The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

Product Description


The story of the tragic decline of an Indian family whose members suffer the terrible consequences of forbidden love, The God of Small Things is set in the state of Kerala, on the southernmost tip of India. Armed only with the invincible innocence of children, the twins Rahel and Esthappen fashion a childhood for themselves in the shade of the wreck that is their family -- their lonely, lovely mother, Ammu (who loves by night the man her children love by day), their blind grandmother, Mammachi (who plays Handel on her violin), their beloved uncle Chacko (Rhodes scholar, pickle baron, radical Marxist, bottom-pincher), their enemy, Baby Kochamma (ex-nun and incumbent grandaunt), and the ghost of an imperial entomologist's moth (with unusually dense dorsal tufts).

When their English cousin and her mother arrive on a Christmas visit, the twins learn that Things Can Change in a Day. That lives can twist into new, ugly shapes, even cease forever. The brilliantly plotted story uncoils with an agonizing sense of foreboding and inevitability. Yet nothing prepares you for what lies at the heart of it.
Product Details
Amazon Sales Rank: #6312 in Books
Published on: 1998-05-01
Released on: 1998-05-06
Number of items: 1
Binding: Paperback
336 pages
Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com
In her first novel, award-winning Indian screenwriter Arundhati Roy conjures a whoosh of wordplay that rises from the pages like a brilliant jazz improvisation. The God of Small Things is nominally the story of young twins Rahel and Estha and the rest of their family, but the book feels like a million stories spinning out indefinitely; it is the product of a genius child-mind that takes everything in and transforms it in an alchemy of poetry. The God of Small Things is at once exotic and familiar to the Western reader, written in an English that's completely new and invigorated by the Asian Indian influences of culture and language.

From Publishers Weekly
With sensuous prose, a dreamlike style infused with breathtakingly beautiful images and keen insight into human nature, Roy's debut novel charts fresh territory in the genre of magical, prismatic literature. Set in Kerala, India, during the late 1960s when Communism rattled the age-old caste system, the story begins with the funeral of young Sophie Mol, the cousin of the novel's protagonists, Rahel and her fraternal twin brother, Estha. In a circuitous and suspenseful narrative, Roy reveals the family tensions that led to the twins' behavior on the fateful night that Sophie drowned. Beneath the drama of a family tragedy lies a background of local politics, social taboos and the tide of history?all of which come together in a slip of fate, after which a family is irreparably shattered. Roy captures the children's candid observations but clouded understanding of adults' complex emotional lives. Rahel notices that "at times like these, only the Small Things are ever said. The Big Things lurk unsaid inside." Plangent with a sad wisdom, the children's view is never oversimplified, and the adult characters reveal their frailties?and in one case, a repulsively evil power?in subtle and complex ways. While Roy's powers of description are formidable, she sometimes succumbs to overwriting, forcing every minute detail to symbolize something bigger, and the pace of the story slows. But these lapses are few, and her powers coalesce magnificently in the book's second half. Roy's clarity of vision is remarkable, her voice original, her story beautifully constructed and masterfully told. First serial to Granta; foreign rights sold in France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Italy, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Estonia, Holland, India, Greece, Canada and the U.K.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
This "piercing study of childhood innocence lost" mirrors the growing pains of modern India. Twin sister and brother Rahel and Estha are at the center of a family in crisis and at the heart of this "moving and compactly written book."
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Customer Reviews

Brilliant debut for Roy
It is hard to believe that the author of "The God of Small Things", Arundhati Roy, is a debutant novelist. Her experience as a screenwriter aside, Roy's literary genius knows no bounds her first novel. She is able to transform what is a rather ordinary plot, about a pair of twins whose lives are inexorably shaped by family and circumstance, into a haunting tale of struggle, passion, and the search for identity.

The effects of her linguistic skill can be felt in the indelible marks each of the characters leave on a reader. Roy infuses the plot and each of the characters with small, personal details which draw readers into the story. One will feel the humid, languid summer weather of Kerala "suffused with sloth and sullen expectation" and will convulse with anger and shock on behalf of Estha at the depravity of the OrangedrinkLemondrink Man.

This novel has been criticized for having a plot that is too convoluted, but that is, in my opinion, why it is so compelling. The book begins with a sense of apocalyptic doom, and as the story progresses, each layer of the mystery is peeled away with painstaking detail to reveal the causes of a family's downfall. The reader is pulled along through the highs and lows of the plot, often without being braced for what is about to come.

Although the book is set in India and is rich with details about Indian culture, it is by no means esoteric. Roy's writing is too exceptional, the story too heartbreaking and the characters too unforgettable for this book to be limited to any specific readership. After finishing the book, I was left with an importunate urge to go back and re-read it, this time on my own terms, savoring the lyrical prose, this time ready for the twists and turns.

GREAT BOOK
Great Book, I am not going to retell the story or any part of it you wil just have to buy it for yourself to find out, but what a read, I loved it. It was very well written and easy to read, which made it better to follow along.

Review of _The God of Small Things_
Excellent novel for semi-experienced and experienced readers (comp. Toni Morrison's _Sula_, Jean Rhys' _Wide Sargasso Sea_). Poignant, shocking, yet not gross. Beautiful language, mature style. I rate it as one of the 10 top books of my life.