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

5.0

As I tell you about Roy’s book, more comes to mind about the language and painstaking attention to detail, rather than the plot that loosens itself in the backdrop. It is minimal, unravelling around an Indian family whose extended members have all ended up living together, and not by their own choice. 
It’s a bizarre, dysfunctional assemblage of people who grow together, then grow apart: the abusive Pappachi and overprotective matriarch Mammachi; the bitter and proud Baby Kochamma who fiercely governs over an empire of pickle preserve production; her disillusioned daughter Ammu, single mother of “egg twins”, the inseparable little angel demons Rahel and Estha (that unapologetically steal your whole heart); their divorced uncle Chacko, whose Oxford education slings around him like a cape (which he willingly dons).

The story advances in a non-linear path as past and present can’t decide to meet each other half-way, embodying perhaps how trauma and their past lingers in the family. You especially follow the children and you feel your heart slowly stepped over when you witness their world doesn’t allow them to be children. A world of selfishness, self-preservation, dog-eat-dog, where heartfelt moments are to be followed by bone-chilling wake up calls.  Where the characters remain unsatisfied for the whole book about who they are, and reminisce on who they could become.  

Now onto the language that wraps itself around them;  Roy has a beautiful relationship with the world round her, and i m so grateful she decided to share it with us. If human thought and observation could speak, it would be in her voice. She manages to find the just right images and words to wrap an invisible, intangible feeling or moment into something tactible, possible to taste. My favourite recurring description motif is Pappachi’s moth that lies on Rahel’s heart, who flaps its wings whenever Rahel feels anxiety. 

While reading this book, many elements of the Indian context could be palpable. Themes of class, colonialism, the communist wave in India, the caste system, poverty and strife weave in an out of the narrative. I definitely will want to read more non-fiction and educational material on the periods this book lapses in, around 60s India to contemporary India. 

The way it ends is so satisfying. I turned the last page and only at the final stop did I realise I had finished my journey. I hope you will have an equally enjoyable time picking up Roy’s phenomenal book. ❤️
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