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Summary: The book gave me chest pains (I"m serious)
Review: ********* WARNING **************Steer Clear of This Book I had the misfortune of reading this book a few months back and I must say that I believe this book had so much wasted potential. A story must be told of 'love across the castes' in India - but this isn't it. From the meandering writing style to the irritating characters there isn't much here to enjoy. The only character I liked was Baby Kochamma (although I wouldn't in real life) because she kept giving all the other characters such a hard time. Oh to be Baby Kochamma.....
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Summary: Pedestrian, mishmash
Review: A previous reviewer, Lisa Mason, gets to the heart of the book in her review but she wonders at its success and her own failed books. Well, the reason is the locale and marketing. Lisa Mason's books are about now and here in the cyberworld but all that is passe. Technology is here and so it is boring. A successful book will go to the margins and Kerala is as good an example of something unlike the West that one can imagine.
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Summary: Fabulous
Review: I loved this book, and could not put it down. As soon as I finished it, I started at the beginning again. Imagine my surprise at reading the absolutely vitriolic review written by a sizeable minority of reviewers. I guess you can't please everyone,Ms. Roy. Keep up the great work. I want to share this book with all of my truly literary friends who will appreciate it (they know who they are!) As for the rest of you, keep on reading what YOU love. I'll never forget this book!
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Summary: A great read!
Review: I forgot what it was like to see and think things as a child does. TGST is terrific. A tragic story with some characters that we like and some that we detest. And isn't that how life is? William Shakespeare himself couldn't have told a more tragic story any better.
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Summary: Confounding, flawed, often wonderful, ultimately moving
Review: As an author ten years into her career with four novels of speculative fiction (search Mason, Lisa at Amazon.com) and two dozen short stories (search David Copperfield's Tales of the Impossible, Desire Burn, Immortal Unicorn, Year's Best Fantasy and Horror Fifth Edition), I marvel at the commercial success of this book, however brilliant at moments. There must be 10,000 manuscripts attempting word jazz/plot inversions that never make it past a creative writer teacher, literary agent, or editor. If you're a new writer, don't even think about attempting such pyrotechnics. And after reading this book, cleanse your palate with something astringent--Double Indemnity, say, or Night Train. Also note that I find Rushdie unreadable, Mistress of Spices enjoyable but weak in its fantasy elements, and explore caste issues myself in my forthcoming fantasy epic PANGAEA, Book I (May, 1999) and PANGAEA, Book II (Oct, 1999), both from Bantam. Two flaws prevent Ms. Roy's book from becoming a major epic: (1) The untouchable who is the moral heart of the personal tragedy and the larger politics isn't explored vividly enough (for me). What scenes there are of him are wonderful, but somehow don't add up to enough. Perhaps he should have made his appearance much sooner. The child molester in the theater is more memorable! Which I'm sure wasn't the author's intent. (2) The political maelstrom that ruins the family and their factory and stems from the untouchable's heinous death is tossed off almost as an afterthought. Roy portrays so well the Communist leader's hypocrisy and the terror of being trapped in a political demonstration, but shies away from showing the ultimate storming of the capitalist bastion. Which would have added a deeper societal resonance and the sense of inexorable destiny. Having said all this, as a writer who enjoys word jazz (SUMMER OF LOVE) and plot pyrotechnics (THE GOLDEN NINETIES and knowing full well that Roy can justifiably say, "Bugger out of my book," I found the twins fascinating, the tragedy heart-breaking, and the irrational compulsion of passion at the end erotic and deeply moving.
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Summary: The bigger things are best left unsaid....
Review: *The God of Small Things* is occasionally brilliant and yet at other times shockingly pedestrian, lushly evocative and yet filled with lacunae, sympathetic and yet detached. There are a couple of places where Roy could have striven harder to keep the reader's interest alive. Moreover, some of the author's stylistic tendencies (like The Repeated Capitalization Of The First Letters Of Words) tend to be a trifle overdone. Having said this, I would hasten to add that, overall, this book represents not merely a magnificent first attempt for Arundhati Roy, but also a valuable addition to the meager ranks of top-quality Indian fiction in English. It is therefore hard to believe that such an obviously talented author is nonetheless capable of engendering such naive, amateurish and irrational statements in her rant on the Indian nuclear tests, exasperating even those (like myself) who support her position.
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Summary: One of the best books I've ever read!!!
Review: Roy's use of poetry in her literature was beautiful. I bought this book while traveling in Europe this summer and couldn't put it down. Roy has written a book like no other I've ever read.
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Summary: Lush, haunting tale, beautifully written
Review: "The God of Small Things" is a faceted gem of a novel; using lush, haunting images, Arundhati Roy evokes a country--India--so far from our own, made vividly present through her emotionally charged storytelling. A child's life is altered by violence and tragedy, yet the beauty and intensity of Roy's language pierces us with joy even as it horrifies. Highly recommended.
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Summary: wonderfully terrifying
Review: as ammu says.... people tend to like things they can identify with. this excruciatingly beautiful tale seems so heartfelt that one cannot help but suspect that it is born from the dark recesses of the author's closet. it is hard to beleive that this book has been so commercially successful in the west, for a large part of what is said can only be felt and appreciated by someone native or one with an intimate knowledge and feel of india, or rather the specific community and religion; though the broad theme itself can be deemed universal. A great number of instances in the book are frighteningly similar to the brown stink that goes on in my family in india; the character of rahel is someone whom i most certainly can identify with- in the nature of her mom ammu, the boarding school i went to, coming to the US, the floating around in architecture school-brrr......( excuse me for bringing myself into the review). well, the point is that this book is especially intimate and meaningful to me. the prose is stunningly refreshing(though it takes a few pages to get used to) and manages to accurately and cheekyly capture the quirkiness of spoken indian-english, not to mention the vivid potrayal of the landscape and culture. roy's first novel is strong, bold, explicit, uncompromising and engrossing. a fine work of storytelling ( not just for a first attempt)
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Summary: Race, Gender and Beauty
Review: One reads this book slowly, in small gulps, baby sips. Everything about this novel challenges the reader to acknowledge the power in doing, thinking and understanding "small things". Ms. Roy's language is concise and lyrical and yet florrid. This was, perhaps, the thing that stopped in so often in my tracks. Her prowess with language is formidable and completely poetic. At times she reads like Toni Morrison (especially in Songs of Solomon) and at other times, a bit like Hanif Kureshi. More admirable are the ways in which Ms. Roy writes the poisons of intermingled and destructive oppressions: racism, sexism, homophobia, heterosexism. She turns this political stance on its head, however, by speaking about the various repressions and internalizations that these "isms" create in her subjects. Rather than taking a white other, Ms. Roy shows the effect of racism in Indian culture. Not only does this firmly locate the story within the culture that could easily be neglected by focusing on white racism and hence white peoples, Roy makes all of the focus of the story remain with her protagonists culture and nation. By doing this, though, Ms. Roy still firmly acknowledges that the aformentioned "isms" push and pull on the subject, *within* the subject. The story in itself is not just about death, it is about the color of the one who dies. It is about small things that in truth, are never small. This is a beautifully written, engaged, poetic and moving novel. I cannot wait to read more of this woman's work.
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