The God of Small Things

I really wanted to like this book more than I did. This was a book chosen for my monthly book club and I was quite happy that it was chosen because it had been sitting on my shelf for quite some time, without me having given it a second glance whenever I'd go to pick out something to read.

The God of Small Things is about Indian twins, Rahil and Estha, who learn that their whole world can change in a day. It's a story about love - namely, the "laws of love."

Arundhati Roy is a magnificent writer. The whole story was written so beautifully, lyrically and poetic. Had I not been on a deadline to finish the book, I would have slowed down considerably in my reading to really take in the text. Roy plays with words, rhyming them, stretching them, flipping them backwards. She capitalizes certain ideas or phrases to give them meaning, and relies on foreshadowing - a whole mess of foreshadowing - to tell her story.

I really liked how, at the beginning of the story, the reader knows - to an extent - what happened. We don't know the details, but we know something is up. The rest of the novel is the story unfolding through the eyes of a child. It's disjointed and slightly confusing at times, but Roy does a good job of using repetition to hone in on certain important details. I read the whole novel only feeling a little confused, which isn't what I expected when I first started reading.

The characters are so well outlined, that it was so easy to love the twins and to hate their "baby aunt" Baby Kochamma. There was politics mentioned throughout the novel, which I understood the basics of, but probably not the full extent of it. Roy's main theme, as mentioned above, is love and the "laws of love," which outline who citizens of certain castes are to love - and how much.

While it feels like I'm praising the novel extensively, I'm not going to say this is going in the archives as one of my favourites. I appreciated what Roy was doing with her story, but it wasn't the story that I loved - it was the writing of it. I loved the poetic quality of it, how certain phrases or sentences or paragraphs rolled off the tongue in a rhythm all their own. This isn't something that's normally seen in novels, so it was nice to read something different.

Of course, the whole novel isn't wonderful poetry, beautiful descriptions, and the upside of love. In fact, the book is quite dark and there are some very dark themes throughout - most of which will make readers cringe. The thing that got me was that the novel was so dark, but I wasn't left feeling sorrowful after it was over. I wasn't left feeling elated and high in spirits, but it wasn't a story that dragged me down.

If you're looking to read a wonderfully-written classic novel, read The God of Small Things. If anything, the words will take your breath away.

Loved this book. Could not put it down. It was touching, emotional, powerful, author's attention to detail is simply amazing. The book has layers after layers, wrapped with enough twists and turns to keep you hooked.

Like most things written by Arundati Roy; The God of Small Things has a personal motive for her. It is really as denunciation of the times in which we live. Ms. Roy is a true activist and this book plays to that aspect of her life and her denunciation of the times we live in. In the book there are many examples of Ms. Roy's denunciation of our times and each one is significant in its own way and its own meaning. In The God of Small Things, Roy explores the ideas of the caste system, love and who should be loved and how much, along with many other issues of Indian society; these are the big things in society and the things that are most focussed on. But, the real direction of this book is seen in the small things, which is referred to as "the whisper and scurry of small lives" often ignored or overshadowed; like promises, secrets and our emotional lives. The caste system in this case is what over shadows them and crushes them into the corners of our lives, as silent as the dead.
A great example of Roy's denunciation of her times is: "She arrived on the Bombay-Cochin flight, hated, bellbottomed and Loved from the very beginning." She is referring to Sophie Mol; Chacko's half white English daughter. She is loved simply because she is white and she is from England, while Estha and Rahel are from India and are brown. Because of this they are on a lower level of the caste system then Sophie Mol. That is why she is hated. Roy tries to show just how far reaching the caste system is in the fact that it is enforced upon the children by adults. The caste system breaths its cold breath on the children throughout their lives, reminding them of their place; reminding them that their not wanted. Rachel and Estha naturally seem to have a more modern view of things and therefore hate Sophie Mol. It was the best of times; it was the worst of times for them, as they both carry a burden; one that they constantly remember throughout the book. This is a little bit of Roy's own denunciation of the times coming out in the characters of Rahel and Estha. For every new road the two of them go down there's always a new rut.
My favourite part of Ms. Roys writing is how she uses colourful imagery to pass on the message of the characters lives and to set the tone of the book. Every line has its own heartbeat, its own meaning. One of the best lines that really denounces our times and sets the stage is ""May in Ayemenem is a hot, brooding month. The days are long and humid. The river shrinks and black crows gorge on bright mangoes in still, dust green trees. Red bananas ripen. Jackfruits burst. Dissolute bluebottles hum vacuously in the fruity air. Then they stun themselves against clear window panes and die, fatly baffled in the sun."" This piece is in my opinion an obvious denunciation of our times, in the idea that most things in our time exist in beauty only to be smacked, dead in an instant; stunned in a reality that is not so beautiful. Roy uses this piece to establish a beautiful not so black and white picture for the reader that ultimately is destroyed by things beyond its control. This is in relation to the caste system which in India is beyond the control of those at the bottom; represented in the character of Velutha. Velutha, often explained as being a very good looking man; beautiful, like the above quote; only to be beaten to death in the end because of the caste system. Another amazing quote that really establishes the above stated ideas is when Rahel imagines the ceiling-painter dying on the floor after falling from the church ceiling, "blood spilling from his skull like a secret." Later on in the book we see that this is Roy's for shadowing to the death of Velutha. Ultimately his death is allowed so as to protect the big thing of 'who should be loved and how much", an idea sprung from the caste system. The blood is the secret and it carries its message from heart to head to concrete floor; a denunciation of our times. Roy shows us that the people like Baby Kochama purposely prostitute the idea of the caste system for personal benefit. In the end Baby Kochama simply wanted to have the house all to herself.
Ultimately the caste system can only lead to the destruction of the most natural things in life such as love; this is why Roy denounces it so strongly in this book. As long as there is injustice in the world literature; fictive and non fictive will denounce it, as Arudhati Roy has the caste system, in the God of Small Things. A caste system is just a contorted form of beneficial discrimination which leads me to my final statements borrowed from a great man whom like Roy spoke out against inequalities. "We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools." -Martin Luther King Jr.

This novel is written in a stream-of-consciousness form, from the innocent perspective of fraternal twins as yet untainted by the class and sexual politics of their day in India. The writing is highly original and delightful, vaguely comparable to that of Catcher in the Rye (Salinger). The story, which ends in a cruel and irretrievable loss of innocence for the twins, as well as the writing style of Roy, make this by far the best novel I have read this year.