Rush job

Current book: The Satanic Verses
Pages read: 400 - 463

I suddenly got really tired of this book today, so this is going to be quick.

Mahound finds out about Baal and the prostitutes, has the place raided, and everyone gets executed. Then Mahound dies.

Saladin goes back to his house and tells Pamela, his wife, that he'll give her a divorce, but is going to stay in the house while he gets his life back together. Joshi and Pamela continue their relationship, but Joshi is highly deferential to Saladin. Eventually, Saladin meets Gibreel at a party and sets out to destroy him as an act of revenge. Allie and Gibreel both trust Saladin and think he's trying to help Gibreel recover from his mental illness. However, by taking advantage of Gibreel's hallucinations that he's an angel and his general lack of mental balance, Saladin sets out on a campaign, Iago-like, to convince Gibreel that Allie's cheating on him. He successfully does so, and after destroying the interior of Allie's apartment, Gibreel runs amok in London. He hasn't done anything yet but buy a trumpet, but clearly he's going to go all Judgment Day on the place.

Blah-blah religious imagery, revenge, Shakespeare, and some other stuff like that. I got all tired of the rhetoric and philosophizing and detached random narrator who's supposed to be God. I can only take so much magical realism before I snap. Apparently, 400 pages was my limit this time. So, really, Rushdie's doing way better than Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who pretty much lost me at page 40 of 100 Years of Solitude. Still, magical realism guys - choose one: magic or realism.