The Eleventh Hour by Salman Rushdie
Thank you for joining me this week for Book Beginnings on Fridays where participants share the opening sentence (or two) from the book they are reading. You can also share from a book you want to feature, even if you are not reading it at the moment.
MY BOOK BEGINNING
The day Junior fell down began like any other day: the explosion of heat rippling the air, the trumpeting sunlight, the traffic's tidal surges, the prayer chant in the distance, the cheap film music rising up from the floor below, the pelvic thrusts of an "item number" dancing across a neighbor's TV; a child's cry, a mother's rebuke, unexplained laughter, scarlet expectorations, bicycles, the newly plaited hair of schoolgirls, the smell of strong coffee, a green wing flashing in a tree.
-- from the "In the south," the first of five stories in The Eleventh Hour by Salman Rushdie.
I joined a new book club in 2026* and this is our first book. I'm halfway through and can tell we will have a LOT to discuss.
Are you a Rushdie fan? I loved Midnight's Children but really struggled to engage with The Satanic Verses and that's as far as I got. So far, I am loving the stories in this new collection so I am happy to read it.
YOUR BOOK BEGINNING
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Jimmy was tall, thin, graying, a carefully spoken man, expressing himself softly (in a high tenor voice), with kindly eyes; and he ran his enormous empire without ever giving the impression of being busy, flustered, or in doubt. Dimmy was his perfect alternate self: the most glamorous grande dame in the city, extroverted, flamboyant, and given to talking nonstop in a low, cigarette-haunted voice.
Rushdie turns his extraordinary imagination to life’s final act with a quintet of stories that span the three countries in which he has made his work—India, England, and America—and feature an unforgettable cast of characters.
“In the South” introduces a pair of quarrelsome old men—Junior and Senior—and their private tragedy at a moment of national calamity. In “The Musician of Kahani,” a musical prodigy from the Mumbai neighborhood featured in Midnight’s Children uses her magical gifts to wreak devastation on the wealthy family she marries into. In “Late,” the ghost of a Cambridge don enlists the help of a lonely student to enact revenge upon the tormentor of his lifetime. “Oklahoma” plunges a young writer into a web of deceit and lies as he tries to figure out whether his mentor killed himself or faked his own death. And “The Old Man in the Piazza” is a powerful parable for our times about freedom of speech.
* I now belong to three book clubs, which I think is insane. I've been in one for 19 years, the second for 12 years, and now this one. My problem is that I hate to miss out on book fun and I really like all the women in all three of the clubs. The original one is cool because (with a few exceptions here and there) we are friends through the book club. The second one is cool because we were a group of friends who started a book club. The third one hasn't met yet, but I think it will be a combination. Half the women are neighbors (and friends) and each of them invited a friend. Fortunately, each club meets every other month, otherwise I could not keep up!
