In the desultory manner of my reading habits, I picked up Knife when I took my kids to an indoor play structure and forgot to bring the book I was currently reading. Fortunately, the building was right beside a branch of the Ottawa library, and they had Rushdie’s newest book available. I probably would’ve gotten around to reading it eventually regardless.
I was, of course, familiar with the central event of the book, as I remembered the news of his attack. I’ve also read The Satanic Verses (which is more than can be said of his attacker) and admired its scope and dense lyricism, even if I admit it didn’t grip me all that viscerally as a story. Knife is told in much more straightforward a manner, with Rushdie’s literary gifts still present but dialed down to a more straight-forward discussion of the attack and his recovery, punctuated by some philosophical explorations of the event. He does not spare gory details, but he doesn’t relish them, either, treating them with a clinical equipoise that likely took some time and distance to manage.
There are some diversions to up the page count, and an extended imagined dialog with his attacker that tiptoes up to pretension without flinging itself over the edge. All told, it was an engaging book, and I read it more or less in a single sitting (I had to finish the last twenty or so pages at home that evening).