as well have been shouting this is not going to end well. The family treads the same path of decline as the America it inhabits, from the hope of the Obama era to the what Rushdie envisions as the Joker presidency. It could have been called The Fall of the Golden House. Or perhaps that's sufficiently implied.

The Goldens all told stories about themselves, stories in which essential information about origins was either omitted or falsified. I listened to them not as 'true' but as indications of character.

Of course, the reader only 'knows' this Golden family through the eyes of outsider, film director, and neighbour, Rene, whose current project is to make a film telling their story. The question never far from the mind is how much of what we are being told is real? Is it the truth as the Golden's would understand it? Far from reflecting the impartial gaze of the camera, Rene's perceptions determine the narrative, especially as his associations with the family become closer and more complex. This is reflected in the structure of the writing, sometimes set up as a film script, with directions and asides from the narrator. It is not steady narrative, it jumps from the 'we' of the collective habitants of 'The Gardens' surrounding Golden House, to the 'I' of Rene, to internal monologues he could only be imagining, reported speech, and even interjections from mythical characters of folklore, like witch Baba Yaga. These layered stories, interspersed with frequent literary, cultural, and film quotation and reference, combine to form a labyrinth of connected lives and ideas, revealing how we use others' stories to illuminate our own, sometimes guiding or bolstering our identity, or even overwhelming who we are or who we might be. In the end, when it comes to people, truth and reality may be nothing more our own creations.

I'm also finally finishing up my Golden screenplay, my faction about these men who made fictions of themselves, and the two are blurring into each other until i'm not sure anymore what's real and what I made up.

I can see how others might find this too self-referential, too obviously clever, but it's nevertheless my favourite since Midnight's Children. As a commentary on modern society and contemporary ideas of truth and identity, it's not to be missed.

ARC via Netgalley.