Rating: 
Summary: A masterpiece dealing with human emotions
Review: As opposed to most other reviewers, I couldn't put down this book to a point it made my husband jealous. The Ground Beneath Her Feet makes you become an instant rock and roll fan. It made me go back to the time I was "in love" with The Beatles- it carries you along the lives of rock singers as if you were there with them all the time.
Rushdie captures your attention weaving the story using well known music words and at the same time describing people and places so vividly- you feel like you're part of the book.
The book took me sight-seeing through Bombay as though I lived there- (I've never been to India). I would say Rushdie could be compared to Shakespeare and to Ingmar Berman- these are people who have a clear grasp on how to describe human passions, emotions, attitudes. Their stories touch deep in your heart.
I've read other books by Rushdie - even more recent ones and I like them all, but this one is a masterpiece. The story of Vina and Ormus won't leave my mind and every rock band I listen to it seems I see Ormus and Vina on stage.
The length of the book- well,to me it could even be longer- I couldn't wait to read the end but at the same time I didn't want it to end.It was like having a multiple orgasm!
I appreciate Rushdie's use of endless lists of adjectives and adverbs, (even though you sometimes have to go back to the beginning of the sentence to remember what it is about), because he thus creates a vivid image of what is really happening, of the light, the smell, the sound of the place and the exact feeling. I can't wait for my kids to read the book so we can discuss our feelings- a truly well done piece of literature.
Rating: 
Summary: Transitional Rushdie?
Review: "The Ground Beneath Her Feet" is devoted to the stories of the pop stars Ormus Cama and Vina Apsara as told by Umeed Merchant ("Rai"), their mutual friend and Ormus's rival for Vina's affections. Rai narrates Ormus and Vina's meeting in Bombay, their rise to fame in 1960s London, and eventual cult status after moving to the USA.There's much in this novel that will appear familiar to anyone who has read Rushdie's other works: the themes of East meets West ("disorientation meaning loss of the East"); and the exploration of popular "culture", for example. "The Ground Beneath Her Feet" felt to me very much what it is - the novel which came between "The Moor's Last Sigh" and "Fury". It could be seen as a transitional novel - Rushdie still deals with the interconnections and tensions between Eastern and Western cultural traditions, but is already turning his attention to what he sees as the shallowness of modern Western "culture". In this novel, he is damning of the cult status given to dead pop stars: traces of the all-sweeping pessimism and condemnatory style used later in "Fury". I thought that "The Ground Beneath Her Feet" was a more accessible novel than "The Moor's Last Sigh", which I felt to be too self-indulgent. That perhaps is due to the possibility that I'm becoming accustomed to Rushdie's writing style, which to use a metaphor is the equivalent to being taken on a long train journey, but getting off at many of the stations on the way to have a slow wander around. Thus does Rushdie abandon temporarily his narrative to indulge his random thoughts and explore word play. I suppose this can be greatly appealing to some readers, but I confess that it taxes my patience. On the plus side, Rushdie at least to some extent succeeded for me in giving an impression of the changes in environment in the novel: 1950s Bombay; "swinging London" of the 1960s; and market-obsessed 1980s and 1990s USA. Watch out as the spelling changes to American-English as the scene shifts to the States (or was that bad editing?).
Rating:
Summary: Transitional Rushdie?
Review: "The Ground Beneath Her Feet" is devoted to the stories of the pop stars Ormus Cama and Vina Apsara as told by Umeed Merchant ("Rai"), their mutual friend and Ormus's rival for Vina's affections. Rai narrates Ormus and Vina's meeting in Bombay, their rise to fame in 1960s London, and eventual cult status after moving to the USA. There's much in this novel that will appear familiar to anyone who has read Rushdie's other works: the themes of East meets West ("disorientation meaning loss of the East"); and the exploration of popular "culture", for example. "The Ground Beneath Her Feet" felt to me very much what it is - the novel which came between "The Moor's Last Sigh" and "Fury". It could be seen as a transitional novel - Rushdie still deals with the interconnections and tensions between Eastern and Western cultural traditions, but is already turning his attention to what he sees as the shallowness of modern Western "culture". In this novel, he is damning of the cult status given to dead pop stars: traces of the all-sweeping pessimism and condemnatory style used later in "Fury". I thought that "The Ground Beneath Her Feet" was a more accessible novel than "The Moor's Last Sigh", which I felt to be too self-indulgent. That perhaps is due to the possibility that I'm becoming accustomed to Rushdie's writing style, which to use a metaphor is the equivalent to being taken on a long train journey, but getting off at many of the stations on the way to have a slow wander around. Thus does Rushdie abandon temporarily his narrative to indulge his random thoughts and explore word play. I suppose this can be greatly appealing to some readers, but I confess that it taxes my patience. On the plus side, Rushdie at least to some extent succeeded for me in giving an impression of the changes in environment in the novel: 1950s Bombay; "swinging London" of the 1960s; and market-obsessed 1980s and 1990s USA. Watch out as the spelling changes to American-English as the scene shifts to the States (or was that bad editing?).
Rating: 
Summary: Finally... it has been written...
Review: I didn't think it would come to this... but I need to rave about this book! Rushdie has captured in his beautiful re-telling of the myth of Orpheus the heartbeat of the post-millenium - a world beside all possible worlds and one waiting to be born, where no 'ground' is 'safe' and yearning and love are the true bookends of life. Distinctions and duelisms are irrelevent in the world of Ormus and Vina and, like life, their story keep cycling back into each other as our real stories continue to flood into one truer fiction that is life - its all here folks! I am haunted by this one and well-worth working through. Easier to 'get into' than 'Midnight's Children' and Rock-n-Roll will never win you a Booker like the birth of post-colonial India... but I feel that when we look back, it be will *this* novel that shows the dissolving of East/West, High/Low culture, and all ideological wars in the face of love (yes... it sounds kitsche...but it is also true!)that he will be known for - maybe not taught in post-grad lit courses... but people will understand this - heck, songs are being written for goodness sake - Art begetting art. And besides... VTO is the coolest fictional band since Spinal Tap bar none! Go... stop working at your dead-end job... order the book now and reflect on things eternal for a change! A no-risk read if ever there was one.
Rating:
Summary: Rushdie's masterpiece of a rock novel
Review: If you like Rushdie and classic rock, you will love this! Nominally about the rise and fall of a Bombay-based rock band which takes the world by storm, and of course including the requisite sad tale of unrequited love between the babe vocalist and the cool dude guitarist. The text is full references to great pop songs, and you probably won't catch all of them on the first read =)
Rating:
Summary: Brilliantly innovative, though lacks depth and dimensions
Review: If you're looking for the socio-political irony of Midnight's Children or the structural complexity, analysis of religion and parallel allegories about human suffering a la The Satanic Verses, this book is going to disappoint you.Though the characters from Satanic Verses and Moor's Last Sigh appear in this new novel,the poignancy of his earlier efforts are missing.The lion's share of this book is devoted to a larger than life couple who also happen to be rock stars per excellence and much has been made about their almost divine and mythological affair,none of which remains too convincing till the end. Frequent and erudite references to the characters of Greek Mythology doesn't also necessarily help. Though most of his rock lyrics are top-notch(the rest fails miserably) and his knowledge about rock and blues and jazz music is quite convincing, you'll get a feeling he ain't really comfortable with this particular genre of music. He doesn't seem to be sure how he feels about rock and so when he tries to portray the dark and hedonistic side of the rockn'roll world, he sounds like a bored journalist. The spontaneity is missing, believe me. He seems to have been way too much impressed by America and it's vibrant, colorful but naive ways, impressed like a child in whose mind cynicism hasn't yet crept in. Vina, the rock diva, and her troubled american childhood seem absurd at the best, never bleak enough to be poignant. Or is Rushdie trying to create an world of absolute lightness ? If you look at the protagonist, Umeed 'Rai' Merchant, secret lover of Vina and friend of Vina's 'great' lover Ormus, and Rai's 'human heroism' against childhood loses, alienation, unrequitted love and his constant strive for artistic excellence(photography is the form),you'll find a voice which resembles Rushdie the most, at least the Rushdie whom we used to know and you'll be surprised to realize that this infatuation of his with the joy of superficiality is a,well, infatuation. First 400 odd pages are brilliant, comparable to Rushdie at his best but then onwards it's a steady decline. There are moments of liguistic innovativeness and brilliantly thought-provoking observations , but then the whole thing doesn't stand together like it should've been.The modern sci-fi cliche of parallel but occassionally inter-woven universes and big crunches in individual universe almost sound like a B-Grade Hollywood Sci-Fi thriller. And the earthquakes, I guess I might've missed a few allegorical refernces to the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice and all that, but then this symbolism has been overused in this novel of excesses. Just a curiosity, the book is dedicated to 'Milan'; is it Milan Kundera the czech/french novelist who in his 'Testaments Betrayed'has rightly glorified 'The Satanic Verses' to be one of the greatest modern novel ? I guess he'll be shocked to discover his buddy Rushdie's singular affinity to rock music and lightness, both of which he proudly hates. And Rushdie would do better not to hobnob with his U2 pals too much, Bone and edge are goner as soon as they've released 'Pop'. Now We don't want Rushdie to release his unpublished till now short-stories, do we ? And a consolation : Rushdie at his worst is still better than the most, and so the above 4 stars are quite justified.
Rating:
Summary: Long read but worth it
Review: It took me nine months to finish this book. It begins slowly and doesn't pick up for several chapters, so consequently I would get bored and stick it under my bed and forget about it for a month or two. But when I picked it up again, somewhere around page 200 I started really enjoying it. At first, the relationships between the characters are disjointed and the reader is disoriented because the narrator begins at the end and with the death of heroin Vina Apsara. Spontaneous flashbacks and sporadic dialogue all add to the fragmented tone. But after those first 200 pages the reader gets more access into the world of the narrator Rai. I really like how the protagonists take turns taking center stage while the narrator remains the same character. I also was delighted by how the end has a twist but stays true to the basis in the tale of Orpheus. All in all I'm glad this book took me so long to read because it gave me time to reflect on the characters and really appreciate Rushdie's linguistic idiosyncrasies.
Rating: 
Summary: Still waiting for the Big One
Review: On the back cover, one reviewer was quoted as calling this novel "the best thing ever written about rock and roll." So with lofty expectations I purchased it, setting myself up for disappointment. It seems hardly to be about rock and roll at all. It's more about Salman Rushdie rewriting history to fulfill his own perverse fantasies cloaked vaguely in the guise of a rewriting of the myth of Orpheus. The idea of the world's greatest rock band coming from India, the place of Rushdie's origins, is farfetched to begin with. The original song lyrics fall flat without the music to support them. (It's a little too demanding on the reader's imagination in that way.) The overuse of puns and "clever" wordplay begins to feel, I don't know, nerdy?, not to mention annoying. There is also a lot of unnecessary background information thrown in -- like Rushdie is trying to impress the reader with all his knowledge and worldliness. I found it difficult to embrace any of the characters, and found myself mostly unmoved by the story, until the very end with the introduction of the Vina-like Mira character. But by that time it was too late to salvage my feelings of disappointment for the novel as a whole.
Rating:
Summary: Great, as Always
Review: Rushdie delivers a perplexing and interesting novel, as ever. I'm not even going to try to explain the plot. I suggest taking a class on Rushdie- his books go that deep. I have enjoyed everything that I have read so far. This is a great novel, whether you are reading it for school or just for fun.
Rating:
Summary: Its rock and roll baby!
Review: Salman Rushdie writes yet another literary extravaganza, full of word plays, symponies of metaphors and a very interesting tale of love, music and twentieth century world. Recommended to anyone who has apetite for heavy reading, for in Rushdie's writing you need to savor the story frame by frame, page by page, sentence by sentence. Complexity is integral to this novel as well, but for someone who has read Midnight Children, Moors Last Sigh and/or Satanic Verses, this book presents a very interesting and simpler read: for its a typical Rushdie novel, with all the drama and absurdities of rock and roll and a very fine love story! Characteristic Rushdie wit keeps you humored, and density of work occupied!!!! PS: Never read Rushdie if you fancy reading 100 page novels in a hours time!!! Reading Rushdie is an effort, but trust me, a worthwhile one!
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