The acid-tongued, Yale-educated purveyor of limn places Shalimar the Clown above Rushdie’s ineffectual 
Fury but below his earlier works (thanks, Rani):
Although the novel is considerably more substantial than his perfunctory 2001 book, “Fury,” it lacks the fecund narrative magic, ebullient language and intimate historical emotion found in “Midnight’s Children” and “The Moor’s Last Sigh.” [Link]
She doesn’t buy the fundamental, near-magical-realism conceit of the protagonist, and without that buy-in the rest of the novel is colored:
Worse, “Shalimar the Clown” is hobbled by Mr. Rushdie’s determination to graft huge political and cultural issues onto a flimsy soap opera plot… But his clumsy suggestion that the title character becomes involved with a group of terrorists inspired by Al Qaeda because he has been jilted by his wife feels farcical in the extreme - unbelievable in terms of the actual story…
The main problem with this novel, however, is its title character, Shalimar… who emerges as a thoroughly implausible, cartoonish figure: an ardent lover turned murderous avenger, a clownish performer transformed into a cold-eyed terrorist. Whereas the other characters’ motives are complex and conflicted, Shalimar is depicted in diagrammatic, black-and-white terms. Indeed, he often seems like a reincarnation of the cardboardy Solanka from “Fury”… These are the sort of words spoken by mustache-twirling, snake-eyed villains in old cartoons…
Rushdie is ‘all about the extended, witty aside, the original, snarky insight,’ which she doesn’t seem to dig:
But others are thoroughly gratuitous asides, included, it seems, simply for the sake of emptying out the author’s archive of recorded and imagined images, and they weigh down the story, diminishing its focus and its momentum.
I’m left wondering whether this review is more a criticism of the genre and Rushdie’s fundamental style than the individual tome. We’ll know soon — the book is officially out tomorrow, though you may have nabbed a copy this weekend.
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