SOURCE: McLaughlin, Robert L. Review of The Ground beneath Her Feet, by Salman Rushdie. Review of Contemporary Fiction 19, no. 3 (fall 1999): 173.

In the following review, McLaughlin offers a favorable assessment of The Ground beneath Her Feet.

Rushdie's funny and rich new novel [The Ground beneath Her Feet] uses the history of a fictional rock band—from difficult beginnings to superstardom through the inevitable legal problems and breakup to a nineties reunion tour—to look at the stories of our time and to examine the role of art in expressing who we are and how we understand our world. Ormus Cama, musician and songwriter, and Vina Apsara, singer extraordinaire, are the driving force behind the band, and their playing out of a variation of the Orpheus-Eurydice myth, as narrated by Rai, photographer and friend to both, is the focus of the story. The thematic focus is on the clashes of...