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3.57 AVERAGE
3.57 AVERAGE
Question 1: Why did this book receive so much recognition and so many awards?
A. It was riding on the coattails of 'The God of Small Things'. The author's long awaited (20 years), second novel.
B. The colorful characters and prose outweighed a barely recognizable story line.
C. To promote the art of ennui, of enduring as well as inflicting boredom.
D. All of the above
Question 2: Why did I not only pick up, but resolve to finish this book?
A. It had won all sorts of awards, including being on the list of GoodReads best books of 2017, and happened to be available to check out via my audio library.
B. G-A-R-S-O-N H-O-B-A-R-T
C. Once started, I find it difficult to abandon something that obviously took much time and energy to create.
D. All of the above.
Question 3: Why does this book have the word 'Happiness' in the title?
Seriously, why? There is so little happiness in this book. The setting is (mostly) in the Kashmir valley during the seemingly unending conflict between Indian Hindus and Pakistani Muslims. Well, the Kashmir valley, and graveyards. Not a whole lot of happiness there. Actually, it is there, but it really takes some effort to dig out.
I really wanted to like this book. It seemed like every time I took a brief break from it, it would take me even longer to get back into it. Or every time I felt excited about where the story was going, the author would go on some wild tangent that (to this hillbilly anyways) had nothing to do with the story, and all I wanted was to get back to it. Was there nobody she trusted to edit her story, and whack these insignificant reveries out? Ugh. Despite my complaints, there were points where the prose was brilliantly silky and sweet (perhaps a folksy Ta Nehisi Coates?), hence my 2 star (maybe 2.5) rating, and gives me a reason to still pick up 'The God of Small Things'. I imagine you could pick an intriguing quote off of nearly any page. Here's a few examples:
"Normality in our part of the world is a bit like a boiled egg. Its humdrum surface conceals at its heart a yolk of egregious violence. It is our constant anxiety about that violence, our memory of its past labors, and our dread of its future manifestations that lays down the rules for how a people as complex and as diverse as we are continue to coexist. Continue to live together, tolerate each other and, from time to time, murder one another. As long as the center holds, as long as the yolk doesn't run, we'll be fine. In moments of crisis, it helps to take the long view."
"If you'll pardon me for making this somewhat prosaic observation: Maybe that's what life is, or ends up being most of the time. A rehearsal for a performance that never really materializes."
"He refined the art of merging into the background, of disappearing in a crowd, of mumbling and dissembling, of burying the secrets he knew so deep that he forgot he knew them. He learned the art of ennui, of enduring as well as inflicting boredom. He hardly ever spoke. At night, fed up with the regime of silence, his organs murmured to each other in the language of night crickets. His spleen contacted his kidney. His pancreas whispered across the silent void to his lungs: Hello. Can you hear me? Are you still there?"
"Mussa's soft laugh was full of affection for the foibles of his people. She had always loved that about him. The way he belonged so completely to a people whom he loved and laughed at, complained about and swore at, but never separated himself from. Maybe she loved it because she herself didn't, couldn't, think of anybody as her people. Except perhaps for the two dogs that arrived at 6AM sharp, in the little park outside her house where she fed them. And the hobos she drank tea with at the tea stall..."
"How to tell a shattered story. By slowly becoming everybody. No, by slowly becoming everything."
The last quote quite nearly sums up my overall feeling about the motives of this book.
A. It was riding on the coattails of 'The God of Small Things'. The author's long awaited (20 years), second novel.
B. The colorful characters and prose outweighed a barely recognizable story line.
C. To promote the art of ennui, of enduring as well as inflicting boredom.
D. All of the above
Question 2: Why did I not only pick up, but resolve to finish this book?
A. It had won all sorts of awards, including being on the list of GoodReads best books of 2017, and happened to be available to check out via my audio library.
B. G-A-R-S-O-N H-O-B-A-R-T
C. Once started, I find it difficult to abandon something that obviously took much time and energy to create.
D. All of the above.
Question 3: Why does this book have the word 'Happiness' in the title?
Seriously, why? There is so little happiness in this book. The setting is (mostly) in the Kashmir valley during the seemingly unending conflict between Indian Hindus and Pakistani Muslims. Well, the Kashmir valley, and graveyards. Not a whole lot of happiness there. Actually, it is there, but it really takes some effort to dig out.
I really wanted to like this book. It seemed like every time I took a brief break from it, it would take me even longer to get back into it. Or every time I felt excited about where the story was going, the author would go on some wild tangent that (to this hillbilly anyways) had nothing to do with the story, and all I wanted was to get back to it. Was there nobody she trusted to edit her story, and whack these insignificant reveries out? Ugh. Despite my complaints, there were points where the prose was brilliantly silky and sweet (perhaps a folksy Ta Nehisi Coates?), hence my 2 star (maybe 2.5) rating, and gives me a reason to still pick up 'The God of Small Things'. I imagine you could pick an intriguing quote off of nearly any page. Here's a few examples:
"Normality in our part of the world is a bit like a boiled egg. Its humdrum surface conceals at its heart a yolk of egregious violence. It is our constant anxiety about that violence, our memory of its past labors, and our dread of its future manifestations that lays down the rules for how a people as complex and as diverse as we are continue to coexist. Continue to live together, tolerate each other and, from time to time, murder one another. As long as the center holds, as long as the yolk doesn't run, we'll be fine. In moments of crisis, it helps to take the long view."
"If you'll pardon me for making this somewhat prosaic observation: Maybe that's what life is, or ends up being most of the time. A rehearsal for a performance that never really materializes."
"He refined the art of merging into the background, of disappearing in a crowd, of mumbling and dissembling, of burying the secrets he knew so deep that he forgot he knew them. He learned the art of ennui, of enduring as well as inflicting boredom. He hardly ever spoke. At night, fed up with the regime of silence, his organs murmured to each other in the language of night crickets. His spleen contacted his kidney. His pancreas whispered across the silent void to his lungs: Hello. Can you hear me? Are you still there?"
"Mussa's soft laugh was full of affection for the foibles of his people. She had always loved that about him. The way he belonged so completely to a people whom he loved and laughed at, complained about and swore at, but never separated himself from. Maybe she loved it because she herself didn't, couldn't, think of anybody as her people. Except perhaps for the two dogs that arrived at 6AM sharp, in the little park outside her house where she fed them. And the hobos she drank tea with at the tea stall..."
"How to tell a shattered story. By slowly becoming everybody. No, by slowly becoming everything."
The last quote quite nearly sums up my overall feeling about the motives of this book.
I wanted and expected to love this book. I like Roy’s writing and speaking a lot. I couldn’t finish it, just got lost in the weeds of details and couldn’t follow the plot.
Incredible. Arundhati Roy outdid herself. Oof the ending... I won't tell you more because I do not want to spoil it. lets just say now I have a deep desire to study my mother tongue Telugu and read up on a forgotten history on a landscape that I call my home.
I really enjoyed The God Of Small Things, but this was really tough to get through. I think it was probably a combination of my lack of knowledge of the history of the events in the book (Kasmir), and the large cast of characters.
For me, the reading experience was 3-3.5 stars, but I recognize that in my mental state my mind just couldn't reach the capacities needed to enjoy this novel in the way it is meant to be enjoyed. I will have to read it again - perhaps in Finnish, if the translation is as good as the language in this book deserves.
Yes, I mixed up the names, and what happened to whom, and who was dead and who was not, and why and by whom. I had no prior knowledge of the Kashmir situation. I mean, none at all. I knew they have wool there. So all the information came fast to an unexpected reader, but that's totally my fault for being ignorant. It made me think about the course I'm taking at uni at the moment, Ethics and Fiction, and about how this novel might at least have the effect of making me google Kashmir and find out a little bit about the conflict. I don't know if that is an ethical thing in any way, but it might make me consider ethical questions, as this novel did.
I was thrilled to have a hijra character open up the story, and (in my opinion) act as a focus point in the story world. The differences on thinking about gender in older and younger generations of hijra/transgender people were interesting, though not the main theme of the novel, I feel. Roy apparently based Anjum's character on a real person called Mona Ahmed, and made use of work done by Dayanita Singh when researching. I have not read any commentaries by any hijra on Roy's novel, but I'd be interested in doing so. At least for now, the subject of discussion when talking about the novel seems to have been mostly its structure, and the discussion has been happening mostly in the literary sphere.
Recommended: to people who can handle challenging structures and/or are not bothered if they sometimes don't know who a character is talking about. Also, contains a lot of violence, also sexual. But it rewards you with insights, and poetry, and moments when all is held together for a while before it crumbles to pieces again.
Yes, I mixed up the names, and what happened to whom, and who was dead and who was not, and why and by whom. I had no prior knowledge of the Kashmir situation. I mean, none at all. I knew they have wool there. So all the information came fast to an unexpected reader, but that's totally my fault for being ignorant. It made me think about the course I'm taking at uni at the moment, Ethics and Fiction, and about how this novel might at least have the effect of making me google Kashmir and find out a little bit about the conflict. I don't know if that is an ethical thing in any way, but it might make me consider ethical questions, as this novel did.
I was thrilled to have a hijra character open up the story, and (in my opinion) act as a focus point in the story world. The differences on thinking about gender in older and younger generations of hijra/transgender people were interesting, though not the main theme of the novel, I feel. Roy apparently based Anjum's character on a real person called Mona Ahmed, and made use of work done by Dayanita Singh when researching. I have not read any commentaries by any hijra on Roy's novel, but I'd be interested in doing so. At least for now, the subject of discussion when talking about the novel seems to have been mostly its structure, and the discussion has been happening mostly in the literary sphere.
Recommended: to people who can handle challenging structures and/or are not bothered if they sometimes don't know who a character is talking about. Also, contains a lot of violence, also sexual. But it rewards you with insights, and poetry, and moments when all is held together for a while before it crumbles to pieces again.
I had mixed feelings when I first heard of this book; excited because I grew to love God of Small Things during my second reading after feeling unsettled and almost-hate the first time I went through it. At the same time, I was worried that I would not enjoy it (because of course it's not the same book and also, expectations).
Thing is, when I started reading the first two chapters, I really did think that I would not enjoy the read. It was slow, and very complex with all the historical conflicts of India as the setting. As someone who is very unfamiliar with that, it truly was a daunting idea to continue reading. However, the story slowly grew on me. As some reviewers have pointed out, true, there is no real plot in this book while lots of things are happening at the same time, and there's multiple povs on the same tale. In previous books, these same characteristics of writing would result in me disliking a book and give it a low rating, but somehow, in The Ministry of Utmost Happiness , it gives of an immersive vibe to the story. It's almost an important "stagnation", almost as if it reflected the slow change of wartime/full of conflict India over the years that even with the characters growing up, the story barely change. You get to see and live through various characters lives, and see how their lives intertwined with each other, characters of various background ending up at the same place, the Ministry of Utmost Happiness.
It does not carry the same level of trauma as God of Small Things , but it reads with a similar tone and atmosphere, slow and steady, carrying readers deeper into the story, revealing the effects of society on the lives of those living in it. It's a different sort of trauma even, one both personal and impersonal at the same time, it tells the story of people having to live with trauma of a much grander scale, one that has been normalised even in society.
Thing is, when I started reading the first two chapters, I really did think that I would not enjoy the read. It was slow, and very complex with all the historical conflicts of India as the setting. As someone who is very unfamiliar with that, it truly was a daunting idea to continue reading. However, the story slowly grew on me. As some reviewers have pointed out, true, there is no real plot in this book while lots of things are happening at the same time, and there's multiple povs on the same tale. In previous books, these same characteristics of writing would result in me disliking a book and give it a low rating, but somehow, in The Ministry of Utmost Happiness , it gives of an immersive vibe to the story. It's almost an important "stagnation", almost as if it reflected the slow change of wartime/full of conflict India over the years that even with the characters growing up, the story barely change. You get to see and live through various characters lives, and see how their lives intertwined with each other, characters of various background ending up at the same place, the Ministry of Utmost Happiness.
It does not carry the same level of trauma as God of Small Things , but it reads with a similar tone and atmosphere, slow and steady, carrying readers deeper into the story, revealing the effects of society on the lives of those living in it. It's a different sort of trauma even, one both personal and impersonal at the same time, it tells the story of people having to live with trauma of a much grander scale, one that has been normalised even in society.
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
slow-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:
Yes
4.8/5
This is one of those books that profoundly impacts you and changes your perception of society.
Essentially a social and political commentary on India, it addresses a wide array of issues such as caste discrimination, transphobia, corruption, the Kashmir Valley conflict, Maoist insurgency, environmental degradation, and, pervasively, the rise of 'Gujarat ka Lalla' and the rise of the saffron fundamentalist army. It also touches upon significant historical events like the Emergency and subsequent Sikh lynching, the Gujarat riots of 2001, the 1993 Bombay bombings, and the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and its aftermath in India.
The story intertwines the initially independent lives of two complex and bewitching characters: Anjum, a Muslim hijra who lives in a graveyard in Delhi, and Tilottama, a fiercely independent Malayali woman (possibly Roy's alter-ego) deeply entangled in Kashmir's bloody tangle and with Musa, a Separatist militant.
Although it received mixed reviews, especially after a long wait of 20 years after [b:The God of Small Things|9777|The God of Small Things|Arundhati Roy|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1590282886l/9777._SY75_.jpg|810135], I ended up liking [b:The Ministry of Utmost Happiness|32388712|The Ministry of Utmost Happiness|Arundhati Roy|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1520327592l/32388712._SY75_.jpg|53001637] even more. I'm in love with Roy's lush, lyrical prose and her mastery of language, with a stream-of-consciousness-like narration and rich elements of magical realism.
I'm glad to have read this work; it will be one of my favourites!
P.S. Eternally grateful to Roy for introducing me to Rasoolan Bai and Leonard Cohen's music.
This is one of those books that profoundly impacts you and changes your perception of society.
Essentially a social and political commentary on India, it addresses a wide array of issues such as caste discrimination, transphobia, corruption, the Kashmir Valley conflict, Maoist insurgency, environmental degradation, and, pervasively, the rise of 'Gujarat ka Lalla' and the rise of the saffron fundamentalist army. It also touches upon significant historical events like the Emergency and subsequent Sikh lynching, the Gujarat riots of 2001, the 1993 Bombay bombings, and the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and its aftermath in India.
The story intertwines the initially independent lives of two complex and bewitching characters: Anjum, a Muslim hijra who lives in a graveyard in Delhi, and Tilottama, a fiercely independent Malayali woman (possibly Roy's alter-ego) deeply entangled in Kashmir's bloody tangle and with Musa, a Separatist militant.
Although it received mixed reviews, especially after a long wait of 20 years after [b:The God of Small Things|9777|The God of Small Things|Arundhati Roy|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1590282886l/9777._SY75_.jpg|810135], I ended up liking [b:The Ministry of Utmost Happiness|32388712|The Ministry of Utmost Happiness|Arundhati Roy|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1520327592l/32388712._SY75_.jpg|53001637] even more. I'm in love with Roy's lush, lyrical prose and her mastery of language, with a stream-of-consciousness-like narration and rich elements of magical realism.
I'm glad to have read this work; it will be one of my favourites!
P.S. Eternally grateful to Roy for introducing me to Rasoolan Bai and Leonard Cohen's music.
challenging
emotional
Incredible.
It requires a great deal of patience, as the primary characters and their settings change frequently and with little warning. About three quarters of the way through, the connections between the characters come into view - it's a sprawling novel that comes together if you're prepared to provide the patience it deserves.
It requires a great deal of patience, as the primary characters and their settings change frequently and with little warning. About three quarters of the way through, the connections between the characters come into view - it's a sprawling novel that comes together if you're prepared to provide the patience it deserves.