Rating: 
Summary: Absolutely Astounding
Review: Roy's mastery of metaphor and creativity in wordplay may just be among the best in the English language today. In The God of Small Things she tells a haunting tragedy in hauntingly beautiful prose that borders on poetry. Almost every scene painted itself visibly in my mind, but in particular I find myself dwelling on the OrangedrinkLemondrink Man, and on the airport scene: Ambassadors E. Pelvis and S. Insect; Rahel wrapping herself in the dirty curtain to escape the reeling changes in her life. I'm so impressed by Roy's ability to see a child's-eye view of the world, and it's so easy to believe that Rahel and Estha would assume that "love had been reapportioned." It's also a remarkable achievement in non-linear storytelling for a first-time novelist.Having said all that, I confess to loving non-linear narrative. If you don't like it, you probably won't think much of this book. Finally, and coincidentally, just before I read The God of Small Things I read Green English, by linguist Loreto Todd. It's a nonfiction book and I won't go into her thesis. But at one point she suggests that some of the best literature of the 20th century comes from countries where one language (usually a colonizing language, as in India, Ireland, New Zealand, numerous African countries...) has overlaid and been adapted to fit an earlier language, pushing the boundaries of expression. This book seems to me to be a prime example of that idea.
Rating: 
Summary: Confusing, but Good!
Review: The God of Small Things is the tale of Estha, his two-egg twin sister, Rahel, and their divorced mother, Ammu, who live in south India in Christian, westernized and Communist Kerala. They and their family of Anglophiles struggle through the heartaches and heartbreaks of India's longstanding and unavoidable traditions, the Big Things. The story centers on the death of their English cousin and is overlapped by several events that lead to the deterioration of the family. Their misfortunes stem from their neglect to acknowledge the Love Laws. Which lay down who should be loved. And how. And how much. Told from the child's point of view, the novel is playful and eloquent at the same time. Dum Dum. Childhood is captured and every perspective- imagination, lack of understanding, fear, independence, vulnerability, friendship, jealousy and wonderment- is preserved with the mangoes at Paradise and Pickles Preserves. The tale is skillfully concocted to pull the reader's own experiences into the children's. Roy's style is poetic, vivid and whimsical. The large overall story contains many smaller ones that can stand alone and attract a variety of readers. The novel is not told in sequence but starts at the end, jumps back and forth, gives insight into the future, drops hints and goes back to the beginning. This made it very frustrating to read along with the fact that by the time I realized the beauty in the story I only had twenty pages to go and 300 behind that I had loathed. Yet, I recommend it because it is inspirational and I believe that if I read it a second time I would probably love it.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing
Review: I read this book for the first time a year ago, and I have read it multiple times since. Ms Roy paints with words; her writing style is unique, probing, and it flows most gracefully. I love this book. I liked the story- There's almost a sense that what happened had to happen and could not be averted. And yes, you get the sense she speaks through Ammu. We need more Incredible Women Writers from non-western countries!
Check out "Purple Hibiscus" by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.
Rating:
Summary: wonderful
Review: This is the story about a pair of unidentical twins, love, relationships, politics, religion and the Indian class society. The book is not chronological and you get fragments of the story in complete disorder. Then you realise that everything was in a special order, that it had to be in that particular order to make the book so good. The story is seen from different generations, but most of the time you see it through the twins' eyes. You meet the twins Rahel and Esthappen, their mother Ammu, Ammu's mother the half-blind Mammachi and her father Papachi. There is also the old aunt Baby Kochamma, Ammu's brother the old Marxist Chacko, his English daughter (the twins' cousin) Sophie Mol and the "untouchable", low-cast carpenter Velutha.
It all begins when Rahel is grown up and returns to Ayemenem (her childhood-home) in the south of India. At the beginning I didn't understand the plot and for a while I wondered what it really was about, if there was going to happen something to connect everything and everyone. At first I didn't get any answer. But the more I read, the more I wanted to read. And then the plot opens like a flower, at first there's nothing,
but after you've read a bit you see it a little clearer, and then even more clear and so on. It isn't until in the end, the last pages, you understand everything.
Roy uses the language in a beautiful way, with perfect words and descriptions of everything. You really get pictures of everything. She also plays on words, splits words and makes new ones of them and uses a lot of Indian words, which makes it very funny. It's also fun to read what the twins think and say to each other. How they feel like one person and understand each other without saying a word.
I really liked the book and hope many others will enjoy it.
Rating:
Summary: Brillaint
Review: The God of Small Things, Roy's first book is full of new ideas and a writing style I have never yet encountered. She draws you on in her amazingly descriptive writing style and interesting use of sentences. The story itself is filled with humour, compassion, bitter cruelty, and shock, and makes certain that it reaches into your soul and rips out your emotions. The facts are not clear initially, as Roy jumps throughout time, back and forth; yet near the closing chapters all the facts fall into place and we become aware of the writer's brilliant craftsmenship at connecting time periods and details. The well-rounded characters develop through the harrowing circumstances in which they are involved, and it is obvious that Roy understands and includes the true natures of people, both good AND evil and one often has to step back from the book and marvel at how she cuts through all the layers of pretence and reveals what many people really are. Issues include Communism, a detailed and genuine potryal of India and the Caste system-and how it affects the characters of the book. I recommend this book for anyone seeking to read a book of true genius and genuine understanding of what it is to live in a world of prejudice and assumption.
Rating:
Summary: Love, life and loss of innocence
Review: Darkly disturbing and beautifully writing, Arundhati Roy has written an extraordinary first novel. Her voice is fresh and ripe with metaphor as the reader is surrounded by the world of southern India. Told through the eyes of Rahel, now grown, who revisits the childhood secret she shares with her twin brother, it speaks of love, life and a loss of innocence. They live in Kerula, a Christian matriarchal state, with their divorced mother, blind grandmother, bitter aunt and sad uncle. It is a world where impending communism is supposed to be weakening the caste system which has been rooted in the culture for thousands of years. It is a world of decay and disaster. There's a skyblue Plymouth, a graygreen river and a world of wonder for the two-egg twins whose vision is filtered through their clear-eyed innocence. The story is one of passion and forbidden love told with fresh eyes while "night's elbows rested on the water and watched.....". It grabs the reader with an emotional quality that goes far beyond the particular characters and even the particular setting. This is a book to be savored, thought about deeply, and, perhaps even read for a second time.
Rating:
Summary: comic, tragic
Review: Very nearly a journey to another land. So easy to envision and identify with each character, frequently laugh out loud, ache for unfairness. I was certainly sharply reminded of and grateful for every freedom American women have earned.
Rating: 
Summary: First novel bumps and pitfalls.
Review: This book sets itself up to be something of an odd mystery: it lays out all of the "what" early on, leaving nearer to the end to reveal, sporatically, the details of "how." Its greatest asset, to me, was in how Ms. Roy used language and concept throughout to really get into how children see the world and their place in it. However, her language is also used in a way of repetition for effect, which I felt made the story drag more than it made it particularly poetic or compelling. Backstories were given to characters well after the point at which their stories would have furthered the book, making it seem to drag all the more. And finally, it seems to be written with an intent to create suspense toward the ending, but I felt that really would have only been effective had the ending not been so blatantly foreshadowed ... or rather, foretold. Overall I would say that it shows in the writing that this is a first novel, and the overall effect is perhaps of trying a little too hard. With less artistically self-conscious writing, I think Arundhati Roy could make a wonderful author of fiction, in addition to all else that she does. This book, however, is probably not a successful example of living up to that potential, and I would suggest checking it out from a library rather than buying it outright if you wish to judge for yourself.
Rating:
Summary: An amazingly wise and talented artist.
Review: This is a dazzlingly beautiful book, with terror and pain and love and charm, but with an incredible amount of humanity and vision. Roy is both a brilliant thinker and wonderful artist. Her craft is keen. The story so amazingly brings together the wonder of youth with the realities of race, class, and gender. The book is so much more than the sum of its part. Her charactes will live in me for a long time. She is a spectacular voice of our time. The reading this novel was a once in a life time experience I want to repeat!
Rating: 
Summary: Enjoyable, But Flawed
Review: The God of Small Things could have been a truly great novel, but, like an artist who can't leave a masterpiece alone, Arundhati Roy simply didn't know when to stop. The characters are vividly drawn, and the language is beautiful. Roy displays a penchant for descriptive language that is wonderfully arresting, but becomes repetitve and annoying. The reader gets the picture well before the novel ends, making the last several chapters anticlimactic. Still, I enjoyed the story of a truly dysfunctional family that suffered the after-effects of British Colonialism and an intractable caste system.
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