Ms. Tangerine Muumuu herself alerts us to this review of the new Rushdie novel by none other than William T. Vollmann himself! (Regrettably, the review is inaccessible from the Publishers Weekly site and must be perused through Amazon.)

It’s a starred review, but Vollmann quibbles over Rushdie’s depiction of Los Angeles, which “relies on references to popular culture that the place becomes a superficial parody of itself.” He notes that Rushdie’s female characters are “less plausible” than the male ones, his “sermonistic parallelism or repetition” (ironically, criticisms leveled at Vollmann’s The Royal Family) and his reliance upon slapstick. But overall, the Vollster digs Shalimar the Clown, calling it a “powerful parable.”