The God of Small Things
by Arundhati Roy
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Book Summary Information
Author: Arundhati RoyEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1998-05-01
ISBN: 0060977493
Number of pages: 336
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Book Reviews of The God of Small Things
Book Review: A World-Lit, World-Class Winner
Summary: 5 Stars
This book won the Booker Prize for Literature. And "in my book," it's also a world-class (as well as world-lit) winner, heartbreaking, haunting, and wise.
The main action takes place in India in 1969, but it jumps around in time. As the author put it, the story "begins at the end and ends in the middle." So we know from the beginning that there has been a terrible tragedy that permanently affected the lives of fraternal twins Estha (boy) and Rahel (girl.) The book is about finding out exactly what it was that happened; and how and why it happened.
I guessed most of the answer pretty early on, but I think that was the intent of the author. The book is more about the process than the solution, and she gives the reader plenty of hints, respecting the reader's intelligence and gently guiding him or her to figure out the answer for himself or herself. It's not so much a novel of mystery or suspense as it is one of psychology (of both personality and relationships) and social commentary. Ms. Roy shows enormous insight into her characters and their situation, and while the writing is deceptively lovely and easy to read, The God of Small Things has a great deal of depth.
Some of her insight comes from writing about what she knows. Parts of the story are autobiographical. Arundhati Roy grew up in the same rural town in India where the book is set, and her grandmother really did own and run a pickle factory. A recipe for Banana Jam is included which not only sounds delicious, but also easily doable for the average American cook. (I'm totally fascinated by how the banana puree turns scarlet red as it cooks. I've got to try that!)
Since the reader has already mostly figured out what happened, in a way the big "reveal" scene in which the full tragedy is described in detail, is anti-climactic; and again I feel certain that this is deliberate. It is as if Ms. Roy wants us to focus on the characters - why they each behaved as they did, and how they were affected, rather than the actual events. There are still a couple of surprises coming, though. Yet even with those, one feels less surprise than might be expected. There's a sense of, "Of course - I should have seen that coming." Because although the author hasn't given us any hints about those particular surprises, she has set up a certain subtle and carefully-crafted atmosphere in which such surprising/shocking/awful things become the natural or logical cause (in one case) or consequence (in the other case.) And this ability of hers to hit us with a big surprise while making it seem not all that surprising, is part of Ms. Roy's genius.
The ending is also anti-climactic, and yet again this is clearly the author's intent. Partly this is because the book ends, as she says, in the middle. I think that, after all the tragedy and loss of the the story, she wanted us to leave the book on a note of gentleness, love, and hope.
Social commentary is a strong theme throughout this work. (Arundhati Roy became a social activist after it was published to such acclaim that she was able to wield considerable influence.) As an adjunct to that, the breaking of taboos and the consequences of that are two major story lines. In one, the consequences are terrible. Yet later, an even more pervasive (across many cultures) and powerful taboo is broken without any noticeable consequence. In fact, Roy has prepared the reader so well that the taboo act comes across as natural, appropriate, and even a positive thing for the characters involved. It is a brilliant and thought-provoking juxtaposition.
I was totally charmed by the way this author plays with the English language. She thinks out of the box: breaks the rules in such a way that it makes sense, rather than causing chaos and confusion. She capitalizes certain words against the rules of grammar, as a very successful way of emphasizing them (". . . life was full of Beginnings and no Ends, and Everything was Forever . . . "). She makes up words, often by combining one or more words ("a viable die-able age" "sicksweet", "a Furrywhirring and a Sariflapping", "dullthudding") or by deliberate misspellings ("Infinnate"). The result is a sense of non-native-English-speakers' minds, a foreign perspective and way of thinking; or perhaps the perspective of a child. Either way, that is so fitting for the setting of the book.
And it's much the same as the way she breaks the rules of structure (i.e., rules of chronology, de-emphasizing the climax, letting us guess the answer to the mystery early on, etc.) in ways that work, that beautifully and creatively accomplish what she is trying to do with the book. She's an ultimate example of how someone with a thorough knowledge of the rules can know when and how to break them.
The God of Small Things is an outstanding work of fiction, one that I think fully deserves its award and acclaim. So far it is Ms. Roy's only novel, as she has been occupied in the decade since its publication with social activism. However, the Kindle edition that I read included an interview with the author in which she says that she is now writing a new book. I hope that it is finished and published soon. I would love to read more of her work.
Quotes from The God of Small Things:
"Occasionally, when Ammu listened to songs that she loved on the radio, something stirred inside her. A liquid ache spread under her skin, and she walked out of the world like a witch, to a better, happier place. On days like this there was something restless and untamed about her. As though she had temporarily set aside the morality of motherhood and divorcée-hood. Even her walk changed from a safe mother-walk to another wilder sort of walk. She wore flowers in her hair and carried magic secrets in her eyes. She spoke to no one. She spent hours on the riverbank with her little plastic transistor shaped like a tangerine. She smoked cigarettes and had midnight swims.
What was it that gave Ammu this Unsafe Edge? This air of unpredictability? It was what she had battling inside her. An unmixable mix. The infinite tenderness of motherhood and the reckless rage of the suice bomber."
"He trembled his own body like a man with malaria."
"It is after all so easy to shatter a story. To break a chain of thought. To ruin a fragment of a dream being carried around carefully like a piece of porcelain.
To let it be, to travel with it, as Velutha did, is much the harder thing to do."
"It's true. Things can change in a day."
(321 pages)
Summary of The God of Small Things
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.
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.
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