The God of Small Things: A Novel
by Arundhati Roy
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Book Summary Information
Author: Arundhati RoyEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-12-16
ISBN: 0812979656
Number of pages: 352
Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
Book Reviews of The God of Small Things: A Novel
Book Review: It's like if Marquez wrote "Lady Chatterly's Lover"
Summary: 5 Stars
If that doesn't sound appealing to you, this book probably won't be. I've read a number of both the positive and negative reviews on this site and most of them describe the book accurately: Flowery prose, fragmented sentences, non-linear treatment of time, unusual metaphors. If you want to read a book for "information" (as some negative reviewers have implied that they do), then you should read Hemingway instead.
That said, I could hardly put this book down. I almost reread it as soon as I was finished. The author creates a unique new language and lens through which to view the world. While others found the metaphors forced, I found them wonderfully colorful and original and appreciated the opportunity to hear a story told in words I wouldn't have come up with in my own head. I usually prefer more lighthearted stories (when I read fiction at all), but this tragedy is possibly my favorite book I've ever read.
I would summarize by saying that this is a truly great work of literature that definitely has its own distinct character. Readers who enjoy magical realism will probably enjoy it. Readers who prefer a more straightforward or literal read, or who are bothered by solecisms or other violation of literary convention, probably will not. Different strokes.
Summary of The God of Small Things: A Novel
Compared favorably to the works of Faulkner and Dickens, Arundhati Roy?s debut novel is a modern classic that has been read and loved worldwide. Equal parts powerful family saga, forbidden love story, and piercing political drama, it is the story of an affluent Indian family forever changed by one fateful day in 1969. The seven-year-old twins Estha and Rahel see their world shaken irrevokably by the arrival of their beautiful young cousin, Sophie. It is an event that will lead to an illicit liaison and tragedies accidental and intentional, exposing ?big things [that] lurk unsaid? in a country drifting dangerously toward unrest. Lush, lyrical, and unnerving, The God of Small Things is an award-winning landmark that started for its author an esteemed career of fiction and political commentary that continues unabated.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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