The God of Small Things

Rating:
Summary: Bifurcated View of India
Review: This is an inspiried memory of a childhood. It opens with an impressionistic view of the place and then it shifts to a string of memories about a childhood as one of a pair of "Two Egg Twins. Roy leads us through this interesting landscape through the eyes of a child. She retains some of the childhood experience in her use of language. She slams words together to show how a child hears Indian-English in phrases like "Orangedrinklemondrinkman." In addition she tears words apart to show the innate dread of such adult words as LAY TER, as in we'll talk about that LAY TER! While you are never sure of where in time the story lies, you are lead to the conclusion about how a family destrioes itself and how the "Two Egg Twins" are injured at the core of their siamese soul. This is not a treatise on India, only a human story like any other about the destructive forces of life. A really good first novel.

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful linguistic game-playing, insubstantial content.
Review: All of us come from families like this where intrigue and one-upmanship rule the day. Women's lives in India are still very much like Ammu's: powerless, dependent, miserable. It is when children get crushed in the crossfire and end up with damaged lives that we realise the consequences of playing with fire. A must-read.

Rating:
Summary: interesting inconsistencies
Review: Arundhati Roy, the diminutive and brilliant author of The God of Small Things, was quoted as saying that her writing was like breathing, and, to paraphrase, therefore she could not change a word of it. The Booker Prize winning book, then, is a first draft. Perhaps that explains both its lyrical immediacy and it linguistic inconsistencies. Its metaphors often have the mystical clarity of dream fragments, yet often her quirks are mystifying. Often while reading I was asking things like: why is this capitalized and not that? Well, now I know. But it doesn't bother me--enough craft is enough, and these days it's all too often exceedingly evident in novels. If Roy can be criticized for her 'automatic writing', perhaps it's for not choosing the best format for it, for instance prose poetry (see the incredible City Terrace Field Manual by Sesshu Foster, a book that also evokes place with powerful lyrical passages, this time the place being East L.A.). In the end, though, Roy's book is a pleasure, more insights than inconsistencies, more originality than indulgence.

Rating:
Summary: A Modern Classic
Review: Arundhati Roy's prose is at once organised and distracted, sad and subtly comical, aggressive and slowly gentle. An impressive novel, making full use of the wide reaches of the English language to craft and emulate a whole language strangely its own. Roy breaks down the barriers of grammer, punctuation in the language which only a talented author would be able to achieve. The story seems full of tenderness, care and consideration for the complex themes, emotions and stories she succesfully manages to spin into this 300 odd page tale, from Baby Kochamma's becoming a nun, to Estha's meeting with the "Lemonorange" man. Remarkably written, albeit slightly over-hyped, this is one book to be remembered as a contemparory classic. Extra kudos to the author for not adding a glossary to her book, the practice of most Asian writers.

Rating:
Summary: Dysfunction and death in a fractured Indian family
Review: A somewhat jumbled, scattered, "free-form" - but still powerful, sad and haunting story of a rapidly disintegrating, culturally confused Indian family...At times I found this book frustrating, yet other times wholly satisfying, highly intelligent, honest and passionate...Like a much-too-aware, highly intelligent, albeit troubled child? Indeed, I dare say there had to have been somewhat of a catharsis for the author, Ms. Roy...Wrestling with demons? A casting-out of skeletons? I sensed quite a bit of intimacy with the subject matter: severe abuse, trauma, near total familial dysfucntion and even a racially-tinged self-loathing...I've read similarly powerful, vivid, strangely "personal" books by African-American authors. Books which also had the air of indictment of the Self and his/her past, kin, etc. But those books at least had a sense of closure...Hope. Roy pulled no punches.

Rating:
Summary: Overhyped like an overbudgeted hollywood film
Review: It was a good book, if you read the last 50 pages, which makes it LIKE a man without a hat. The imagery inudated the reader LIKE ice pellets on the street during a storm. It was rather disjointed and difficult to follow LIKE a winding country road. After awhile, I began skipping any phrase that followed the word "like", LIKE a runner rushing towards a finish line. Poetic writing is wonderful, but not everything should be a simile...

Rating:
Summary: dull and forced beginning...who cares about the rest?
Review: I just could not sustain a reading beyond the first 15 pages, although I had nothing else to do for the next hour in the train. Far too many capitals, a forced style, and all the appearances of a cheap imitation of Rushdie. Other readers at Amazon suggest that the book gets better... I might try again, it is supposed to be a good book after all...

Rating:
Summary: for those simpletons
Review: I am actually a reader that reads from paper bits to big novels.. i found the book to be everything i have thot to write about.. how i wanted to write something..if i write a book..i wanted it to be like this..the author never thinks of the commercial side of the book.. she just writes from her heart..

Rating:
Summary: How not to learn to write a book
Review: Roy spent five years writing The god of Small Things. She said that she never rewrote a word, that once she breathed a word, the breath was finished. This attitude most certainly explains my reaction to the book: If you throw out the first 200 pages of the book, you have a good book; if you throw out the first 250 pages, you have an excellent book.

Rating:
Summary: Flavor of the Month
Review: Despite its powerful, playful use of language, "The God of Small Things" was a disappointment. After evoking a certain time and place -- Southern India in the 1960's -- throughout the book, Roy crash-lands into the worst conventions of 1990's creative writing programs. Did the world really need another incest story? I certainly didn't.