Rating: 
Summary: Extraordinary Achievement, no Small Thing at all
Review: This book powerfully recalls the astonishing feat Faulkner performed in rendering children's points of view as they try to comprehend and assimilate the tragedies drawn and suffered by the significant adults in their lives. With an equally experimental and more poetical narration than Faulkner, Arundhati Roy renders a family saga comprehending three generations in Kerala. The book should be read aloud; it needs to be heard. The brooding sense of looming disaster made me put the book aside several times, for I could not bring myself to see the disaster which would fracture the worlds of the two-egg twins. But the charm of the twins and of the narration, the eccentricities of the characters, brought me back each time to the charms of the book. Like all great poetry this needs to be read aloud and read several times. It is like a traditional Romance--as opposed to the novel which aims to do realism--which is more dreamlike and poetic than an ordinary novel It should be categorized along side _Moby-Dick_ and _One Hundred Years of Solitude_ and _Sound and Fury_.
Rating:
Summary: Read about the "non-Western Perspecitve" - it's about time!
Review: I loved this book! But it is not a book that can be read lightly or quickly. Rather it is one that must be read with time and intelligence. To read it abstent-mindedly means that you read it without gaining from it. It's a great book about a post-colonial country and it offers a perspective that is different than that of the Western one [the perspective that most of us also equate as the "only" perspective]. Pick it up and experience what the "God of Small Things" has to offer. You won't regret it!
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.
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