Rating: 
Summary: Excellent writing, mediocre story
Review: Mr. Rushdie is a great writer (and one of my favourites), but it seems as though when it comes to common stories (the story here is mediocre, to be honest), especially if their background is not in India, he loses some of his mastery, or at least interest. Nevertheless, the book is still Literature.
Rating: 
Summary: Salman fails to shake the ground beneath my feet.
Review: Though the book is not a complete failure, it should fail to live up to the expectations of Rushdie fans. Salman does not properly develop the characters of Vina nor Rai which in turn fails to yield the conflict necessary to make the novel truly compelling. It lacks the philosophical and existential weight and vitality of Rushdie's previous efforts.
Rating:
Summary: Patches of brilliance, but the quilt is fuzzy.
Review: The part in India is best but then tapers off into an incoherent mess. It's all too much...but Rushdie at his worst is still better than most.
Rating: 
Summary: Rushdie Misses Only Once
Review: Rushdie's one swing and a miss in this novel is when Mira is "hated" by the crowd of concert goers for her imitation of Vina...Surely Rushdie knows that Elvis and Sinatra impersonators are an industry and adored...He underestimates the ignorance of the American public to buy anything...otherwise this book is right there with Don Deillo's - Underworld...They are both just outstanding...
Rating:
Summary: Joyful, exuberant, hilarious!
Review: Rushdie's first "American" novel is not as narratively tight as his other-best Midnight's Chldren, nor does it have the same level of social/political commentary of Shame or Satanic Verses, but what he loses in these areas he gains tenfold in pure, joyous readability, in a lovely Nabokovian word-play and an often hilarious spontenaity of language. Reading the novel is like sitting down before an eclectic potluck dinner prepared by the best of chefs. Ironically, his first major work since the fatwa is also his most optimistic and I found myself grinning throughout, as well as breathlessly rereading some of the most finely-crafted paragraphs in modern literature. A pleasure, pure and simple.
Rating:
Summary: Not the Rushdie I love best
Review: I have been disappointed in Rushdie's latest efforts. I feel he is starting to stretch himself too far, addressing subjects with which he has less experience and questionable grasp. I recently read THE LAST DAY, by Glenn Kleier as he has been referred to as "the Salman Rushdie of Christianity." That he is. I found LAST DAY to deliver the irreverancy, satire and bite that has been missing in Rushdie. I recommend Kleier to those of you who miss the once formidable Rushdie.
Rating:
Summary: Not Rushdie's best
Review: This was a bit long and drawn out for my tastes. Anyone looking for the old Rushdie irreverence would be better served to read Kleier's "The Last Day," or even "Damascus Gate" (but "Last Day" is more exciting, and has more bite and satire).
Rating:
Summary: Art is no imitation and imitation is no art
Review: Rushdie proves it again. In all his books, he kept his style; characters are total fiction; you read them without developing any attachment to them. It is his powerful style of writing that brings about this effect. As in painting we should not look for any resemblance to nature and it should be beautiful and pleasing in its own way, Rushdie' novels have those potential of gripping the reader without actually giving him/her any "hangover". It is beautiful in having its own form.I have not yet finished the novel. I was tempted to read the novel after hearing so "negative" remarks. But to my relief, Rushdie has not compromised on anything and his novel stands out way apart. I will stop now and will write more about the novel after I read it completely.
Rating:
Summary: New Quakers forever!
Review: This is the second Rushdie book I've read (the other being "Satanic Verses"). It is a lot easier to read than "Satanic Verses," and it is not as aweinspiring. Now that those comparisons are out of the way, "The Ground Beneath Her Feet" is still a mighty accomplishment. Rushdie's musical knowledge surprised me. The alternate world he presents is not unlike our own, and is drawn out that way because the rock superstar character Ormus Cama experiences an alternate reality, ours, were Lou Reed is a man, and it's not Jesse Garon Parker, it's Elvis Presley. Rushdie again touches on postcolonialism, postmodernism, mythic archetypes (Orpheus) and Joycean wordplay, telling a story and commenting upon it at the same time. Rushdie might be the greatest living author of our time.
Rating:
Summary: Rusdhie has outdone his contemporaries once again!
Review: This book is like a black hole - its gravity has managed to capture the most subtle essence of the world we live in. Hidden in the genius of his writing we can find valuable 'photographic' evidence of our current existential condition. Rushdie's brilliance in incorporating history, religion, mysticism and intellectualism into the story, in the most casual of ways, grips the reader throughout. The Cama family along with all the peripheral characters are full of the old Rushdie magic. His use of Ormus' eschatological obsession serves as a brilliant tool to illustrate the anxieties of the western world, and how these anxieties are being diffused through the rest of the world. This novel is not Rushdie's greatest literary accomplishment, but it is a tremendous intellectual and scholarly success. In this novel Rushdie has made his greatest leap forward, but in doing so has been a little careless about a few things. My only two complains are : 1) The book does drag a little in the few chapters that take place in America, and also does get repetitive as the plot slows down a great deal in New York. 2) Vina and Rai, as characters, were not as well developed as one expects them to be, given Rushdie's other novels. On the whole this book is a mammoth accomplishment, and if it falls short of any standards - these are standards set by none other than Rushdie himself.
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