Rating: 
Summary: At a crossroads of talent
Review: Roy leaves mouths agape; domino structure of language that she forges throughout the work speaks words of volumes to what it means to create. The literary paint thinner to get to the primer of the matter, The God of Small Things is behemoth in execution, rolled to knock the pins from the very structures that we thought, in modernity, cannot possibly exist. Roy opens our eyes to reveal that iniquity exists in the actions of both men and their systems of order and the light that she shows us is nothing less than brilliant.
Rating:
Summary: PHENOMENALLY GOOD, ALSO BAD
Review: This novel is everything that the many reviewers, both positive
and negative, say it is. That is because it overflowing with
things both good and bad; it is all superabundance, superfluity
and sometimes surfeit. Nearly every idea of consequence is
compared to something else, and not one simile will do, when two
or three can be found. The memory of Sophie Mol, for example,
becomes ever-present, like "a quiet thing in socks... like a
fruit in season... as permanent as a government job." These
multiple comparisons, however fresh, are added to a text already
stuffed with colors, tastes and quirky associations. Once a
brilliant image is discovered, it is not used once, or even a
few times, but is repeated incessantly to the end, as, for
example, the trick of describing a character, say Ammu, as "an
Ammu-shaped hole in the universe." Eventually everybody becomes
an X-shaped hole in the universe. And the little verbal habits,
chatter and jingles of the characters, such as the childish "dum
dum" added at the end of a thought, delightful at the start,
become cloying and sickening by the end.All these features betray a phenomenally gifted young writer
simply gushing with words and perceptions, but unable to resist
them, contain them, or cut them down with the cruel, revising
severity of an older master. And so the reader, happy for the
rich fare, but feeling a bloat coming on from the excess of
sweets and carbohydrates, must pass by the later servings with
some degree of displeasure. Yet, overall, it's not right to
turn up your nose at a feast. The most difficult part of the repast is actually the beginning.
THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS is very much a novel about family
relationships. The author, Suzanna Arundhati Roy, apparently
wants the reader to enter the story in media res, as if suddenly
transported to Southwestern India and stuck in a village without
explanation. That device works up to a point, but beyond it
precise information is needed as to who is who and how everyone
is related. Roy never gives a decent accounting and seems
almost spitefully to mix things up. For example, she never
gives the last names of characters, but sometimes gives Indian
(presumably Malayalam) designations or terms in their stead.
Thus the mother of the story is called Ammu, yet her children
call her "Ammu," so we do not know if this is a word for
"mother," or whether the kids call their mother by her first
name. Similarly "Chako" appears to mean "uncle," yet other
characters seem to call the man by this name, while the kids are
forbidden to do so. Readers of English would expect the
characters called Baby Kochamma and Margaret Kochamma to be
related, but they are not: the first is an old Indian; the
second is a young Englishwoman who married into the family.
"Kochamma," then, must indicate a status (non-Hindu, non-
Muslim?) which is never explained. Similarly "Mol" is added on
occasion to the name of a girl and "Mon" to the name of a boy,
without explanation. The mixture is extremely confusing, so
that right from the start I had to make a list of the characters
and constantly revise it. (An explanatory cast of characters
should appear at the front of the book.) For readers preparing
to read the novel, I recommend that you print out the list
posted below and consult it during the first chapters. It is
based mostly on early information, so it does not give the story
away: Setting: the Hindu village of Ayemenem (not on maps), near
Kottayam (on some maps) in the State of Kerala, which lines the
southwestern tip of India; the village is two hours distant from
the coastal town of Cochin (on detailed maps). The language is
Malayalam. Main Characters: Soshamma Mammachi--the grandmother, owns a pickle factory called
"Paradise."
Papachi--the grandfather, 17 years older, a retired government
entomologist. Ammu--daughter of Mammachi and Papachi, mother of the twins,
divorced from Baba, 27 years old in 1969, dies at 31 years of
age.
Baba--the alcoholic father, goes to work in Calcutta and takes
his son Estha with him; then 23 years later returns him to
Ayemenem and moves to Australia. Estha (Esthappen Yako)--their son, first of the dizygotic twins,
born November 1962.
Rahel--their daughter, second of the dizygotic twins by 18
minutes; she marries and divorces the architect Larry McCaslin
and returns to Ayemenem from America when she learns that Estha
has returned. Chako--only son of Mammachi and Papachi, brother of Ammu, uncle
of the twins, a Rhodes scholar at Oxford.
Margaret Kochamma--English ex-wife of Chako.
Sophie Mol--their daughter, dead at 9, cousin to the twins. Velutha ("white")--son of Vellya Paapen, born 1945, a Paravan
(untouchable), handyman and carpenter. Baby Kochamma (Navomi Ipe)--sister of Papachi, grand aunt of the
twins, once a Roman Catholic nun (not related to Margaret
Kochamma).
E. John Ipe--her father, blessed as a boy by the Patriarch of
Antioch, head of the Syrian Christian Church.
Kochin Maria--her midget maid. The above list gives dates and ages as the author provides them,
but try as you might it is awfully hard to determine
exactly what are the years of the two main planes of action.
The author likes to shift from one to the other, so that a sense
of timelessness is created, but once certain dates are given it
is irritating not to have the chief ones, and one cannot escape
the feeling that the author is being intentionally obscure.
Possibly she could write the whole thing in Malayalam and the
Malayalam reader would grasp everything, but if the medium is
English then some concessions to the wider foreign culture
should be made. All the same, there are wonderful things here. Roy, being
fearless, lapses on occasion into bad taste, revoltingly bad
taste, but in her best moments achieves a sublime portrayal of
life as severe and unsparing as Joseph Conrad. The reader
inclined by her child's-point-of-view narrative to place all
good in childhood and all evil in maturity should reflect on a
little scene in which two girls are stepping on ants: one wants
to kill them all, but the other wants to leave one so "it will
be lonely." Here, as in other scenes, is the remorseless eye of
a great artist.
Rating: 
Summary: Love it!
Review: I'll admit, the style of the writing in this book took some getting used to, but that's usually the case with great books, especially those by a talented writer. After chapter three I was thoroughly pulled into the story and comfortable with the author's exotic fashioning of words. Too many times novels like this are nothing more than the author's attempt at showing us how clever they are with the English language. I thought this was the case at first, but after finishing the book realized that the style was intricately woven into the fabric of the story. I highly recommend this book, along with two others I've read recently that were great: House of Sand and Fog, and Jackson McCrae's Bark of the Dogwood.
Rating:
Summary: I LOVE this book!
Review: Greetings from beautiful downtown Poughkeepsie!
C'mon people, this book ROCKS!
Beautiful language, interesting characters, maybe a wee bit too much history, and a terrible tragedy all wrapped in a haunting little message: Things can change in a day.
Even the cover of this book is beautiful.
The only bad thing here is that Ms Roy says she only had one novel in her. Lets hope she's just kidding.
Rating: 
Summary: Bad,bad,bad,bad really bad
Review: This the worst book i have ever read. made me sick to my guts. i can't believe anyone could reward this effort. total waste of time and money.
Rating:
Summary: All about Passion...
Review: This book is one of those that grow on you,the more you read them..each time,a new idea,a new question comes to light...It seems like the queen in Arabian nights, who had an endless storehouse of tales. The most amazing aspect of Arundhati's writing is its simple yet poetic style...for instance, the very title.."the God of small things"..it refers to the character of Velutha,an untouchable who somehow seems to touch the lives of all the protagonists in one way or another.
Another interesting idea is of "love laws",those laws that are set in stone for all of us..reading that book led me to question my own view of love......Love knows no definitions, no boundaries or reason....it is ,as she implies, endless,intense and spontaneous. Interestingly, the same is implied of hate...unending,baseless and destuctive. It was interesting to note this startling similarities between two emotions that have always been thought of as so different from each other....Baby Kochamma's characters clearly personifies this. But the one criticism that I feel of thie amazing book is of Baby Kochamma's character..it seems a bit sketchy,a bit too unidimensional.....I would highly recommend this book to everyone,not just to read it once,but again and again.....its a book to savour...
Rating: 
Summary: Absolutely agree with "Banana Jam" indictment below
Review: The reviewer below who likened the book to oversweet (nay, sicksweet) banana jam is right on the money. Please read his review - it's extremely well phrased and perfectly expresses what "problems" I had with this book. In short: It's preening, it's precious, it's a mess and it's not nearly as "profound" as the critics would have you believe. I strongly disliked it. There is good magic realism (Garcia Marquez, some Angela Carter) and then there is this stuff. I'd say don't waste your time - there are many better books out there.
Rating:
Summary: Read it for yourself
Review: There is nothing I can say that hasn't already be said. So what I will do is tell you why this book is worth the time. The negative reviewers complain that the book is difficult to understand and often has childish phrasing. What these people failed to understand is that most of the sentences are supposed to be written from a child's perspective. The prose is so poetic, that had there been no plot at all, the book is still worth the read because her use of language is so impressive that no one book I've read since has even come close to par. It's ruined me for most other books. Few people will understand every part of the story the first time through., but there are over a dozen intricute underlying themes you can uncover (but you don't have to uncover them to enjoy the book). The only reason I managed to understand it my first time through was that my close friend took a class that revolved around this book and he was able to explain all the difficult passages to me. I'm not one for reading and I am telling you that there is nothing wrong with this book. No one, but no one writes like she does.
Rating:
Summary: banana jam
Review: Every so often in the course of history, a literary genius is born, and adds to the limited list of timeless classics of literature. The God of Small Things is not one of such works of art. In fact, one may be harsh and say it is not a work of art at all, but the manufactured result of a trite formula arranged to gain automatic popular appeal. Not unlike the recipe found in the text itself: "Banana Jam (in [Estha's] old best writing)
"Crush ripe banana. Add water to cover and cook on a very hot fire till fruit is soft.
"Squeeze out juice by straining through course muslin.
"Weigh equal quantity of sugar and keep by.
"Cook fruit juice till it turns scarlet and about half the quantity evaporates. "Proportion 1:5
" i.e. 4 teaspoons Pectin : 20 teaspoons sugar. The premise of my argument lies not in that The God of Small Things is a cake - banana jam, rather - cooked from a recipe, as cakes cooked from recipes are very often very good to eat, but that the cake is overcooked, that it is, as 1996 Booker Prize judge Carmen Callil describes: "an oversweet sticky pudding." For couldn't we all imagine what happens when we add 20 teaspoons of sugar to ripe banana cooked to the point where it becomes jam? In The God of Small Things, Roy makes a gratuitous, forced attempt to fit all the elements of the novel together in line with one simply naïve idea about Small Things as opposed to Big Things. The symbolism of the bride and wedding party in the ambulance (58) is so farfetched as to give the delusion of actually being profound. The allusion to the link between Christ and Velutha is forced; the link between the ever-so-frequently-mentioned roses and Christ's crown of thorns surpasses all over-stretched archetypal metaphors. The same goes for the completely unnecessary love scene between the twins toward the end of the novel - but then again, if the twins hadn't interacted at all upon returning to Ayemenem there would be no base story of a later time for Roy to jump to the actual story using trendy Faulknerian flashbacks from. The actual story, on the other hand, is revisited so often throughout the novel that the reader is left with nothing new to discover about it by the beginning of the third chapter. The technique is equally forced and pretentious. Even the capitalization is Inconsistent with a capital I. Her random capitalization of Important Words are near-justified by a weak assertion that the capitalization emphasizes the childlike viewpoint from which the narrative is told. It conveniently forgets that the novel is narrated through Rahel's and Estha's eyes only half the time. The emphasis on such Important Words and Other Important Concepts is cloyingly redundant. The Love Laws, to Jolly Well Behave, to Return and to Re-Return, Small Price to Pay, Men's Needs (oh the feminist sarcasm), History, the Terror and such phrases Roy capitalizes to hint at some nonexistent deeper meaning that ultimately point to the same plot and theme she keeps hovering around. The same goes for the fragments she places on new lines redefining the image she defines in three or four preceding fragments, sprinkled with obscure metaphors and cultural terms - "Slow being a person. Slow Kurien. Slow Kutty. Slow Mol. Slow Kochamma." And perhaps the most annoying of them all, the repetitive reference to symbols in the exact same wordings she had used back in chapter 1: "Sicksweet. Like old roses on a breeze." It's almost as if she lacks the creativity to rephrase the symbols and metaphors - and it very well may be, because when she does refer back to the symbols in some line she hasn't used before, the result is too obviously contrived, as in the "teeth ... waiting inside [Rahel's] gums, like words in a pen," or as in Velutha's "[folding] his fear into a perfect rose." The descriptions are so redundant and the combined words so ubiquitous that one would imagine there would be a purpose behind the overwritten triteness. "The White termites on their way to work. The White ladybirds on their way home. The White beetles burrowing away from the light. The White grasshoppers with whitewood violins. The sad white music. All gone." One review dubbed such prose as "hypnotic incantations" while another commented that "reading this stuff is like the actors on a television show waving at the camera." Roy's attitude towards the novel is such that it's as if she's saying: "here it is, and here it is again in case you missed it the first time." Arunhati Roy's The God of Small Things is at best a popcorn book, a failed experimentation of an incoherent jumble of derivative, already-done styles, techniques, and themes from a range that stretches over the magical realism of Gabriel Garcia Marquez in her talking corpses, to the stream of consciousness of Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner in the manner with which she jumps back and forth between revisited events of the story until the readers are dizzy. It is completely devoid of innovation, craftsmanship, subtlety, and other makings of works that may qualify as literature.
Rating:
Summary: disappointed
Review: I came to this book with great hopes as it had been praised by so many. I came to it on a real high after reading Rumpole's Last Case and the Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night, both of which I really enjoyed. I found myself growing annoyed with this book almost immediately after I began reading it. Some of the prose is quite beautiful, but much of the time I felt it just got in the way. I don't mind long complex sentences, but I found myself skipping entire paragraphs here. Too many of her words and sentences seemed like needless window dressing and the small insights they proffered seemed inadequate for the effort it took to get them. I hate to give up on a book once I have started it, but this one is really trying my patience. I am about three-quarters of the way through, but there are many other books beckoning me that I think might be more rewarding.
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