The characters are so many (each of them with their own peculiarities), that I have trouble choosing who to write about first. Chronologically, the first person we meet is Heidelberg-educated doctor Aadam Aziz (Saleem’s grandfather). Who fell in love with a seemingly delicate woman, Naseem, who to my surprise has turned out to be the matriarch type, growing bigger as she got older, fond of gossip and filled with superstitions and biases — for example she never understood the usefulness of knowing foreign languages (“‘If God meant people to speak many tongues,’ she argued, ‘why did he put only one in our heads…’” or “She has vivid pictures of hell. It is as hot as Rajputana in June and everyone is made to learn seven foreign languages“). She is said to be able to be so controlling as to even dream her daughters’ dreams. Amina Sinai, Saleem’s mother, is nothing if not assiduous, always trying to do what’s best for her family. On the contrary, Saleem’s father is a weak person and a lover of the kinds of djinns that live in alcohol bottles. Speaking of Saleem, the best trait I have found about him was that he used to have a dream for changing the world to the better, a dream he tried fulfilling for a while (only fate had wanted differently). A very interesting character was also Saleem’s sister, Jamila, nicknamed Brass Monkey in her childhood, due to her hair, Jamila who as a child always came second (making her so fierce and so desperate for attention she sometimes set fire to grown-ups’ shoes and she unleashed her revenge upon anyone who showed her love), Jamila who will be later nicknamed Singer and become famous for her voice. And I just have to mention Shiva too, Saleem’s nemesis, a frightening character who enjoyed killing people by strangling them with his knees (who later joined the army in order to be able to satisfy this vice of killing without fear of punishment). But the cast of characters comprises lots and lots more than that, each person with its own peculiarities and adding its own “colored thread” to the world in the book.

This is a beautifully written book, with powerful imagery very realistically described (one can just see the people and the events in front of its own eyes). The land where everything happens (India and Pakistan, India the most) has its own contribution to the charm of the story: a land so different than ours/mine, a land filled with superstitions (especially at that time — more than 50 years go): flowers that bleed real blood, statues walking on the streets at night foretelling danger, mango trees that, if climbed on by women, will only give sour fruits from then on and so on. It’s interesting to note that the story isn’t necessarily linear — the narrator gets ahead of himself, mentions things, goes back to others, remembers about the stuff that happened before, details the things mentioned previously and so on. As if the whole book is constructed out of fragments, bits and pieces (fragments being a leitmotif of the book), like a kaleidoscope of colored glass pieces, always changing, always casting light one way or another.

My knowledge on the topic of India’s history was only sketchy (closer to nothing than anything else). Despite this I was amazed at the way Indira Gandhi was portrayed, not in the least at her physical appearance (hair parted down the middle, half white and half black). While it did sound like an exaggeration (which probably was), I was quite surprised to look up her picture in the wiki and find her looking like this.

What I liked most: All the mentions of fragments — from the way the grandfather-to-be has fallen in love with the grandmother-to-be, after only seeing various parts of her body (nothing indecent), so the only image he had of her in his head was a construction out of all the fragments he knew (without a face as he had never seen it back then), to Amina’s assiduous attempts to love her husband:

“[...]she began to train herself to love him. To do this she divided him, mentally, into every single one of his component parts, physical as well as behavioural, compartmentalizing him into lips and verbal tics and prejudices and likes… in short, she fell under the spell of the perforated sheet of her own parents, because she resolved to fall in love with her husband bit by bit.
Each day she selected one fragment of Ahmed Sinai, and concentrated her entire being upon it until it became wholly familiar; until she felt fondness rising up within her and becoming affection and, finally, love.”

, to the fact that to me the book itself seemed made out of disarrayed fragments.

What I liked least: For some reason I found the first part of book three (Saleem in the army and Saleem in the jungle) not as enjoyable as the rest (perhaps because there were less characters plus Saleem was not quite himself?)

Recommend it? Yes. It is fascinating at times (plus let’s not forgets it has won its author many awards).

Two quotes I liked:
Saleem, working at a pickle factory by day and writing his memoirs at night:

And my chutneys and kasaundies are, after all, connected to my nocturnal scribblings-by day amongst the pickle-vats, by night within these sheets, I spend my time at the great work of preserving. Memory, as well as fruit, is being saved from the corruption of the clocks.

And the other one, about the fascinating powers of the Midnight’s Children:

Midnight’s children!… From Kerala, a boy who had the ability of stepping into mirrors and re-emerging through any reflective surface in the land-through lakes and (with greater difficulty) the polished metal bodies of automobiles… and a Goanese girl with the gift of multiplying fish… and children with powers of transformation: a werewolf from the Nilgiri Hills, and from the great watershed of the Vindhyas, a boy who could increase or reduce his size at will, and had already (mischievously) been the cause of wild panic and rumours of the return of Giants… from Kashmir, there was a blue-eyed child of whose original sex I was never certain, since by immersing herself in water he (or she) could alter it as she (or he) pleased.

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