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Summary: Easily the best book I've read this year...
Review: This book matches all of my criteria for a fabulous read:-the prose is beautiful -the characters feel real -the sequences are described fully -the relationships ring true In a perfect world, this novel would have had something like a legend and some pronounciation assistance. I never knew how to think to pronounce the main characters names "Rahel, Estha". A little background about the geographical area would also have been great.
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Summary: A Powerful Tale from Kerala, India
Review: Arundhati Roy's 'The God of Small things' is indeed a delightful reading. Through her powerful narration and captivating stories, she is introducing to the English reader a world not so familiar. The novel begins in the prestigious homestead of Ayemenem House in Kerala, India, builds up as the story of a pair of 'two-egg twins' and ends with the gruesome tale of Paravan Velutha, the god of small things. All the happenings are in the backdrop of the falling apart of a family, disintegration of Ayemenem House, growth of Marxist unionism and the Paradise Pickles & Preserves locked out. It is a beautiful canvass of the life in Kerala, a unique state in the Indian union with prevalent Christianity, high rate literacy and growing communist ideology. Roy is also a gifted artist in the use of English language with its poetic and rhythmic movements. This book should be highly recommended as the first reading to anybody who wants to learn about Kerala.
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Summary: Poetry unfolds like rose petals, these are small things...
Review: Arundahti Roy's first novel is a journey into a mysterious country, filled with colours, smells and stories. The poetry of her prose is intoxicating and allows this reader (and hopefully you too) to journey beyond her small New York apartment to distant lands. The God of Small Things is truly a little miracle and we have to thank Arundhati Roy for having brought it to us.
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Summary: What can I say more....
Review: This was one of the very few English books I read. And it was an amazing experience. Such fluid poetic language and such rythm. The relationship between the twins is just beutifully portrayed. I cannot but stop thinking that this is some way related to things that happned really. But so what? How many of us can write about real things so wonderfully? What more, can I add, just read this book when you can, and be slightly patient, you will never regret.
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Summary: This is one awesome book!
Review: Lyrical and a fantastic story. You'll be glad you acted upon my recommendation. Don't blame me if you stay up all night reading this book the day you get it. ;)
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Summary: Beautifully written, but depressing
Review: I found this book a little tough to get through despite the author's facility with words. It was veiled in sadness throughout, even before the precipitating event(s), and then became downright depressing. I give the author 5 stars for language and writing ability, but only 1 star for writing a book that I desired to finish. I did finish it, but found little in it to encourage me to pick it up each night.
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Summary: Vivid though flawed
Review: Arundhati Roy would have described The God of Small Things when she wrote: "The secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don't deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don't surprise you with the unforeseen....In the Great Stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn't. And yet you want to know again", If she had exchanged the word "Great" for "entertaining yet imperfect" and the phrases "want to hear again" and "want to know again" for "aren't really interested". Admittedly it was a very good book in some places, but one can tell that this is Roy's first book. Several scenes seem to be thrown in just for kicks and shock value and they lend no obvious support to the rest of the plot. These are some of the niggling little details that detract from the overall quality and charm of the novel. The overall effect is that the reader finds themselves trying to make their way through the book like an explorer trying to make their way through the Amazon-with a machete. Despite the descriptive writing and lush imagery, there seems to be a formula to the book. Evocative literature aside, the tragedy and affair that follows is rather predictable(and she doesn't tell you her definition of a good book until you are far beyond the halfway point.). This story is made up of densely woven together(I find that I keep making my way back to the forest imagery)plots and subplots intertwined with masses of elaborate descriptions and phrases. The flashbacks and flash-forwards and twists that make up the novel are refreshing in the beginning but soon bring this reviewer back to those sad, unfortunate days spent sitting in English class discussing Sound and the Fury, a book I soon learned to loathe for the style it was written in, stream of consciousness. While Arundhati Roy does make use of stream of consciousness, she does not wield her style like a meat cleaver. Her book attempts to make amends by the use of vivid and beautiful imagery. The God of Small Things is more about the language being used to tell the story as opposed to a real direction or one of things we like to call plots. Roy admits that the book was a "work of instinct" and mentions that the book was written "sentence by sentence" and this is quite evident. Many smaller sub-stories are meshed together, united by storytelling. The foundation that the novel rests upon is the voice. The story is told in a non-linear fashion, moving back in forth through time, touching upon events that have happened or will happen. There are no surprises with regard to actual events just how they unfold. The odd turn of phrase that is readily apparent in the joined words and sentences, the overabundance of capitals, and silly rhymes makes sense when it becomes clear that the tale is narrated using the eyes and voice of seven-year-old Rahel. The plot centers on the fraternal twins Esthappen(Estha) and Rahel and their forced transformation from two children with "joint identities into two separate people. Roy writes that they "thought of themselves together as Me, and separately, individually as We or Us". The Estha's and Rahel's unusual bond is threaded throughout the storyline, and shapes the decisions that they make, how other characters react to them, and how they interact with other people outside the unit that are. Roy's characters are quite enjoyable and interesting because one is able to see their own relatives in the unconventional characters. Everyone has that weirdly intelligent relative, or a quirky or a cantankerous relation. Arundhati Roy declares that the family broke "all the rules. They crossed into forbidden territory. They tampered with the laws that lay down who should be loved and how. And how much." A brief sketch of a few of the main/important characters as follows: There is Blind Mammachi, the twins' grandmother and founder of Paradise Pickles and Preserves. Blind Mammachi is a virtuous violin-playing widow who suffered years of unwarranted abuse at the hands of her highly-respected yet overbearing, insecure husband. There is Estha and Rahel's grandaunt, Baby Kochamma, who totters on air cushions for feet while playing out the bitterness of her lifetime of unrequited love for an Irish Roman Catholic priest. Baby Kochamma spends her days savoring soap operas and satellite television wrestling matches, while living her life backwards. Velutha, the title character, an ebulliently talented handyman, tainted by his Paravan lineage. Chacko, Estha and Rahel's uncle, now divorced from his English wife, runs Paradise Pickles and Preserves with the iron hand of what he likes to think is communism, and flirts and sleeps with his female employees. The twins' mother, Ammu, is a divorcee who fled her tyrannical husband's alcoholism which didn't endear her to her family or community since it was her fault that her marriage fell apart, of course. A feminist before feminism, Ammu cannot decide on a last name, because as she says, "choosing between her husband's name and her father's name didn't give a woman much of a choice" at all. If you're looking for a book that follows and highlights the events in India during the '60s, go get yourself a history book. This book is more about social class in India and the relationships between members of a family, and members of different sexes and what happens to those unfortunates who have the temerity to deviate from the established order of life. All in all, flaws aside, The God of Small Things is a very good read. The book is by no means a masterpiece, but it should be enjoyed for it's beautiful prose.
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Summary: Roy is astounding
Review: Arundhati Roy uses eloquent language to describe the story and life of two twins, Rahel and Estha. Her uses of images is beautiful. Her prose it rich and poetic. I read on until the very end because it captured me so well. In the future I would compare her to famous writers like Rushdie.
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Summary: Muggy
Review: At a bowling alley, after a you have knocked the carefully arranged pins all asunder, they lay scattered, ruins, victims of havoc wreaked by a crushing weight applied rapidly. Most modern American bowling alleys have installed useful equipment that sweeps up the chaos, and resets the pins, ready to get smashed again. Most modern American bowling alleys are also experienced with the phenomenom of having this equipment get jammed. THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS is a lot about sitting at the end of the alley, staring at the strewn remains of the catastrophic event, for, oh, 23 years. The reason I use such a clumsy metaphor is that it is also mundane (and cliche). THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS brings an exotic setting, with exotic stresses, and makes it accessible to those of us who will never know India, and it's amazing history. By placing the events of the story amongst semi-familiar contexts -- TV-watching, THE SOUND OF MUSIC, expensive cars, Elvis records, family businesses, Christians (instead of Hindus), divorce and star-crossed love -- Arundhati Roy gives us a protective veil through which we can examine the "exotic" aspects of her otherwise conventional fable -- caste society, foreign language, colonialism, and of course, a viable, diable Communist Party. Frequently, tales that use the unraveling of memory to examine a repressed traumatic event do not interest me. In this case, Roy also kept herself busy creating new ways to use the language of children and other small things. At times it seems precious, at other times is lightens the way, and sometimes it just seems to bog things down. I generally do not respond well to this type of writing, but Roy seems to handle it nicely, and it provides a good disguise for the familiar traumas. Nevertheless, the language ultimately gives the story, as a whole, a sticky, sweaty feel, muggy, just like Ayemenem in 1969.
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Summary: Amazing
Review: It really is amazing how good this book is. I highly recommand it to everone, who loves to dive into the world of this family for some days, because I am sure, that once started you will finish it quite easily. Even now, one month after finishing it I surprise myself still thinking about this fascinating language and about the choice of words Arundathi Roy uses sometimes. Although it is located in India, to be more precise in Kerala - the place does not matter - this story could even be that of your neighbour, because you will discover that India is nearer than you thought.
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