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3.57 AVERAGE
3.57 AVERAGE
No início, parece a história de Anjum, uma mulher presa num corpo de homem. Mas depois são muitas histórias dentro de uma história que anda para a frente e para trás tantas vezes que quase perdemos o norte. A história da Índia, a guerra Indo-Paquistanesa, uma Índia corrupta, violenta e miserável por pessoas corruptas, violentas e miseráveis. Algumas pessoas boas. De repente, a história que são muitas histórias adquire uma segunda parte. Entra uma nova personagem principal, Tilo, que traz consigo mais personagens secundárias e as suas histórias de amor, traição, patriotismo. A sorte é estar extremamente bem escrito e o fio que une cada história é subhistoria não se perder. As últimas 40 páginas são, ao contrário do que esperava, o bote de salvação das anteriores 400. Talvez só por isso apenas não tenha odiado. Só não gostei muito. O Deus das Pequenas Coisas perdeu-se na sua procura pela felicidade suprema. É pena. Ou talvez um problema de 20 anos de expectativas.
Began very interesting with an exciting hermaphrodite main character living in South Asia through times of great political upheaval between India and Pakistan, but there was no plot - very confusing time jumps and characters introduced haphazardly- became totally unenjoyable to read. One main character randomly adopts his name as Saddam Hussein and every time his name came up in the book - it threw me - thinking she was mentioning the historical villain, rather than the hapless friend in the story. One star given for the beginning.
so here's the thing: i love Roy's non-fiction works. i also usually like it when books have thinly-veiled fictionalized political contexts. of course, i also compared this to the god of small things.
however, this was kind of unnecessary. maybe the audience for this book is not me, because i really would have liked to read Roy's actual thoughts about the "events" in the book. right now, it's so convoluted and all over the place, that i just didn't enjoy it. there's just no plot or character depth. it zooms out so much that it really should have been an essay collection. i mean, if this book was written by literally anyone else i would have a harsher criticism of it, and maybe i'm not smart enough to understand all the nuances of this book.
however, this was kind of unnecessary. maybe the audience for this book is not me, because i really would have liked to read Roy's actual thoughts about the "events" in the book. right now, it's so convoluted and all over the place, that i just didn't enjoy it. there's just no plot or character depth. it zooms out so much that it really should have been an essay collection. i mean, if this book was written by literally anyone else i would have a harsher criticism of it, and maybe i'm not smart enough to understand all the nuances of this book.
This is a difficult one to summarize my opinion on.
First, I do love Roy's way with words, her whimsical asides, her willingness to switch up the style and voice of her writing. And in the end, I did like the story and grew attached to (some of) the characters.
That said, there were points at which I felt like the plot was getting lost, that characters were getting confused, and that the whole thing was altogether *too much*.
So I'd say a solid 3.5 stars, rounding up here because my final feeling as I turned to the last page was that of appreciation for the book rather than frustration with it.
First, I do love Roy's way with words, her whimsical asides, her willingness to switch up the style and voice of her writing. And in the end, I did like the story and grew attached to (some of) the characters.
That said, there were points at which I felt like the plot was getting lost, that characters were getting confused, and that the whole thing was altogether *too much*.
So I'd say a solid 3.5 stars, rounding up here because my final feeling as I turned to the last page was that of appreciation for the book rather than frustration with it.
As enjoyable as you would expect a literary epic to be, I haven’t a clue what it was about! That’s 10 days of my life I’ll never get back.
I LOVED the god of small things. This is nothing like that, as I’m sure Roy’s influences have changed. This book was not what I expected and let the politics drive the story instead of the other way around. Her first book was so rich with visuals and sensory experiences that I was disappointed in the approach she took with this one.
This novel takes patience, determination and concentration (plus Wikipedia open on the side for reference). I felt that Roy was trying to do too many things at once in this book. I loved it in parts, while I found other parts confusing and/or tedious, and the quality f the writing varied considerably. Nonetheless, I felt that my perseverance was rewarded. Even though it didn't completely succeed for me as a novel, it taught me a great deal about the complex politics of India and reinforced my perceptions of the sub-continent as a chaotic melting-pot of cultures.
Somewhere I read a review of this book that talked about letting Roy’s prose just wash over you and enjoy her writing/story telling - which is beautiful. It was sometimes hard to track the jumps in time - especially when listening to audio book - but I still found this to be a remarkable set of tales and intertwined lives set across years of Indian history and chronicling some of Roy’s favorite themes.
Indian summer: if Harper Lee writes with the vigilant self-control that enables her to create a taut spider’s web of nearly invisible threads, Arundhati Roy creates a rook’s nest that shouldn’t, by rights, be able to stay aloft. Somehow it does, perhaps due to the god of small things, or the anger underlying the farcical. And anger is, sometimes, a beautiful if difficult thing. I can’t pretend to understand the maelstrom of politics on the subcontinent and this is no primer, but it’s universal in any case - a good book for times when the world seems determined on multiple acts of self-sabotage - see, for instance, the tiresome talking head, “another guest, a retired, geriatric army general...was trundled out regularly by TV studios to supply venom and stupidity to all discussions.” Sounds familiar?
Trite solutions - the woke generation - are given similar short shrift, such as the torture-enjoying female officer who receives an inviting text: “ ‘Let’s unite on international yoga day for poolside candlelight yoga and meditation’....She tapped out a reply: ‘please, let’s not.’ “ Quite right too, madam.
As the generations relentlessly make the same mistakes and one brand of tiresome religious/nationalist hypocrisy is replaced by another, there’s a momentary pause as the Hijras consider whether accessible and better surgical treatments and swifter transitioning making their kind obsolete is a totally good thing. History, it would seem, is a revelation of the future as much as a study of the past - if you can tie all the threads together...
Trite solutions - the woke generation - are given similar short shrift, such as the torture-enjoying female officer who receives an inviting text: “ ‘Let’s unite on international yoga day for poolside candlelight yoga and meditation’....She tapped out a reply: ‘please, let’s not.’ “ Quite right too, madam.
As the generations relentlessly make the same mistakes and one brand of tiresome religious/nationalist hypocrisy is replaced by another, there’s a momentary pause as the Hijras consider whether accessible and better surgical treatments and swifter transitioning making their kind obsolete is a totally good thing. History, it would seem, is a revelation of the future as much as a study of the past - if you can tie all the threads together...
Brilliant, awful, tender and terrifying: Arundhati Roy writes beautifully about horrors.