Midnight's Children-review

MIDNIGHT'S CHILDREN by Salman Rushdie, a wonderful tale bringing together India/Pakistan history, gods, and wonderful characters. I like a variety of books, but my favorites are ones that make me think and ones that bring alive a place that I have never been before. This book does both of these things. I was only 6 years old in 1965, what did I know about strife between countries, I was two worried about going to school for the first time. This book makes me want to look up the history and the wars (or not wars) that occurred during the 1960's. I remember some of the things that were going on in the 70's but once again vaguely, as I was too worried about surviving high school and the endless array of bullies. Did my history teachers talk about India/Pakistan? I do not remember them mentioning at all. I do remember Ghandi and Indira Ghandi because I remember thinking are they related. I remember the name Nehru. I remember the gods names because I took a religion class and I read Siddartha. So now I must go and look up history, this is the thinking part.

As for the places, the descriptions like that of his characters are fantastic. I read the Life of Pi, and that made me have a fear of mangroves appearing or disappearing. But this book took it to another level. You wanted the three men and the man-dog to get out of there as soon as possible. I kept waiting for teeth to appear in the trees, but instead we got insects, snakes and scorpions. Just recently, I read an article about mangroves, moving north. All I could think is, how are they moving north. I  now have to look up mangroves. Are these really places our author is telling us about or just works of fiction? 
I truly like this book. I may have to read it again, just to pick up things I may have missed while my eyes were heavy with reading so late into the night.