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Summary: A Great Story. You must stay involved or you'll get lost.
Review: This is an author who really understands English, and pushes the limits on its written usage. Phrases are restated as anchor points as time shifts from past to present, much as a movie uses flashbacks. If you're looking for a story about India, you'll be disappointed. Instead you'll find a family in a state of decline. A family in crisis. A family with no winners. Everyone looses. Very depressing in a way. But, never-the-less, a great story told by a mistress of this art! Ms Roy successfully winds and twists everyone's life into a painful, synergistic whole. Read this book, and you'll walk an adventure in English.
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Summary: This is an overwhelmingly nauseating reading experience.
Review: I might gain more respect for Ms. Roy's writing when she produces an interesting work that makes its points -- probably unpleasant points, if this book is any indication of stuff-to-come -- without total reliance on the ugly, the awful, and the smelly; pukey scenarios; nasty people, and spaced hints of worse to come. Yuk. Can't she see Anything Nice?? After all, the sky is blue and the sun shines brightly even on Bosnia. I haven't gotten to comic-relief point one, so far, even though I'm (finally) about one-third through the book. I really feel sorry for the child-characters but my goodness, isn't there some way to describe total, unrelieved crud without forcing the reader to wallow in it ALL THE WAY THROUGH?? P.S.: There are too many weak similies and non-sentences. The creative capitalization gets old. It's cute the first time.
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Summary: a real disgrace
Review: Roy has shamelessly portrayed characters that certainly do not represents the average Indian family. the average Indian woman and that too a mother of two kids does not go around making love with other men nor do the average siblings have love affairs between them. she should be ashamed of how she has presented her culture to the rest of the world.
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Summary: Only the truly unimaginative could dislike this wondrous bk.
Review: Agree wholeheartedly with virtually every positive comment written above. What I cannot comprehend is why people who failed to finish it feel entitled to comment on the book as a whole. Perhaps the most amazing thing about this book is the way the complicated structure fits together perfectly; one can't help but wonder, at the end, how much the author's training as an architect contributed to her ability to put it together in such an unusual fashion. I suspect that anyone who could say the book is a waste of time, money or whatever without reading the end would also be the type of person to look at an enormous building while standing 6 inches away from one wall and, without stepping back to obtain a more complete perspective, feel himself entitled to comment that its design is "nothing special." (Not to mention that the love scene between Ammu and Velutha, which occurs near the end, is one of the most beautiful ever written.) I seriously urge anyone considering reading this book to ignore the naysayers, ESPECIALLY those whose opinions are admittedly uninformed. Similarly uninformed is the reviewer(s) who criticized Roy's use of language, then chalked it up to problems with translation. I have seen Roy speak; she is 100% fluent in English--the language in which this book was originally written. (This is why you don't see a translator credited in the book.) Open your mind, let Roy's beautiful, imaginative style engulf you, and you will love this book. One other comment to the ethnocentric reader who calls this a story about "nasty people" in a "nasty culture" - where do YOU come from? Only a couple of characters in this book (notably Baby Kochamma and the law enforcement personnel) are nasty people; Velutha, Ammu and her children are as humanly appealing as any characters I've ever had the fortune to encounter.
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Summary: See how many metaphors I can create... should be the title.
Review: I bought this book after alot of hesitation...but finding no better book for the trip, i took the plunge. Starting reading the book was enjoyable..but after reading so many metaphors and similes u just get bored and by the middle of the book u just want it to end..and what an ending...it's ending beats or at leasts tries to most cheap novels out there.. it mistakens pure lust with love..and makes u loose alot of the sympathy u feel for the characters.. i gave this book such i high mark compared to my review because i enjoyed the first part of it and it was different from most books i read.. but how it won the booker prize is something out of my comprehension...maybe the ending explains it ;-)
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Summary: Disjointed - and ultimately disappointing
Review: You may be curious to read this award winner which has sold so well. But it is mostly all hype, and ultimately it is a difficult to read, disjointed novel. For anyone who is interested in India, Rohinton Mistry's "A Fine Balance" is a far superior novel, also an award winner, but delightfully readable.
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Summary: All glitter, little gold.
Review: Roy can write. She can make up new words. She can construct interesting metaphors and new turns of phrase. However, instead of using her skilfull language in the service of ideas and narrative, the novel seems to be largely a device by which the author self-consciously demonstrates her genius to the gallery. I get the feeling that the primary response is expected to be that the reader is to fall at the feet of a new literary titan and worship. As for the substance of the novel: it seems less of a novel than a short story bulked up on the steroid of flashiness.
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Summary: juxtaposing brilliance of words against powerof silence
Review: The book though an excellent manipulation of language, is even more impressive for the silences it uses thereby demonstrating the greater power of silence to communicate the inner layers of human psyche
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Summary: Don't miss this incredible book
Review: Do you ever read a sentence, a phrase, a paragraph that is so beautiful it takes your breath away? It brings tears to your eyes? Well, this book will do that to you over and over again. Thank God Ms Roy did not develop the character of Velutha any more fully than she did. As it was, the end of this book is so heart-breakingly, gut-wrenchingly sad it took me an hour to read the last ten pages. This is the most tragic, yet the most beautiful book I have ever read. Thank you, Ms Roy.
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Summary: beautiful use of language, just too much of it
Review: I love a good simile and metaphor as much as the next person, but this was a serious case of what my writing class teacher used to call "over egging the pudding"; too much richness makes you nauseous, like a small child eating too many sweets at a birthday party. There! I'm doing it myself! I think the word "like" must be the commonest word in this book. Each individual simile or metaphor was breathtaking and original (mostly.. some were totally out of place like "silence climbing the bathroom walls like Spiderwoman") but together it was all just too much and slowed down the pace of the story. This author would be better occupied as a poet. There she can give full expression to as many metaphors and similes as she likes. They are way overdone in this self indulgent work. I can't even comment on the core story because it was obscured by the language used to tell it.
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