I found the first section, East, to be really engaging and fascinating to read. Original and lyrical storytelling and great imagination.
I couldn't really get into any of the other stories/sections. Just seemed odd and didn't click with me at all. with the exception of Ruby Red Shoes which was both baffling and beautiful.
So about middling, 4-5* stories and 5 others which could be ignored. ( )

Nine short stories about human interactions. Some happen in the East (India) and others in the West (England). The only story I really couldn't get with was Yorick. Yorick is a sideways retelling of Hamlet... too sideways for me, although I did read the whole thing, it was painful.
All the others were wonderful!! ( )

Rushdie is one of my favorite authors, but I've never read any of his short stories. Happy to say he's at the top of his game here. He's my Wizard of Words - five words into anything he writes and I'm ensorcelled. The stories in the first two sections (East and West) were previously published elsewhere, but the three stories in the third section, 'East,West' are original and two of them were my favorites - Chekov and Zulu, which improbably and brilliantly weaves together Star Trek and the assassination of Indira Ghandi, and The Courter, which is funny/tender - a combo that can so easily turn into treacle, but doesn't. ( )

Rushdie is an author I've always wanted to read more of than I have. I'm mostly familiar with him through his children's novel, "Haroun and the Sea of Stories," as well as at least one novel that I read in herky-jerky bits and pieces during my 20s. I think it's entirely fair to say that Rushdie is one of those writers I always feel, snobbishly, like I *should* have read, and I've enjoyed seeing him interviewed and talking about other books and films. It finally dawned on me, then, that a short story collection like "East, West" might be my "way in" to a fuller appreciation of his work.

It's a challenging set of stories. What is immediately apparent is the mastery Rushdie has with the English language, because even the stories I didn't enjoy, content-wise, had a real flow that made them like music to read. I found myself wondering if Rushdie ever reads his own work aloud for audiences; in many cases, I felt like these would be even more of a joy to hear performed by the author. As stories, though, they were sometimes a little beyond me (hard as that is to admit). The collection is split into three sections - "East," "West," and "East, West" - with three stories in each. You can guess the thematic separation between these sections ("East" largely indicating India and "West" Britain). To be perfectly fair, most of the first six left me feeling a little distant, with probably "The Prophet's Hair" - which is rather like a mournful, bad-luck Indian fairy tale - the most engaging of the lot. However, I was surprised to find how much I enjoyed all three stories of the final section, each of them playing on themes as varied as infidelity, loyalty, and a shared love of the original "Star Trek" to find an interesting shared space between Indian upbringing and British culture. Those stories made my reading of the volume completely worthwhile.

Would I recommend the collection? Contrary to my original theory, I think these might come off better if you are already familiar with Rushdie's longer work. His stories are dense and literate, and I think if you know the patterns of his writing, they might be a little easier to engage. That said, I'm certainly glad I made the attempt. Reading "East, West" has made me want to move back toward Rushdie novels and give them a more determined try. This time, I'll be better prepared for the density, and I always like to read beautiful music. ( )

East, West is good book, appropriate if you’re looking to fill a hole in your love of Rushdie, but for me, it will depend on how much I want to reread any of these stories six months onwards. And without that perspective, I’m not sure I can unequivocally recommend all of it. Check the book out of the library, read the second story in each section, and see of how you feel.
It was good, but not as good as other Salman Rushdie. Ultimately, I think it was just a little too ordinary. All of Rushdie’s excellent books have this intrusion of religion, or otherworldliness, that manages to seep through the texts. Whether it’s Machiavelli’s memory palace, Shalimar’s ability to walk on air, or Gibreel’s angelic status. Or even Haroun’s ability to tell stories, from a literal place of tales. Those miracles don’t come in to East, West, simply because of the length of the stories. Sometimes, some of them come close, but there’s no sense that the magic is actually intrusive, unexpected.
Take “The Auction of the Ruby Slippers”, one of the West tales in the saga. In it, the world begins to collapse in on itself, around the Ruby Slippers. Some want to buy them to go back to another time and place, one lost. Some people want to use them to escape, because time machines are space machines, and the slippers might even offer release from life itself. But none of that is emergent. It’s just the way that the world of the auction happens to go.
The largest exception to this comes in “The Prophet’s Hair”, the last of the East stories in the volume, where the miraculous discovery of a hair from the prophet Muhammad causes a great deal of changes in a single family, a confession of all sorts of sins and a total upending of the household order, a move from the western to the most strictly religious household that Rushdie has ever written. And in doing so, Rushdie actually manages to instill this magic again, transforming the story from a tale of morality into a tale of tales, an appropriate homage to his own work and the giants on whose shoulders he stands.
Not that the volume doesn’t deserve praise. Three stories were written for this piece exclusively, and one of them, “Chekov and Zulu” might be one of the best things I have ever read about the relationship of western popular culture to Indian livelihood. Chekov, you see, is a character on Star Trek. As is Sulu. But Zulu, that’s just a mispronunciation, taken by a boy, and his friend, as they all took on the personas, real and imagined, of Star Trek characters. They didn’t have the episodes to watch, just the ephemera, and seeing the effect of that on their lives is a sight to behold. ( )