A review by dejnozkova
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

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

4.5

A story of jealousy and blind contempt born from the rigid hierarchies within Indian society, The God of Small Things tells of how oppressive societal structures quietly ripple into larger tragedy. Colonialism further emboldening a higher caste to shit on those who rank below them; the duties and burdens of womanhood encircling victims in bitterness and envy; the oppressor succumbing to the anxiety that the oppressed will someday punish their corruption and cruelty; the loneliness of clueless children condemned to expectation without being truly seen. The quiet suffering of each character culminates in a catastrophe that no one dares speak of. 

Arundhati Roy shrouds traumas in mystery, lifting veil after veil as she jumps around her narrative; the book skips from the past to the present to the future, in a more “stream-of-conscious” way of remembering, where one focus is interrupted by a memory or a reflection on a related event, which is then interrupted again by a different topic that is still somehow related to the greater narrative in a roundabout way. 

The novel is told more from the perspective of the children, whose confusion at the events that unfold highlight the senselessness of everyone’s suffering. Roy’s writing style is poetic and playful and captures this childhood lens by employing clever use of wordplay, rhyme, repetition, rhythm and poetry —not unlike children’s books or nursery rhymes. 

I very much loved Roy’s non-linear method of storytelling and I think it amplifies the power of each event throughout the book because past, present and future provide context for each other. It almost feels like the ENTIRE narrative is frozen in time because everything is Happening At The Same Time. Not exactly a spoiler but the novel ends at The Middle and not at The End, and it just leaves a profoundly bittersweet melancholy in you when you close the book. That underneath the layers of politics in book, it all boils down to people just trying to be people in a world that won’t let them.