The God of Small Things

By: Arundhati Roy

Narrated by: Sneha Mathan

Man Booker Prize Winner, 1997

Likened to the works of Faulkner and Dickens when it was first published 20 years ago, this extraordinarily accomplished debut novel is a brilliantly plotted story of forbidden love and piercing political drama, centered on the tragic decline of an Indian family 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.

©1997 Arundhati Roy (P)2017 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Myth and Performance does not expunge colonialism

I want to love this book, but it deprives me, as a reader, of what I wanted most from the author. Beautiful metaphors and words don't assuage the deep grief of cultural repression. Arundhati Roy bends time, mythology and nature like metal in the hands of a jeweler. She makes filigree from social injustice and tragedy with perfect beads of infinite details. Layers upon layers of intimate history melt in a strange crucible, a cauldron, of repressed desires from multiple generations.

I walked away from the book feeling overwhelmed, almost cheated. After reading Joëlle Célérier-Vitasse's article, The Blurring of Frontiers in Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things, in Études anglaises 2008/1 (Vol. 61), I am better equipped to appreciate Roy's masterful novel. I am not, however, any less grief stricken. Kathakali is a highly stylized dance drama performed by an all male company whose characters are dressed with colourful and intricate costumes and display codified and elaborate make-up. It is this mythological drama that underpins the story of fraternal twins Esta & Rahel, their mother Ammu, her lover Velutha, and their extended family network.
https://www.cairn.info/revue-etudes-anglaises-2008-1-page-68.htm#

The drama begins with the death of a cherished, English-Indian cousin, Sophie Mol. Most of the book centers around the grief over a child, but it is a good man's needless & violent death that left me most sad. Interspersed with references to Shakespeare (The Tempest, Julius Cæsar, Macbeth, Anthony and Cleopatra), as well as the theatrical metaphor of Kathakali, The God of Small Things bridges impossible cultural gaps. This is the miracle of Roy's narrative filigree. Everything is made in translation of tragedy between two very different cultures. Unlike the crimson banana jam that Esta stirs, however, no nourishment comes from this melting pot.

I prefer the metaphor of intricate Indian jewelry to fusion cooking as a way of understanding Roy's work. She has crafted a beautiful tiara with the crown jewel characters of Esta, Rahel, Ammu and Velutha. The metal work that surrounds these gems are the snaking vines of family obligation, cultural & religious guilt, which are wound tighter by sociopolitical upheaval. The combs that keep this crown in place bite into the reader's consciousness, bending to the point of breaking what seem to be universal laws. Roy calls them The Love Laws, codes that decide who is loved, how they are loved and in what quantity.

Célérier-Vitasse's argues in her article that The God of Small Things, "reveals a new possibility of breaking in the realm of artistic creativity and freeing people from neocolonial domination." Reading Roy's book in 2020, (more than 20 years after it was written) I would like to think that we are all headed toward a "pursuit of some more positive and constructive globalization", but I'm not sure humanity is capable.

Innocence lost

Beautifully written story of innocence lost, portrayed so vividly that I could almost hear, smell and taste the scenes.

This book has me both excited and confused.

Okay so listening to the audiobook had me want to keep going to a text which did not exist. The fact that the book is not in sequential order made it an poor choice as an audiobook. I enjoyed it overall.

Too Much Work

I found the author’s overly verbose writing style, in combination with the difficult names of the characters, made for a very tough read. Too much work for my taste.

one of my favorite books

Soft, lyrical, sad. a beautiful book. uplifting, a good study of human nature and the human heart.