“The God of Small Things” is Complex, Cryptic, and Artsy. It’s almost as if the author is trying too hard to be these things, at the detriment of her tale.
Rahel and Estha are “two-egg” (fraternal) twins who live with their mother, uncle, grandmother and grand-aunt in Ayemanem, India. Their uncle, Chacko, has an ex-wife and daughter who live in England and come to Ayemanem to visit. At this same time, their mother, Ammu engages in some activity that threatens the way of life of everyone in their village. The story of this activity and the arrival and death of Rahel and Estha’s cousin Sophie Mol is revealed in bits and pieces, interspersed with accounts from the present day.
None of the action is remotely chronological and is dribbled out to the reader in such a way that it is difficult to understand what any of these vignettes has to do with each other. Immediately upon finishing the book, I felt like I should go back and read the first few chapters again, just to see what it was they were talking about in the context of what all happened in the end of the book, but before these events chronologically. I didn’t, however, because the prospect of wading back through the cryptic descriptions and frequent dropping of Malayali words that are not ever translated was too daunting.
It was beneficial to me to find a study guide for this book, written by some college professor, when doing a google search for Love-in-Tokyo which is an item frequently mentioned in the book, but never explained. You should know, if you ever plan to read this book, that a Love-in-Tokyo is a ponytail holding apparatus consisting of two beads attached to a rubber band. It figured prominently in a film that was apparently popular in India called “Love in Tokyo.” I was not able to find any reference to a Love-in-Tokyo as a hair band in anything besides commentary on this book.
I can’t really tell if the plot or characterizations or descriptions of life in India in the 1960’s would be more valuable if the tale were told without all the cryptic crap, and in a chronological order, but I do know that I didn’t really enjoy reading this book. It might have been better if I had read it for a class and participated in discussions, but as a pleasure-book, it certainly was not at all pleasurable reading. ( )

Beautifully written book which draws you in completely ( )

This challenging novel tells the story of a multi-generational family in southernmost India whose lives are changed in one day by a tragic incident. While the main story is set in 1969, Roy moves back and forth throughout the time focusing mainly on the young twins Estha and Rahel and the adults they become as a result of the novel. Roy touches on post-colonialism, conflicts between Christianity and native beliefs, communism versus the status quo, and the caste system. While the story is heartbreaking and sometimes brutal, Roy has a way with words and composes some very beautiful sentences. ( )

One of my favorite books of all time. A little slow going in the beginning, but builds to a conclusion that feels inevitable and horrifying at the same time. Wonderful claustrophobic descriptions that leap right off the page and into your brain and won't leave. ( )

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. ( )