The God of Small Things

Rating:
Summary: The God of Small Things - Not for all Audiences
Review: This is in response to anyone who did not like the book.

Please read Thoreau's WALDEN. You all inspire a certain quote in the beginning.

And for YOU...
To learn about India you must go to India and live like an Indian. You can't expect to get an in dept feel of the place or its' people by reading this book. Say you weren't expecting to learn much -you probably would have enjoyed the book more.







Rating:
Summary: Isolated sentences of evocative poetry, mostly wasted breath
Review: I am a bit puzzled by the critical acclaim piled onto this book. It seems well written in some respects, but it is also needlessly complex in its verbage and its time/setting schemes (half the time you have no idea what time frame she's talking about, often for several pages). Moreover, none of the characters seems particularly compelling or relatable, which in retrospect, I think might be its fatal flaw. You've got a complex array of eccentric and bizarre characters, but they never seem to really come alive-- least of all the twins, who are the two main characters. And however rich the language of the book may be, it's hard to get past the fact that you don't "feel" these characters; it feels like elegant, but wasted, breath for the most part. However, there is a noticable, but modest, element of alluring beauty in her sentences and phrasing, but more often than not, I did not find myself particularly engrossed in the poetry (although, in its defense, I didn't hate the hell out of it, as I often do with books in which the author needlessly overdoes it; case in point, William Faulkner's "Light in August," a book that bears more than a passing resemblance to this one).

"God" is littered with the kind of writing that I suspect prize judges fawn over-- particularly the convoluted plotline that is easy to admire given its complexity and the apparent amount of time that was put into it-- but in my opinion it is not a very satisfying work for the reader in the "effort vs. reward" aspect; I didn't feel like I completely wasted my time, but I also wished I had spent this time on another, more rewarding piece of literature.


Rating:
Summary: A Book Shaped Hole in My Week
Review: I had one question after finishing this book: Why?

I picked up Roy's first novel after hearing and seeing it lauded everywhere as the most recent "Must Read". Well, I was unimpressed.

First of all, I found Roy's writing style to be very choppy and unenjoyable. It is written in the tone and speech patterns, I think, of an 8-year-old child, probably the main character when she was younger. This was not charming or endearing; it was annoying and choppy. Instead of getting a mature observation, opinion, or commentary on social values/life, I was left to anticipate with dread the random repetitions, and Capitalized Insignificant Non-comments (such as "An Ammu Shaped Hole in the Universe") that Roy uses throughout her book. Surely such a life altering event is worthy of a more profound, or even just more thoughtful, observation.

Secondly, I found the story to be enormously depressing. Not only does one event destroy their childhood, but we find in the last few chapters that their adult lives, their family, and their hometown has suffered also.

And most of all, I found the use of profanity by the voice of an 8-year-old narrator to be extremely disturbing. In the same breath as "An Ammu Shaped Hole..." this child is using some really bad language. I read classics to escape everyday life, not return to it. Had Roy not stooped to using this language, I might have been more forgiving of the other flaws in her book.

I did not particularly enjoy this read and I probably won't recommend it to anyone. That said, this is Roy's first novel, and I do still have hope for more enjoyable novels in the future from her.

Rating:
Summary: One of The Best BooksI Have Ever Read!
Review: This is the most beautifully written book i have ever read, and goes down as one of my all time favorites. Through lyric and poetry, Arundhati does a great job of accuratley portraying an Indian family in midst of turmoil.

Rating:
Summary: Overwhelmed
Review: The children Rahel and Esthappen ("Estha") live in Ayemenem in Kerala, southern India. Tragedy has truck their family and their lives, but what really caused those events to happen? "The God of Small Things", bit by bit, reveals the real history of what happened to Rahel and Estha.

This book has been widely praised and equally widely criticised. I'm afraid my distrust of prize-winning novels was confirmed after having read it. It's a difficult book to get into at first - the plot jumps disconcertingly from time period to time period, making it difficult to get orientated, and to appreciate how the characters are related and how they are supposed to interact. Things become clearer as you persist, and there is a case for saying that the persevering reader should be rewarded for their effort - why should readers expect an easy time? That argument only stands up if you feel the overall effort is worthwhile once you have finished the book. Hence my problem with this novel.

The chief irritant was the author's over-elaborate and derivative writing style. I found myself fighting against it rather than taking an interest in it, or finding that it carried me along. Rarely did it illuminate. The sequences in which the author reverted to a less flowery style were in fact the better parts of the novel. I couln't help feeling that here was someone trying very hard to do a Rushdie or a Garcia Marquez, only to have that self-indulgence overwhelm her story. That was a shame, because there is a good story lying in there somewhere. If the author really wanted to write a novel in the style of another author, perhaps she would have been wiser to consider Narayan.

G Rodgers

Rating:
Summary: a torture
Review: If I didn't have to read this book for my English class, I would have given up after the first few pages. The writing is extremely showy. The author capitalizes words with Little Significance in the middle of sentences. This technique would be acceptable if it was only a few words but she sticks them all over the place for decoration. She also put excessive and many times pointless imagery all over the place distracting the reader from the content. I don't think that it would be exaggerating to say that half the book is imagery. A few times the imagery is beautiful but many times it is downright disgusting or pointless. For example, immediately following a descriptive urinating scene she has to say that the pee was like, "a yellow brook burble through a mountain pass." This made me imagine pee gushing down a mountain pass. Not exactly beautiful. An exceptionally disgusting part was when she had to write a little poem about the process of Estha (the boy twin) getting molested. Her attempt to show-off by writing a poem describing the process of molestation is distasteful at least.

Another problem is her constant repeating of "important quotes." I heard the same thing so many times that I wondered if the author thought I was too stupid to get it the first time. This technique is good if used only a few times but once again; it was too excessive and caused the quote to become a cliché.

In addition, she also has a tendency to stickmanywordstogetherinanannoyingway. This made the book hard to get through. This book sounds like a first draft.

Besides technical issues, the characters in the book with the exception of Baby Kochamma and Chacko, are poorly developed. The twins who are suppose to be the main characters seem like empty buckets with no personality. It's kind of hard to be sympathetic to their misery when they barely show any emotion or admirable traits. One also wonders about the morality in this book since she condones incest between twins. The book also appears sexist in the repeating quote of "Mans Needs" and the portrayal of most men as wife-beaters or women oppressors. The only men in the book that were good guys were Estha and Velutha. However, both of these men are powerless and weak. This author basically whines and complains about all the horrible things that can possibly happen in society without offering any solutions. There is no silver lining. She seems more concerned with showing off her poor literature skills than the plot or the characters. Highly not recommended.

Rating:
Summary: The best book I've ever read
Review: There's really not much more to say beyond what's said, so this is mainly intended to be yet another vote for the book and confirmation of the opinions expressed here. A book has never captured me the way this one has. I can *feel* the life in Ayemenem. It is a part of me. How many writers can accomplish such a thing?

Rating:
Summary: A Novel Shaped Hole in The Universe
Review: Reading Arundhati Roy's effort is an uphill endeavour. Illustrated here is the ever recurring limitation of 98% of novels as an art form: saying very little - and at length.

Mere crumbs of insight - surrounded by repetition, waffle and padding.

In telling the story of a family and others struck by tragic events, the style is flowery, over-written and relentlessly irritating. If it is a point-of-view narrative device, it fails. If the novel is allegory then it's a glib attempt. The ornate Dylan Thomas-like stylistic devices bog the whole ponderous venture down. Get on with it women! Life's too short for this bombastic exercise in the superficial. You just want to get to the end and write the whole purchase off as the mistake that it is.

No surprise that it fooled the Man-Booker's judges - all too keen to grab the opportunity to give the prize to an Indian (and a female).

Bharat is forever trapped and enslaved by a stodgy mind set. A permanently old fashioned, stilted outlook (note: `Dadi', `Dada', `Mammachi', `Pappachi'). This novel reveals that its younger generation remain still imprisoned by lack of clear thinking, sentimental day dreaming and worship of the extended family unit as a god.

A god of small talents surely smiled on this novel.