The Eleventh Hour: A Quintet of Stories
A set of performative calisthenics more strained than satisfying; a meandering constitutional; a shake of the wrist spilling out a bag overpacked with tricks ... The references pile up and stories nest within stories and it all becomes impossible to peel apart, like slices of American cheese without the cellophane ... The heart wants badly to praise this valiant late-career offering from Salman Rushdie: teeming intellect, generous soul, survivor, bon vivant, lover of language ... But the brain struggles to find a way.
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Rushdie’s towering talent is evident throughout The Eleventh Hour ... The prose here is Rushdie at his supple best, restrained yet daring ... While diverse in technique, each story in The Eleventh Hour springs from a common argument: Language, whether spoken or read or imagined, transforms us all.
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More streamlined ... His flights of fancy...are more controlled and add subtle strokes of color. Some groan-inducing puns aside, Rushdie’s comic touches are deftly managed, appearing as sharp satirical swipes or witty repartee ... This is an inventive and engrossing collection of stories which, though death-tinged, are never doom-laden. With luck this master writer has more tales to tell.
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