Rating: 
Summary: If you can read, read this story........
Review: What a magical, beautiful book. Not enough can be said about her use of language . Not to mention the ability to creep under the skin of situations and paint them in such true colors. Her understanding of the subtle complexities of human nature is phenomenal. Whereas some felt the novel was too dark, I did not. I felt it depicted both the beauty and cruelty of living like nothing I had read before. This has to be one of my favorite books of all time. The twins and their mother are characters that will stay with me forever. Like people I have known and loved.
Rating:
Summary: Best Reading
Review: It is not just the plot, which is enough to thrill. Nor the way it is revealed -- deliciously in layers, like peeling a fruit. It is not just the thoughtful social commentary, or the way it educates readers about the rural life of India. What makes this book a pure exquisite read is the language. The poetry is beautiful. The way opposing sentiments are juxtaposed in a single sentence is genius. I recommend reading this book more than once. The first run merely to discover the plot. The second and upteenth time to savor the language.I do not recommend this book to those who enjoy their books fast and think John Grisham is a literal genius.
Rating:
Summary: The most beautifully written book I have ever read
Review: Please, Ms. Roy. Write another one. I am not a big reader, rarely do I read more than one or two books a year. I generally prefer short stories, but this one was special---a wonderful funny and sad intertwining of love and betrayal among family members, about a time and culture unfamiliar to the average American written in the kind of sweet prose you just want to read over and over again. I haven't had a chance to read the negative reviews the last on-line reviewer refers to, but I am imagining they might discuss that it was difficult to get started---probably true, but once you get into it, you will find yourself emotionally attached and unable to put it down
Rating: 
Summary: Trite, naive, and oh-so-sweet
Review: This book should have been called "The God of Overwritten, Underanalyzed Things". The writing is so poor I actually put the book down and started to laugh several times (at passages that were NOT supposed to be funny). The Indian style of word play and the special mode of dialogue wielded so masterfully by truly talented writers like Rushdie, in Roy's unskilled hands simply comes off as cloying and immature. I felt, throughout, that I'd mistakenly picked up a Young Adult novel.
Rating: 
Summary: Great for some, but not for everyone
Review: This review is a summary of opinions of the Dallas/Lakewood Book Club, which meets once a month at a Club member's home in Dallas. Our Book Club chose The God of Small Things as our first selection to read and discuss. We considered about a dozen possibilities, but chose this one because of its critical acclaim and because one of the club members had read it and strongly recommended it.
The Club is made up of folks who have quite a wide variety of tastes in books - some like a light read with a direct, fast-paced story line; others' tastes run more toward dense, classical works that provoke deep analysis; and still others prefer creative, ground-breaking or controversial works. As a result, the reaction to The God of Small Things was very mixed. Club members who enjoy classic literature and poetry loved Arundhati Roy's poetic language, and her superb use of imagery to describe the complex emotions of the book's characters. For them, the book did a terrific job of conveying the plight of characters who are doomed to their fate by powerful circumstances beyond their control - the caste system, the vestiges of British imperialism, sexual abuse, and society's ill treatment of divorced women and their children. But that sense of doom and determinism bothered the Club members who prefer a more direct story line and who look for growth in the characters. They would have liked to see one or more of the characters transcend the circumstances; instead, they felt that the book was rather depressing and that they could not relate to the characters. Another major issue for most folks was that it was difficult to keep track of the characters and the story line. Roy's indirect way of telling of the story caused most of the club members to have to backtrack and re-read portions of some chapters in order to follow the plot. Her extensive use of metaphors, oblique prose, and frequent coining of new words became rather tiring for some, causing them to lose interest in the characters. While creative use of the language is refreshing, several folks felt that it was overdone, and a bit gratuitous. So overall, we give The God of Small Things two-and-one-half stars (amazon.com's system doesn't officially let you use halves of stars, so we rounded up). It is a great read for those who enjoy new and interesting use of the language, but don't bother reading it if you're looking for a fast-paced story that pulls you in from the first page.
Rating:
Summary: Impressive, but overrated from my point of view
Review: Although the complex, interwoven narrative with its propensity for innovative sentence structure and neologisms is impressive, I found the book rather dull. I tried to rehabilitate my initial impression--chocking it up to having read too many "stylistically complex" ouvres, but unfortunately upon a second reading, found it just as dull. I do believe there is more to literature than impressive wordsmanship. The colonial commentary was not at all revelatory. No more than a freshman level discussion on imperialism's psychological and cultural influences. The descriptions were quite vivid and interesting, but the characters awfully dull. The chief character, a girl/woman has rather insipid and ordinary relationships with her mother, father, great-aunt, uncle, other Indians, a very uninteresting recollection of a trip to the U.S. where she works behind a bullet-proof glass enclosed gas station booth as though the reader should think this to be of any vicarious minatory experience. I worked as a cab driver in NYC, and it was a lot more exciting than the depictionso of events and people that infiltrate and inhabit this book. I have read in an interview with the author that she was an aficianado of "freewriting." Well, fine, but anyone with a modicum of imagination and a basic mastery of language could turn out the same stuff, albeit not in the exotic clime of India. If you like style over substance you'll really like this book; if you want to reflect and be awed by characters with depth, intellectual riffs of wonder, and remarkable insight of the human condition, go elsewhere. But the author must be rich, although I have learned she has contributed her Booker Prize money to political groups which she supports; the publisher's excited, and English-speaking Indians satisfied that there world view has been articulated. So, what the heck!
Rating:
Summary: This Author Needs to Write More Books!
Review: This novel was wonderful. The characters were so alive and the story was breathtaking. I can't wait until she writes something else.
Rating:
Summary: The myth and drama of The God of Small Things
Review: A great story must be propelled by a majestic myth. The myth behind Arundhati Roy's fascinating tale,The God of Small Things, is universally known and powerful. It is the myth of the Garden of Eden. Like Eden, the garden of the tale is planted with fruit trees, bananas, jackfruits, mangoes, nuts and citrus; and it is a working garden, a tropical paradise, for the produce is used to make preserves and pickles. This eden has its boundaries, a small but swift river, dangerous in flood, and a vaguely described world road that leads first to the villiage Ayemenem, then to Kottayam,the county seat of Kerala, and, far to the East-of-Eden lies Calcutta. Eden has is symbols, too: its denizens are Syrian Christians, transplanted to India ages ago and stuck in the midst of a mixed pagan and Hindu milieu. Inside the garden is innocence; outside, there is an ugly world fraught with temptation and the seven deadly sins which include pride, sloth, lust, greed, and the Indian caste system. The innocence is impersonated in the two protagonists who are "two-egg" twins, an Adam brother (Estha) and an Eve sister (Rahel). There is a serpent in eden; she is great-aunt Baby Kochamma. There is a god in this eden; he is uncle Chacko and he's omniscient because he has been schooled in paradise, as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxenford. As God, however, Chacko is manque, for he has neglected or failed to banish the god of small things from his creation, the Tohu and Bohu of Genesis (mistranslated as Formlessness and Darkness). Chacko gives eden its neo-Genesis by making of it a productive garden--a pickle factory which employs the needy of the region, including some untouchables (horribile dictu), in low-skilled jobs. His grandfather was a colonist who ran a latex plantation for profit by exploiting these people. The mansion of the latefundia lies outside the garden on the other side of the river; and it is this place, called the History House, which represents the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. So this eden has a history. The do-unto-others morality is represented by communism, and Chacko is a comrade, but one without credentials. Hence the ambient morality is conditional and corrupted by politics. God, too, has a history; for, while he was absent in paradise, he had a wife and made a child. And this beautiful, white-skinned flaxen haired Lilith, called Sophie Mol, comes to Eden. That is the beginning of the tragedy--knowledge, folly, deceit, murder and banishment. A moving story must be propelled by drama. The drama behind The God of Small Things is archaic. Its action is simple: a reunion. Reunions are comedic, but any element of comedy or happiness Ms. Roy has studiously avoided here. The dramatis personae are two; it is then an Aeschylean tragedy. But the protagonists do not utter a word; only their act of reunion described. The rest is told by the chorus, as in Aeschylus. The chorus in this novelized drama has the voice of the omniscient narrator which often takes voice as the recollection of Rahel. The utterances of the chorus are sheer poetry, as in Aeschylus full of surprising neologisms and unusual rhythms, and it is reminiscent, as in the Agamemnon, making our knowledge of the events and motivations complete by cyclical repetition. This book is a masterwork. The syndics of the Booker prize are to be lauded for their perspicacity in choosing the work of a tyro for the prize, for by a tyro or not, Ms. Roy's novel is bound to become a classic.
Rating: 
Summary: A delicate gossamer of fragile human experience
Review: Poetic and simply written, "The God of Small Things" skillfully evokes a mood and atmosphere that is often hauntingly beautiful. However, the plot is melodramatically predictable and a bit cliched. One can say the same of the generally one-sided characters. Still, among its florid metaphors (which are, at times, bogus)there lies some deep human truth for which the novel is worth reading.
Rating:
Summary: A Masterpiece
Review: I am currently reading this book for the third time, and everytime it is as fresh as new. The book is a 321 page poetry, enchanting, captivating and mesmerizing, every page with a distinct kind of life dissolved into it. Rahel is definitely an image of the author herself, I started to believe. The story is about a small incident on a rainy night, but seen from past, present and future, spread over years. Like a spider spinning a web, the story too converges to the single incident and why the incident is so important. Roy has invented her own language, her own flow, with characters like Terror, Fear, Happiness etc., all blended into a sad stream of events with very little happiness, redefining love, whom to be loved and how much. I would recommend readers to read this book atleast twice to get the inner beauty of this Booker winning novel. Hats off to Arundhati Roy.
|
