Rating: 
Summary: What a horrid book
Review: What a horrible little book by a somewhat petty moralist. It was done better in "To Kill a Mockingbird." Which apparently the author read.
Rating: 
Summary: Two Everykids in India
Review: Estha and Rahel are fraternal twins, a brother and sister, living with their mother in the Indian state of Kerala. This book is about them and their roles within their extended family.The story jumps from Rahel's perspective to Estha's, as well as their uncle and mother and grandaunt, from their childhood to their adulthood and back again. They are both raised by their mother, then they are separated Estha is sent to live with their father for years before he comes back. They have a half-Caucasian cousin named Sophie Mol who visits them from London. During her initial and brief encounter with her cousins, tragedy befalls. All of these events seem to mark the twins as they move forward in life, trying to understand those --- especially the adults ---around them. The twins' childhood viewpoints are like any other child's as they try to figure out if their parents really love them, and their confusion is like any other child's as they discover they can never really know that answer.
Rating: 
Summary: Tough Read-Not for Everyone
Review: The God of Small Things is a Booker Prize recipient & I hoped that I would enjoy it as much as the many raving reviews said I would. Unfortunately, I did not find this to be a book that I enjoyed. The book was well written and full of a lot of lyrical/poetic prose. This is a book that requires much focus and concentration and despite my best efforts, I can't say that I enjoyed it. The novel, set in India does flashbacks from past to present around an Indian family. Rahel & Estha are twins, born into a family that owns a pickling company. Most of the story is set during the 1960's and portrays a life of deep poverty and sadness. Through flashbacks from the past as well as current information, we learn the painful history of this family and the secrets that destroyed it. I had hoped to gain a better understanding of Indian culture, but personally felt the author only grazed the surface of this issue and never felt I got to really know or understand any of the characters. This is a book that I may have enjoyed more reading it in an English class to gain a full appreciation and understanding of the writing. While many may love this book, I don't think it's for everyone.
Rating: 
Summary: The Book's Genius and Failure Are Both About Lack of Control
Review: The genius of this book is how forcefully it conveys that accidental happiness only exists in the shadow of tragedy. Roy's world is dense with potential, happenstance, melancholy, and idealism. All these formless ideas have manifestations no one could anticipate. The world (and the book) are filled with language, feeling and actions without order.
The failing of this book is that the story does not have cover its very large bones. The language is textured, but often "styled". If a reader expects (given, very conventionally) for Roy to be fully in control of the story, he or she will not be satisfied.
Rating:
Summary: 300 pages of beautiful and endlessly sad imagery
Review: Don't let this book's packaging fool you: it is poetry. It is
just over 300 pages of poetry, meant to be read aloud, set
down, thought about, slept on, read aloud some more, and
thought about some more. And when you're done reading it, you
should set it down, think about it, and reread it. No one part of _The God Of Small Things_ can be understood
without understanding the rest of it, but perhaps a chunk from
the beginning of the book will reveal some of its beauty and
form. Read it aloud if you'd like; that's probably the best
way to appreciate it. The quote is this: `` Their lives have a size and a shape now. Estha has his
and Rahel hers.
Edges, Borders, Boundaries, Brinks and Limits have
appeared like a team of trolls on their separate horizons. Short
creatures with long shadows, patrolling the Blurry End. Gentle
half-moons have gathered under their eyes and they are as old
as Ammu was when she died. Thirty-one.
Not old.
Not young.
But a viable die-able age." That quote is particularly apt, revealing as it does the poetic
tragedy of the book. There is very little that is uplifting
about _The God Of Small Things_, because nearly every image is
surrounded by the knowledge - which Ms. Roy plainly lays
out early on - that tragedy will befall the characters soon. As
readers, we approach the tragedy with mounting horror, followed
by something like resignation, followed by deep loss. The tragedies of this book are the tragedies of caste, of
childhood lost, and of love destroyed. Outwardly, the book is
the story of two twins and the broken lives that their
childhoods yielded. To me, it is much more: it is a series of
paintings in words, of a million small feelings and events from
everyday life: the feeling of a lover's skin on our own, the
thoughts that race through a child's mind, the desperation of
adults who are trying so hard to hold onto the tattered remnants
of their youth. The story is told in such a way that each painting appears for
a moment, then disappears into a misty background. This, anyway,
is how I envisioned it. Ms. Roy paints each Small Thing well
enough that we can see it for ourselves, marvel at its beauty
and truth, then move onto the next. It is some of the most sublime
prose I have ever read. I know nothing about India, but the books I've read by Salman
Rushdie and Arundhati Roy reveal it to be a land of almost
bottomless sadness. It is a testament to their skill as writers
that an ignorant man like me can see - and more importantly,
feel - their heartache.
Rating: 
Summary: Breathtaking
Review: This is an amazing work - for an author of any age - and a breathtaking accomplishment especially for someone so young.
If you loved Toni Morrison's Jazz or Beloved, this work has similar sense of history and humanity. I truly loved it.
Rating:
Summary: god of small things
Review: God of small things is a brilliantly crafted novel that combines scintillating prose with a devastating commentary on the state of Indian society. The author, however, in my estimation, takes on too much in one bite, and her critique of the culture, while it strikes true, leaves a bitter after taste...there is no redemption or goodness that one can draw upon in the end. The novel left me feeling that things were hopeless. It is true that the very power of the novel lies in the devastating criticism of a society mired in senseless tradition, but I was left with the feeling that the author used every tool at hand to shock and disgust rather than understand.
Rating:
Summary: Remarkable, Poignant
Review: One of the best novels I've read. Such a profound story-telling and believable plot I had suspected that this is a true story. It wrenched my heart to read some of the parts - when The God of Small Things was brutalized, and when Estha was parted from Mother. Anyway, the language confused me a lot, probably because of the context and culture I'm not really familiar with. The story got better as I went along. Also interesting to read how things are as seen by the twin. Frank and sometimes funny, but always delightful I read the book twice just to recapture the enjoyment of reading it.
Rating:
Summary: If you like your literature challenging, tackle this one.
Review: The first thing I would like to mention is that I am by no means a scholar when it comes to literature. I do, however, love to read books. I have my own particular taste for what I read, (mostly science ficiton and fantasy), but if a book is interesting and easy to read, then I believe it is worth looking in to. I read numerous reviews on The God of Small Things, and most of them had good things to say about Ms. Roy's book. Unfortunately I did not enjoy the book. I believe the reason that I did not really like it is because of my own personal views on the way a book should be written. When I read a piece of literature I don't want the text to be so confusing that I spend most of my time trying to figure out what the author is saying. It feels as though all of my mental energy is spent trying to piece together the sequence of events taking place. What the writer is trying to describe in his/her book should imbue itself on my memory for a short period of time, allowing me to immerse myself in the world the author has created; books such as Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card, or The Lord of the Rings trilogy, by J.R.R. Tolkien. I did not have these feelings while reading The God of Small Things. There are parts of the book where one does get into what she is describing, like the march of the Communists around the "skyblue Plymouth". But there are not enough of these moments to suit me. I also do not care for the way Ms. Roy writes the story. I find the first few chapters extremely difficult to get through and understand. There are numerous flashbacks which go back and forth, back and forth, and it is very hard trying to figure out when things took place. One minute Ammu is alive and talking to Rahel and Estha, and on the next page she has been dead for years. It is the same with other characters, like Mammachi. There needs to be clearer transitions between time eras to help readers understand exactly when certain events take place. Another thing that irritates me is the way Roy strings words together. It is almost like a foreign language inserted into the text. Words like: "thiswayandthat", "wetgreen", and "sourmetal". Perhaps these words are her own way of trying to desribe things, but it just doesn't work for me. Along with the togetherwords is her free use of capitalizing words in the middle of sentences. "It was her idea that Estha be Returned" and "For a Breath of Fresh Air" are good examples. I am not sure if Ms. Roy does this for emphasis, or to describe the way the children think, or what, but it works about as well as the imaginaryvocabulary. Ms. Roy's tale does have some merits however. She attacks the Indian "caste system" and "love laws" in her novel, which to me is a good thing. I did not know how serious and harsh these customs are in India until I read The God of Small Things, and her story shows how evil the love laws and caste system are. Of course you must read through the whole book to understand all of this, and to see what happens between Ammu and Velutha....not an easy thing for me. As I have stated before, I am not a literary scholar. But from my point of view this book is too difficult to read to really be enjoyed. For those who like their literature challenging, then by all means, tackle this one. I do not recommend this book, however, to those who simply want a novel that is easy to read. This book requires a lot of time to read, and is very difficult to really understand.
Rating:
Summary: A beautiful, poignant book
Review: This novel is an international bestseller and winner of the Booker prize. The writing is lyrically poetic and dense with detail, but initially I had a bit of trouble maintaining interest. About halfway through, the characters and events had been woven together in a manner that craftily captivated my attention, causing me to read the remainder of the book at a feverish pace. It's funny how that works. If I had less time on my hands, I might have given up reading too early to realize the quality of the writing. The story is mostly set in India, and it revolves around two seven-year-old non-identical twins and their extended family. The stark observations and playful dialogue of children are often depicted in a sing-song fashion, sometimes obscuring fact momentarily (or at least bringing to light the differences between adult and child perception of reality). The plot is at times startling and heart-wrenching; this is not light reading. All in all I was very satisfied by the book. I think someday I might even enjoy reading it again.
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