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3.94 AVERAGE
3.94 AVERAGE
I think Roy invented a new language just for this book. It's marvelous. So much joy in the details, the textures of things.
not for me. not chronological and I was lost of who was alive and what time where the characters.
4.5 stars
This story of two siblings living in Kerala, India and how an incident unravels the childhood they had made for themselves within a dysfunctional family, has been in my tbr for ages and I finally got around to reading it and man do I not like the choices past-me has been making. THIS BOOK IS EVERYTHING.
First and foremost, it's without a doubt a beautifully written story - Arundhati Roy has a way with words that few others have. Her writing is the kind that will leave all other books I read after this, with something inexplicably missing. But the best part of the book is how she crafted the story, time looses meaning where we get glimpses of the past, the present and the future all interspersed together to reveal the story (or the history) at the centre of it all. It took a while for me to get used to it, but I think the purpose it served was worth the confusion.
What I loved the most about this book, however, was how effortlessly Arundhati Roy describes all facets of life in South Asia, how unforgiving she is with the details. She leaves nothing: the beauty, the ugliness, the disgusting and the delightful everything, every feeling however fleeting has been put into words within these 300 something pages.
“He didn’t know that in some places, like the country that Rahel came from, various kinds of despair competed for primacy. And that personal despair could never be desperate enough.”
This one passage will possibly keep me up at night for a long time to come - how deftly she explained this feeling that one carries around. Every page in ‘The God of Small Things’ feels like seeing your thoughts laid bare. The book is set in 1969 Kerala India and yet even today I feel understood in ways that I don’t have words for.
And let me end this little review with an excerpt from the book that I think really sums it all up:
“Nothing mattered much. Nothing much mattered. And the less it mattered, the less it mattered. It was never important enough. Because Worse Things had happened. In the country that she came from, poised forever between the terror of war and the horror of peace, Worse Things kept happening.”
This story of two siblings living in Kerala, India and how an incident unravels the childhood they had made for themselves within a dysfunctional family, has been in my tbr for ages and I finally got around to reading it and man do I not like the choices past-me has been making. THIS BOOK IS EVERYTHING.
First and foremost, it's without a doubt a beautifully written story - Arundhati Roy has a way with words that few others have. Her writing is the kind that will leave all other books I read after this, with something inexplicably missing. But the best part of the book is how she crafted the story, time looses meaning where we get glimpses of the past, the present and the future all interspersed together to reveal the story (or the history) at the centre of it all. It took a while for me to get used to it, but I think the purpose it served was worth the confusion.
What I loved the most about this book, however, was how effortlessly Arundhati Roy describes all facets of life in South Asia, how unforgiving she is with the details. She leaves nothing: the beauty, the ugliness, the disgusting and the delightful everything, every feeling however fleeting has been put into words within these 300 something pages.
“He didn’t know that in some places, like the country that Rahel came from, various kinds of despair competed for primacy. And that personal despair could never be desperate enough.”
This one passage will possibly keep me up at night for a long time to come - how deftly she explained this feeling that one carries around. Every page in ‘The God of Small Things’ feels like seeing your thoughts laid bare. The book is set in 1969 Kerala India and yet even today I feel understood in ways that I don’t have words for.
And let me end this little review with an excerpt from the book that I think really sums it all up:
“Nothing mattered much. Nothing much mattered. And the less it mattered, the less it mattered. It was never important enough. Because Worse Things had happened. In the country that she came from, poised forever between the terror of war and the horror of peace, Worse Things kept happening.”
challenging
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence
Moderate: Child abuse, Child death, Domestic abuse, Incest, Racism, Vomit, Religious bigotry, Abandonment
challenging
dark
emotional
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Beauty of The God of Small things is in it's non linear narrative. You know what's gonna hit you. And it just adds up the burden just because we know what's gonna happen.
The epitome of Roy's prose is at the last chapter. Ironically she had to face obscenity charges for the same. And when it ends with the last word "tomorrow" it just made a hole in my universe which will haunt me for a very long time.
The epitome of Roy's prose is at the last chapter. Ironically she had to face obscenity charges for the same. And when it ends with the last word "tomorrow" it just made a hole in my universe which will haunt me for a very long time.
This book was fascinating and excellently written. It captured the strangeness of childhood as well as the violence enacted by hatred quite well, and most interestingly, the magic- both good and bad- of love which "breaks the love laws". And all with a beautiful nonlinear style that works. One nitpick: if I never have to hear the phrase "with her Fountain in a Love-in-Tokyo" again, it'll be too soon. Roy is definitely way into repeating phrases. But other than that, very good.
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Gorgeous. Perfect. Like heartbreaking poetry. So good I had to read it twice in a row.
challenging
dark
slow-paced
The pacing and the time jumps made this tough for me.