Rating: 
Summary: Ms Roy's prose is refreshing and her story touching
Review: I enjoyed god of small things for its touching but tragic story of a family in India...I wanted to take care of the twins, Estha and Rahel and tell them everything would be okay...
Rating:
Summary: Savour the sizzling and boiling words of Arundhati Roy
Review: It happened to me. I was taken away. I was touched and furthermore I was amazed of Arundhati Roy's way of harnessing the english language. It ran, it walked, it came down as rain and shined on me as hard as a Tropical sun can shine.
In other words, The God of small things crept under my skin like a parasite, a parasite that stayed on until the last page was read.
What made this book so enthralling and captivating? Was it the poetic language describing an India that was and was to be? Or was it the fact that the author used words like pieces of a jigsaw-puzzle and trying to make the picture complete..? "Is it the right piece, no... Then I'll have to try with this one.."while the reader sits back and guesses what the next piece will lead to into a crescendo of nightmarish actions that whispers what will happen but never says it aloud. Was it this that made the book so interesting?
Maybe it was a combination of the above. Or maybe it was the characters. Yes. It must have been the characters that swept me away. All the rest was the beautiful framework of a skillful and creative writer.
Ocassionally, the writer made the characters destiny seem a little bit like the ingredients of a bad soap: the sob of a child, intrigues and pathetic dialogue. Maybe this was a way to show that we all play parts in a big social game where everyone do their best to gain attention.However this does not bring down the books quality. The characters are trueworthy and Roy uses a well developed psychological skill to describe their thoughts and actions.
The book is mainly about two indian two-egg twins that find their way back to a house they left for a tragedy, that should not be revealed for future readers. It is a trip back to the past that shows an India groping and wrestling with identity problems. The strong part of the book is the characters way of trying to cope with the modern ideas and norms that, unstoppable, creeps in the world of a christian indian family of upper middle-class.
This is one of the books that you will carry inside you for the rest of your days. At least that's what I will do.
Oscar Naeslund 1998
Rating: 
Summary: A terrific literary achievement
Review: This is an extraordinary debut that is notable for its spectacular and fresh writing style. Roy writes about divorce, sex, politics and caste relations with an openness that is still rare in Indian writing, which will undoubtedly be condemned by the many hypocritical guardians of Indian culture. The story goes back and forth in time, and there are many characters which makes this book a "not so easy" read. This will be a tough act to follow, but I hope Ms. Roy can keep it up.
Rating:
Summary: Portable therapy without jet-lag!
Review: As an earlier reviewer pointed out "The God of Small Things" has many curious parallels of setting with the wonderful "The Autobiography of Jesus of Nazareth and the Missing Years" by Richard Patton. Both books visit and reveal similar regions in India and both have wonderful spiritual revelations. If you enjoy long hot baths with a good book, you need look no further. Ideally you would have Patton's book on one side of the bath and Roy's book on the other. Your choice of the poetic Arundhati Roy or the revelatory Richard Patton is the only decision you would have to make. That having been decided, you would be eased into a dimension where sweet smelling sand and exotic spices vied with compelling dialogue. - And it's far cheaper than a return flight to India!
Rating:
Summary: A Viable, Readable Book (Dum Dum)
Review: Roy's fractured and circular narrative could confuse James Joyce or Gabriel Garcia Marquez but her purposeful and lyrical language harkens to Eliot's Shakes-pa-her-ian Rag in "The Waste Land." A brilliant and delicate book for the sensitive.
Rating:
Summary: A beautiful book of real people, the suffering. Recommended
Review: I couldn't put it down. The style of her writing, captivating characters was absolutely wonderful. Velutha the mysterious small god.
Rating:
Summary: Beautifully written; intricate; new.
Review: This beautifully written book touched me on many levels: as an adult recalling childhood wonders, games, understandings; as a woman trying to understand and deal with society while maintaining my sanity; as a human being trying to understand the world around me and how I fit in it. I'm very much looking forward to her next book.
Rating: 
Summary: The critics have taken people for a ride
Review: The God of Small Things Review Author: Samuel Varghese An Indian writer has received an advance of half a million pounds for her first novel, The God of Small Things. Great stuff, one would say, it proves there is talent in the country. The hype that has necessarily accompanied this has obscured the novel to a large extent. There are reviews floating all over the Web, some of them written by people who have not even read the book. The very fact that an Indian author has received a six-figure advance for a first novel necessarily means that the book must be good -- thus runs the logic. It makes for even better copy when the writer is a woman. A number of Indian publications have gloated over the novel. The customary interviews have taken place with the writer and the usual pithy sayings have emerged. It is time to look a bit more closely at this publishing "feat", the circumstances of the writer and the actual content of the book. One must remember first of all that this year marks the 50th anniversary of Indian independence; indeed, it is a nice time for a British publishing house to give an Indian author such an honour. Good timing to expiate some of the guilt surrounding the act of partition of the subcontinent. Now to the novel itself. It is the story of a family who hail from a village in Kerala, one which Roy has chosen to call Ayemenem. The story is told within an uncertain time-frame which winds itself back and forth and anyone searching for structure within this book will be disappointed; the writer has an excuse -- it is like a work of architecture, she says, and the form develops in any direction. There is plenty of detail in the 350-odd pages; the English is stuffed stupid with a surfeit of similes, most of them very poor ones. There is a bid to copy Salman Rushdie but it does not work; the use of language is stilted and some words are so obviously contrived that they are out of place when used. Roy would have one believe that this work is spontaneous but the truth is that it is contrived and rather badly at that. It is so obviously wrung out of herself that any claim that this novel was lying dormant within herself just waiting to be written must be taken with loads of salt. The God of Small Things is seen from the perspective of seven-year-old Rahel. She and her twin brother, Estha, live with their mother, Ammu, who was married to a Bengali from whom she is divorced. Ammu and the twins live in the Ayemenem house with their grandmother, uncle, and grand-aunt Baby. The family owns a pickle factory that comes into conflict with the Communists. The family is awaiting the arrival of Sophie Mol, the twins' half-English cousin and the book drifts back and forth to the arrival and the aftermath of the death by drowning of Sophie Mol and an ill-fated love affair between Ammu and the untouchable Velutha. Rahel returns to Ayemenem as an adult to a decimated household, a dysfunctional twin and a decaying house. Were a Keralite to read this book, he or she would obviously understand the setting and a lot of social surroundings. An outsider may find it exotic but that is all. In this sense, the book is insular in the extreme; there are splashes of Malayalam here and there and despite the feeble attempt at translation, the real meaning of the phrase is often hidden. Roy obviously has a huge narcissistic streak and ensures that the reader will identify her as the girl Rahel; whether this is intended to tell the reader that everything, including the incestuous relationship Rahel has with her twin, was also part of Roy's life is unclear. This is a totally unnecessary twist to the book. The story line is quite predictable; the death of a child and the love affair between a woman of the higher caste and an untouchable are standard fare in many an Indian novel. The only difference here is that this affair is suddenly sprung on the reader and it cannot be logically deduced; indeed, logic is a major casualty in this novel. There is a process of development in any book but there seems to be none in this book and, in my opinion, it is highly over-rated. One thing which puzzles me no end is the fact that Penguin India did not publish it; David Davidar has been the face of Indian publishing in English and his laconical explanation, "it wasn't offered to us," does not answer the question. Davidar is one who has chased after any writer whom he feels has the slightest chance of being a success. Why he did not choose to do so with Roy is a mystery.
Rating:
Summary: Over-done, over-hyped, over-rated florid prose
Review: Too bad the author got so much praise for such over-the-top writing. Reminds me of creative writing classes, too descriptive, contrived, aiming to make an impression rather than tell a story.
Rating:
Summary: An exquisite debut
Review:
What Arundathi Roy has done in her fascinating book is capture the essence of the lives of a particular Syrian christian family set in a particular period and a place (a small Kerala town in the late 60s). Arundathi has put all the intricacies of the life of this family in a bottle, preserved it intact and released it in the form of a novel for universal consumption, much like a bottle of vanilla essence. I can see now why people react so differently to this book after reading it. Some people just do not like vanilla, some people think it is imitiation and others love it. The accuracy of small things is mind boggling and maybe it is something which can truly be appreciated by someone who has lived through similar times in Kerala. Everything from the description of how the seats in the movie theatres (called talkies during that time) fold up, to the little ladle made of coconut shells, to the pride of the father whose son gets a double promotion, or the way the hindu wife addresses her husband, to the little song that the children sing when they row their boat across the river, or the starch in the shorts of the Kerala police that make them stand stiff, is absolutely right on the mark. I applaud Arundathi Roy on her boldness, courage and perseverence to write this book. She handles delicate sexual topics with ease and confidence. Her unabashed use of Malayalam phrases (without translation) is a refreshing change from other Indian authors. She has spent great a effort in creating her own language for this book, sculpting words, chiselling them, putting them together until they are the right balance for her communication with the reader. I can see some weaknesses as well in her book: Her characters lack real depth. She is exquisite in describing the exterior appearances of a character but not as complete with thier mental or emotional makeup. When a character is faced with a particular situation we are told what the emotional response is to that situation without much of explanation of why it was that response. None of the characters have any redeeming qualities which makes the book a little unrealistic. Failures in professional and marital life abound in each character. Overall, I would say this is a must read.
| 
