Reviews tagging 'Death of parent'

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

43 reviews

cheyneflynn's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

It was beautiful but sometimes I got lost in it. The writing style was great and it’s unlike any plot I’ve read. However it’s essence did resemble The Idiot, I’m still trying to grasp onto that nature of storytelling. I would reread, I think if I could sit with it for longer than the period I was given (ticking of my uni booklist) the rating would be higher. Parts of it made me sick, check the warnings.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Violence, Physical abuse, Death of parent, Child death, Pedophilia, Sexual assault, Domestic abuse, Death, and Classism

jellyparfum's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Blood, Murder, Pedophilia, Police brutality, Sexism, Sexual assault, Death, Hate crime, Animal death, Emotional abuse, Rape, Religious bigotry, Toxic relationship, Excrement, Fatphobia, Misogyny, Violence, Classism, Colonisation, Gore, Incest, Abandonment, Body shaming, Child abuse, Child death, Death of parent, and Sexual violence

marisacarpico's review against another edition

challenging dark mysterious sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

Wasn’t connecting with this for most of it, but found the last 15 or so pages incredibly effective. I’ve not liked stream of consciousness for nearly 2 decades at this point and this didn’t change my mind. Lots of repetition here that didn’t work for me. Often found certain imagery effective the first time and rage-inducing 100x in. Probably deliberate on some level, but made this less of a stimulating read than I was hoping.

That said there are certain descriptions that were striking in their beauty or specificity. A description of a house as being like a sunken thing near the end especially made me pause. Mostly, though, the language is in service of a sort of grotesquery, a bluntness about life that’s as impossible to deny away from as what happens here.

I guessed the central family secret incorrectly (though it’s perhaps more accurate to say I placed it in the wrong part of the story), but the eventual reveal is such a powerful mix of both tragedy and cultural/historical specificity. And those last chapters are a big part of what give that central trauma and the surprisingly beautiful note. The books ends on its impact.

I will say, though I still don’t like stream of consciousness from moment to moment, I do think the structure here is astounding. Not just the way it ends, but the whole theater-going section, for instance, or they way things just build and build so that when everything is revealed, it all feels so inevitable, all of it flowing brilliantly from the characters and world Roy has shown us.

Truly, I did not enjoy the act of reading this book almost at all, but I certainly can’t deny the craft.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Pedophilia, Vomit, Violence, Emotional abuse, Domestic abuse, Death of parent, Sexual assault, Police brutality, Racism, Physical abuse, Injury/Injury detail, Excrement, Death, and Classism

Moderate: Sexual content, Misogyny, Grief, Murder, and Incest

abhix's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Pedophilia, Violence, and Death of parent

aga89's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child death, Incest, Pedophilia, and Sexual assault

Moderate: Abandonment, Racial slurs, Death of parent, and Xenophobia

sunny_not's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional reflective sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.75

It was very dark, brutal and hard hitting. I think that you should be in the mind space to read this to be able to read this since the content warnings list is very long. Also the language was very poetic which was nice most of the time but sometimes it made this quite hard to read. Overall a really important piece of literature but I really wished there wouldn't be incest in this... 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Toxic relationship, Child abuse, Child death, Classism, Physical abuse, Racism, Sexual assault, Toxic friendship, Alcoholism, Emotional abuse, Grief, Sexual content, Sexual harassment, Sexual violence, Homophobia, Death, Death of parent, Gaslighting, Pregnancy, Incest, Abandonment, Alcohol, Domestic abuse, and Pedophilia

aaronjdilkes's review against another edition

dark emotional mysterious tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexism, Sexual assault, Racism, Infidelity, Ableism, Police brutality, Death, Racial slurs, Misogyny, Death of parent, Incest, Physical abuse, Grief, Domestic abuse, and Child death

courfee's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad medium-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

4.25

The writing style is absolutely gorgeous, and Roy handled the themes with the painful beauty of the scars they leave. I would give 5-stars if the descriptions weren't so wrapped up in metaphor that it's difficult to understand what's actually happening.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Physical abuse, Violence, Rape, Death of parent, Grief, and Murder

Moderate: Death of parent and Blood

Minor: Child death

astridrv's review against another edition

emotional mysterious reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

What a complicated and impactful book. First of all, I adore the writing. Heads over heels with the way Arundhati Roy describes atmosphere, places, people, gazes, interactions, and all the tiniest details of the world is so vivid, refreshing, and colorful. I was there, I felt some sentences go straight to my heart. She also writes stunningly about childhood and brotherhood. As for the story: it meanders through different periods of time, mainly between a present family reunion and a traumatic series of events from the past. The end unfolds really well in pacing, after the many detours taken earlier on. I am not sure I understood everything, and this book certainly isn't for everyone. But the thing is, when you write this well, you can take me anywhere and I will follow. I look forward to rereading this.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Abandonment, Death, Death of parent, Grief, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Pedophilia, Racism, Sexual violence, Terminal illness, Violence, Blood, and Child abuse

Minor: Incest

jocelynh's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

This is one of those books that felt healthy but deeply unpleasant to read.

Starting with the minor complaints, the extremely frequent word concatenation for the kids' POVs drove me a little crazy. "Steelshrill," "chinskin," "trainrumble," "carbreeze," "greentrees," and "daymoon" are only some of the ones in chapter 2, and it keeps going from there.

There's also a bit of overreliance on simile and metaphor. It takes a long time for Roy to get to the main thrust of any scene, and I get the mild impression that Roy came up with a bunch of these turns of phrase and couldn't bear to edit any of them out, so they tend to clash overall. For example, we have:

The gray sky curdled and the clouds resolved themselves into little lumps, like substandard mattress stuffing.

Less than a paragraph later, there's:

Raindrops slid across the curved bottom of the rusted gutter on the edge of the roof, like shining beads on an abacus.

I wish they were at least thematically consistent; all the different imagery gave me whiplash. Some others are just bizarre:

The silence gathered its skirts and slid, like Spider Woman, up the slippery bathroom wall.

I will grant that she takes so much time with these, and with describing scenes in general, that the settings and events are extremely vivid. It felt almost like I was there, seeing, smelling, feeling, and hearing everything. Whether or not every detail (e.g. the formations of mosquitoes, or the personal histories of characters we never hear of again) is needed is perhaps more of a subjective call.

About 90% of the book is spent as exposition circling and leading up to the central event, and though we learn a lot about the characters and the cultural context, the writing (see above) makes it feel like a slog.

The God of Small Things is a somewhat long-winded and extremely emotionally ugly story, and that combination makes it a miserable read. Everyone suffers, no one is ever really happy except in a bitter, spiteful, gloating way.

It's a disgusting tale told in a poetic way. I think it's a very useful and culturally informative tale and I'm glad I read it as someone who isn't very familiar with Indian cultural biases, but I can't say I really enjoyed the journey.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Death, Death of parent, Child death, Sexual harassment, Violence, Child abuse, Domestic abuse, Injury/Injury detail, Misogyny, Police brutality, and Incest