Every once in a rare while, I finish a book and still can't say whether I liked it or not. Whether I was impressed with it or not. Whether I just finished reading something amazing, or I just wasted hours of my life on something that was ultimately disappointing. It should be easy to tell the difference, no?
With Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things, I find myself experiencing that dilemma. A convoluted and language-rich novel, it seems at times too weighty with its own complexities, and other times quite lovely in its simplicity. A contradiction in terms throughout.

The story begins with a confusing cast of characters, unfamiliar names and places. Told backwards and mostly through the voices of two other-worldly children, twin brother and sister, there is less exposition and more evisceral reaction. It's best to not analyze too deeply and just absorb the tale as it unfolds, in the beginning.

The language is beautiful, rich in tone, lush with unexpected turns of phrase. But is it too much? Will readers drink up each word in treasured amazement, or, as was my experience in the end, feel somewhat turned off by the density of phrase. Too much of a good thing, as they say, can ruin anything, and by the end of the novel I was feeling tired of reading about envy that is "delicate, purple-tinged" and sounds as they "mushroomed over the temple". As the entire novel is essentially a tease for a tragedy that is alluded to in the first pages, as the story goes in reverse, I felt frustrated and put off by too many descriptive turns of phrase separating me from the resolution.

Roy's novel is mesmerizing at times, and the story of the "two-egg twins", Estha and Rahel, is compelling and strange. I can't decide if this book was brilliant or just a brilliant exercise for the author. In the end, though, as a reader, I felt I had been more dazzled by language and less enlightened by meaning than perhaps would have been best, and this lessened my appreciation overall. ( )

The God of Small Things is about the small pleasures and gestures which see people through the larger upsets and tragedies in their lives. It is the story of fraternal twins in India, living with their single mother, scornful great-aunt, and brilliant but unambitious uncle. And although India's caste system and rigid social structure are rarely spoken of overtly, they resonate through the story. Everyone is marginalized or oppressed in one way - by the ambiguity of the twins' lineage, the family's befriending a crafty and gentle Untouchable, or the tensions creating a bitter undercurrent to the Communist party.

But it's not a political book; it's one about the turmoil and confusion of childhood. The story opens with the twins at their cousin's funeral - Sophie Mol, who is clever, beloved, Westernized, and dead. As the non-linear narrative progresses, readers piece together the misunderstandings and childish reactions which lead up to her death, small and innocent occasions which nevertheless turn out fatal and disrupt the family forever. ( )

I just read this for the second time, after reading it in college. I remember some at my Christian school having an issue with many of the relationships in the book including the Orangedrinklemondrink man and Estha and Rahels final outpouring of grief. I think that without all the sad and, to some, disturbing elements, this book wouldn't resonate and make sense to the reader. A beautiful book although not necessarily a happy one. ( )

Rahel and Estha are ten-year-old Indian twins. When their English cousin comes to visit them, a series of unrelated events coalesces into a terrific tragedy that tears their family apart. Most of the book is told through the eyes of the children, with all the feelings and misinterpretations children have, giving the book a dreamy quality. ( )

It's about racism and classism and love and family in India, and oh, is it a beautiful book. It takes the entire book to unravel the tragedy, and you keep thinking, oh, so that's what happened, but no, that happened because of something else, and something else, and then something else, and finally, it all happened because two lonely people fell in love.