SOURCE: Caute, David. “Going Unsuccessfully West.” Spectator 282, no. 8905 (10 April 1999): 37-8.

In the following review, Caute faults The Ground beneath Her Feet for its uneven and “boring” narrative.

East-West is of course a central theme in Rushdie's work—alongside literary hit contracts for regicide and deicide—and this time [in The Ground beneath Her Feet] his trajectory runs from upper-crust Bombay in the 1950s to rock'n'roll in the heyday of the Western counter-culture. At the centre of the epic narrative is a passionate love affair between two superstars of the rock music scene, Ormus Cama and Vina Aspara, characters whose virtually mythical status signals a reimagining of the Orpheus and Eurydice story, though I was left scratching my low brow over the parallel: Eurydice, it will be recalled, could be lost forever because Orpheus is unable to resist a single backward glance at her. Gluck's opera is introduced on...