The God of Small Things

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.

Rating:
Summary: A most astonishingly beautiful work of art
Review: So many aspects of this novel are exquisite. Firstly, the language and style itself; Ms. Roy enthuses her story with a lyricism which draws on and enlarges the richness of the English language; the repetition enhances the sense of the story's inevitability, while the conning of new phrases and the unusual combinations of words and sounds fleshes out the internal worlds of the central characters. The way in which the author refers to the central events in epic terms also brings home the scale of the tragedy that afflicts this otherwise ordinary family.

Though others here have decried the way in which the novel shuttles from past to present to future and back again, any attentive reader cannot fail to discern the care with which this structuring has been made. In order to fully grasp the central tragedy, we must understand as deeply as possible the characters of Ammu, Rahel anbd Estha, and this is why Ms Roy shows us everything before she reaches the pivotal moment of the story. The very final word - 'tomorrow' - is a powerfully simple and yet moving comclusion to the story; we know exactly what will happen tomorrow, we know exactly how the characters will deal with and be influenced by the events of tomorrow, but we are left at the brink of the tragedy so we can savour at once the rapture of the Ammu's love for Velutha and the grief of the tragedy it leads to.

The story is a simple one, and deliberately so; Roy does not intend to present us with a complex story, but instead wishes to explore every aspect of one straightforward tale, to examine the characters and motives of all the characters involved. The joy of the God of Small Things is not in any elaboration of plot, but in the intricate manner in which the author unfolds this simple story for us so that we see the vast richness of human experience contained in even the most humdrum of domestic tales.

The structure of the novel also lends it tremendous suspense; as we move torward the central event, Roy leads us closer and closer to realising what happens, without revealing all until the very end. At the same time, as she describes more and more about the subsequent lives of the characters, she further stokes our desire to know exactly what happened and why their lives turned out so. Moreover, our growing affection for Ammu, Estha and Rahel makes the sense of impending doom all the harder to accept. This is a very dramatic dynamic.

The children are not shown to be wise-beyond-their-years, as one reviewer has claimed; but they are shown to be in possession of the full range of human emotion. They are not belittled by Ms Roy; they are as completely involved in the story as their adult relatives. Their understanding of the situation they find themselves in and their reaction to that situation, as well as their motives and biases, are as important in deciding the outcome of the story as are those of the adult characters of the novel, and in this Ms roy demonstrates clear and unsentimental insight into the complex and subtle workings of family.

Incredible.

Rating:
Summary: I didn't get it
Review: I have heard great things about this book and looked forward to reading it. I was in India for six months when I read this book and could see some of what she was talking about and I found that interesting. However, that is all I could find interesting about this book.

I think she is a good writer, but only on a page to page basis, anything of more duration than that and I just didn't get it. I read sixty books a year and this is the only book in the last few years that I didn't finish. I gave up about thirty pages from the end. The story went nowhere (at least nowhere of interest), the characters were pointless, and I just couldn't force myself to read one more page when I quit.

Everyone else thought I had talked to suggested this book and thought it was the duck's nuts. I just couldn't feel this way.

Rating:
Summary: Lyrical Narration
Review: I read "The God of Small Things" a while back, and must add it is one of the most powerful novels I have ever set my eyes on. The plot was difficult to catch on to at first, but by the end the stray bits and pieces fit together perfectly. With Roy's writing style one is able to view the world through the eyes of Estha and Rahel -- twins lost in a world of adult justice. The coming together of the novel as a whole at the end is truly beautiful. If you really care for a truly rewarding reading experience, if you like to ponder over what you read, if you are ready to know the unknown, if you are an unprejudiced reader who does not try to 'judge' an author without first sampling his or her writing, if you need to understand how myth, history and life are intertwined in the Indian consciousness, just try reading "The God of Small Things."

Rating:
Summary: Masterful!
Review: With her "The God of Small Things", Roy has clearly established herself as one of the great writers of our time. Her compassion, creativity, and great imagination come out on nearly every page. I endorse this book wholeheartedly and it surely deserves every award it has received with more to come! Definitely one not to be missed!

Rating:
Summary: Mediocre Magic Realism
Review: I think the Booker Prize (which Roy received for this book in 1998) is beginning to resemble the Oscar. A Booker Prize like an Oscar means increased even phenomenal sales and so the award has become corrupted by a number of influences(namely political) none of which provides a true measure of literary talent.

This author combines a lot of influences. Her writing style owes a debt to Latin America. In fact the book reads like it has been written by a student of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's. It's not quite Magical Realism but its close enough. Unlike Garcia Marquez however Roy has no sense of structure. The past and present tense seem to flow in and out of each other and in no particular direction. I suppose you could call this "experimental" but theres not much method to the madness. The individual stories of at least twelve characters are told and each story would be rather simple but the stories are all shuffled together with no regard for tense and this makes the book seem much more complex than it actually is. Also Roy seems very aware that for most of her readers India is still an extoic and faraway land and the way she describes it makes it seem like its an exotic and faraway land even to her. In other words the imagery like the vegetation is overly ripe. The storyteller is really more in love with the way she is telling her story than she is with her characters. The characters are merely caricatures each conveniently outfitted with an amusing assortment of eccentricities and yet its still difficult to tell them apart because they don't really have individual voices; the only voice we hear is Arundhati Roy's. Some of these same arguments could be railed against 100 Years of Solitude but Marquez's book is full of events and characters that are all larger-than-life and lend the book its fable-like quality and like a well constructed fable the book has mythic power in it. Roy uses the magical realist's verbal style but she fails to give us characters and events that make an imprint on us and so her book falls somewhere short of magical realisms goal. Plus she moves forwards and backwards and sideways in time towards a central event which has been hinted at in countless ways but by the time you get to that event you are mad because all of the confusion could so easily have been avoided if she'd simply told the story, or each of the twelve stories, chronologically. A shift of tense is a viable storytelling device but in this book Roy is guilty of gratuitous shuffling.

Its really not a bad book, by far not the worst I've ever read, but when you give a book a prestigious award like the Booker Prize readers like myself expect an extraordinary read and this is merely an ordinary one.

Rating:
Summary: Selling tales of exotic places and wretchedness
Review: After patiently reading the stories of misery and outrage that happen to every character all along in the novel, I reached the end with discontentment and disgust. It is unbelievable to see how such nonsense actually won a major prize.

Like many recent Indian writers who put out these rambling pieces in English (Vikram Seth is another one that comes to mind), Roy uses word play incessantly. To this she adds the backdrop of a different and 'exotic' culture (to non-Indians at least) and an oversupply of suffering and wretchedness. The resulting mix is perfect bait for the international reviewers and some initial readers of the world who sometime in their life have heard of India, its poverty and its exotic culture and customs.

The reviewers get what they want and the authors get the initial acclaim and the prize money that they want. If most of the current English language writers from India were not so hugely boring, you would almost have to give them credit for their commercial sense (unethical though it may be). Its pandering plain and simple.

Rating:
Summary: A review for The God of Small Things, Dum Dum
Review: Arundhati Roy's first novel, The God of Small Things, is a fine exercise of storytelling and style. The general structure of the tale (sequence of narrative, etc.) is actually a bit like the late Douglas Adams. The events described are not told in chronological order. There does not seem to be a plan for the novel through much of it. And when it seems that the plot cannot become any more convoluted, everything starts dropping into place. Of course, in Adams' works the curtain drops to reveal hysterical punchlines of some immensely entertaining wisdom-ish type. Roy's novel is not meant to betray a comic sentiment in the end, although there are moments of sheer joy in the novel. When everything coagulates in her book, a tragedy unfolds of relatively gigantic proportions. There is a sadness, helplessness, and resignation present in the novel that presents quite starkly the plight of many Indians, not just the fictional ones found between the pages here.
The God of Small Things reveals the dignity of downtrodden characters and the underdogs while scouring the abusive caste/class system that in much of India (and really, in much of the world) refuses to die. The characters, both upper and lower caste, who seek to preserve their arbitrary social status by whatever means they can find are given the rough treatment warranted while the transgressors of societal norms are revealed in their beauty, all flaws included. The prose is constructed in way perfectly suited to the story. What appear almost to be whimsical flights of fancy for the pen turn out to be the very substance of the novel upon which all the character development rests. Be it Rahel & Estha's penchant for reading things backwards (eB ti lehaR & s;athsE tnahcnep rof gnidaer sdrawkcab) or the peculiarities of Chacko's different voices, all the exercises in random reveal insight into the characters and their perspective of the events described.
For about twenty pages late in the book the story seemed to drag a bit before revving up again for the finale. Given how much I enjoyed the rest of the novel, I'm apt to chalk that up to having read it in one long sitting and not some fault of the author's. This is indubitably one of the finest novels I've read. The characters are enjoyable, alternately vivid or gray depending on what Ms. Roy has decided to paint them as. The prose is alive and inventive. The story is compelling and very moving. The book is, in short, a masterpiece.

Rating:
Summary: Simply Beautiful
Review: This is a lovely book which drew me in more and more as I continued to read. The novel is like a whirlpool told forward from the past and backward from the future, coming ever closer to the central moment, that which changed all the characters lives so dramatically. The closer you get to this point, the longer the time you spend without setting the book down. While trying to describe the plot to a friend, he told me it sounded like the content of a South American "telenovela", and after a bit of reflection, I realized he was right. But the structure of the novel is so incredibly unique, and so is the language that Ms. Roy uses to enter the minds of the children, Rahel and Estha, whose special relationship as twins is a theme I find interesting and provocative. All of the characters in this novel are interesting in fact, and the author has such a special gift for getting inside their minds. I was impressed because this female writer from a part of the world I have never been to and know nothing about was able to make me remember things I said as a child and thought while growing up. This is a difficult novel, however, and I think the great number of bad reviews on this page is due to the fact that some people just did not get the gist of the book and are used to reading books which serve information on a silver platter...as though a novel should be as simple to comprehend as a TV Monday night movie! This novel has neither too few, nor too many words, it has a fine balance, and shows just enough for us to know the essential. A WONDERFUL BOOK!