01 May / Quichotte by Salman Rushdie [in Booklist]
STARRED REVIEW
Sixteen hours. Multiple layers of convoluted narrative. A vast cast in need of distinct distinguishing by age, gender, social standing, ethnicity, region, accent. Who you gonna call? Already a proven collaborator after The Golden-House (2017) and Shame (audio 2017), Adam returns as Rushdie’s voice-of-choice for his latest meandering – literally – epic.
The eponymous Quichotte here is a traveling pharmaceutical salesman representing his billionaire Atlanta cousin. He experiences life mostly via TV screen, through which he’s fallen obsessively in love with Salma R of über-talk-show fame, second only to Oprah. After his cousin fires him, Quichotte embarks – towing along a son named Sancho (natch!) he wills into being – on a transformative Chevy Cruze-ferried quest to meet his beloved.
But wait! Quichotte’s not real … ?
He’s apparently been imagined by Sam DuChamp, a paranoid spy novelist whose own son might be missing, who’s haunted (or stalked?) by a Japanese American armed agent of … whatever his ID says.
With remarkable aural agility (and an eyebrow perennially cocked), Adam corrals Rushdie’s impossible characters into a wild ride across the United States, confronting all manner of social ills, including murderous racism, family dysfunction, prescription-drug abuse, and even end-of-the-world projections.
Oh, and that Whoville of an unexpected ending? – Adam makes us believe it all.
Review: “Media,” Booklist Online, April 21, 2020
Readers: Adult
Published: 2019