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Title: "Play 'Free Bird"! "
Review: I have a great deal of respect for Salman Rushdie's work. I have been a serious student of his novels for several years now. It is thus with regret I must report that his current novel, "The Ground Beneath Her Feet", is the textual equivalent of a lighter waved in the air. It takes Rushdie over 500 pages to say, in essence, "Play 'Free Bird'! Yeeeaaaahh! " This is an unfortunate turn of events, to say the least. The novel is undisciplined and self-indulgent, melodramatic and maudlin. It is, in short, a midlife crisis of a book. The story of over-sized, one-dimensional Celebrities, "The Ground Beneath Her Feet" fails to engage the reader or create any sympathy for its spoilt, unpleasant protagonists. Rushdie's readers have come to expect better. It is to be hoped his next book will be less of a disappointment.
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