Rushdie is a difficult author to hate. Rushdie is a difficult man to love. But oh, when he writes, how he writes. And the words, like the source of all words in Haroun and the Sea of Stories, flow across, over, on top of one another. Messy and frightening and incredible and flawed, but, above all, above all, incredibly, incredibly beautiful.

Such a beautiful, difficult, annoying book. Such a different book from Rushdie's usual haunting magic realism offerings. Such a living, breathing proof of why, and how, people differ and act and love and live. Such a Hogwartsian glimpse into an extraordinary life lived under extraordinary circumstances.

Many reams, many columns have been written about the self indulgence of this book and this author. About the dismissive hurt of his four marriages. About the drabness of the last hundred pages. About his inexplicable life with the fourth wife, the millennial illusion as he refers to it. I agree with all of these.

But I am, at the end of it all, a plebian, humble Rushdie fangirl. And to me, the words, the utter beauty of this man's writing, make me want to hug this book. Secretly and tightly to my chest.