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Plot Summary: This highly stylized novel tells the story of one very fractured family from Aymanam, Kerala. Through flashbacks and flash forwards. Rahel ahend Estha are fraternal twins whose emotional connection to one another is stronger than that of most siblings. As though they were a rare breed of Siamese twins, physically separate, but with joint identities. Now, years later, Rahel has a memory of waking up one night giggling at Estha’s funny dream. Their childhood household hums with hidden antagonisms and pains that only family members can give one another. Blind Mammachi, the twins’ grandmother is a widow who suffered years of abuse at the hands of her highly respected husband, and who has a fierce one-sided Oedipal connection with her son, Chacko. Baby Kochamma, Rahel and Estha’s grandaunt, nurses deep-seated bitterness for a lifetime of unrequited love, a bitterness that plays out slyly against everyone in the family; in her youth she fell in love with an Irish Roman-Catholic priest and converted to his faith to win him, while he eventually converted to Hinduism. Chacko, divorced from his English wife and separated from his daughter since her infancy, runs the pickle factory with a capitalist’s hand, self-deluding himself all the while that he is a Communist at heart even as he flirts with and beds his female employees. Ammu, the twins’ mother, is a divorcee who fled her husband’s alcoholism and impossible demands, a woman with a streak of wildness that the children sense and dread and that will be her and her family’s undoing. The family’s tragedy revolves around the visit of Chacko’s ex-wife, widowed by her second husband, and his daughter, Sophie Mol. It is within the context of their visit that Estha will experience the one horrible thing that should never happen to a child, during their visit that Ammu will come to love by night the man the children love by day, and during their visit that Sophie Mol will die. Her death, and the fate of the twins’ beloved Untouchable Velutha, will forever alter the course of the lives of all the members of the family, sending them each off on spinning trajectories of regret and pain. The story reveals itself not in traditional narrative order, but in jumps through time, wending its way through Rahel’s memories and attempts at understanding the hand fate dealt her family. The God of Small Things unfolds the secrets of these characters’ unhappiness. Arundhati Roy twists and reshapes language to create an arresting, startling sort of precision. The average reader of mainstream fiction may have a tough time working through Roy’s prose, but those with a more literary bent to their usual fiction inclinations should find the initial struggle through the dense prose a worthy price for this lushly tragic tale. In a nut shell - it was an attempt to write something that was told before in simple language (by authors like Kamala Das) by giving a different flavor altogether. For me it is a forced literary gimmick at the expense of readability. If you want to crack nuts then go for "Ulysses" - Atleast it's worth cracking !!Read full review
Caution: This story should be rated PG-13 for some of the content within its pages. Also, please be prepared to give the story multiple readings. Reading the novel through once will do the understanding of the story any justice. If you have a hard with child deaths, or childhood sexual trauma, you may want to reconsider reading it. But overall, this really makes you think that about how everyone in the world no matter their cultural background is not so different from yourself.
This story is extremely well written. Roy has mastered the art of storytelling, and it shows in this tale of two children and their lives in India. She does a great job of weaving native customs and tradition, politics and civil unrest into the fabric of the story. While reading this story, before you know it, you will have learned something, you will have felt something, you will have changed somehow. I like this story because it is the same story that minorities face in America-racism, elitism, and betrayal, and the many ways that family can influence these issues. It gave me a broader perspective on the whole light/dark, white/black color issue. Color bias is not an American issue, it is a world issue, as brought home in this story. I bought this book because I wanted to share the story, but not to part with my own copy! It was that good.Read full review
The God of Small Things is truly one of my favorite books. It takes place in India and addresses some uncomfortable things about the developing world, as well as offering some history, a love story and a mystery. The author also won the Booker prize for this novel. I highly recommend it.
This is one of the best books I have ever read. I have read many books. Roy plays the language like a fine instrument. Her style makes for a wonderfully delightful, creative and incisive handling of disturbing subject matter. I have bought several copies online and sent them to friends to read. Highly recommended!
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