The plot hurtles unstoppably forward, save for a few wearying riffs on the history of rock 'n' roll and the music business, and several blathering passages on love, art, and death. Ultimately, the plot overruns a deeper, subtler examination of the characters' inner lives. Inventive, ambitious, and complex, Rushdie's novel speaks to the cosmopolitan experience of his audience. Cultures begin fusing from page one and continue mutating until the end. Not funky but defunct.
History moves on.
The drunken rhythm of the salsa saints. Play it as it lays. Ormus and Vina's music crosses all frontiers, rising above the limits of family, clan, nation, and race and flying over the minefields of turf and taboo. Upon her death, mourners on the front lines of the world's armed conflicts lay down their weapons to embrace. When Vina dies, the American consumer machine cashes in.