The God of Small Things (1997)

Very Important work for its nation. Amazingly honest, entertaining and rich in language as well as narration. Enjoyed it immensely on all levels: plot, characters, observations on society and people, geography and their relationship with the river, originality of language, humor sadness. Most unforgettable experience. Thankyou Arundhathi Roy I bow to you in awe. ( )

I'd given up wondering why Rohinton Mistry is spot on, while this misses the mark. At breakfast today, however, I found out that Roy isn't a writer, she's a political activist. Everything is explained!

And there I was thinking it was because she'd won the Booker Prize. ( )

Wow. The narrative style immediately reminded me of [b:Beloved|570179|Beloved|Toni Morrison|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1387706052s/570179.jpg|736076] and [b:Absalom, Absalom!|781818|Absalom, Absalom!|William Faulkner|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1338821231s/781818.jpg|1595511], employing what I have always labeled as "revelation by degrees," but what John Updike in his review of Roy's novel appropriately calls "accumulating revelations." What a beautiful, mesmerizing, complex, and moving achievement -- a commentary on the ways in which society, families, and individuals develop "Love Laws...the laws that lay down who should be loved, and how. And how much." In fact, this is essentially a Love story, the most poignant moment occurring when Rahel lies in bed with her uncle and asks him, in what can only be imagined as that achingly innocent and desperately uncertain voice of a child, if one is bound to love his or her children "Most in the World." Of course, Roy foreshadows, here, what later transpires between the twins and their mother; she effectively repudiates them, albeit in a moment of intense exasperation, and sends them fleeing into what turns out to be the "Terror." This, however, follows a brief lapse in Rahel's judgment, during which she inadvertently disrespects her mother and then embarks upon a series of pitiful attempts to regain her devotion. Love appears, in varied manifestations, elsewhere -- the aunt whose momentary venture into romance is a years-long and unrequited infatuation with a clergyman; the multiple failed marriages; the relationship between the twins. In all of these things Roy makes clear the colorless, classless, creed-less desire that defines, universally, the human journey on earth: not merely the pursuit of Love as a thing to possess, but also the compulsive development of some Love concept.

India gained its independence from Britain (the British Raj) in 1948 and the Indian Constitution abolished any institutional discrimination against what Indians traditionally called "untouchables" -- those employed to do certain kinds of manual labor, such as those that might require the employee to come into contact with excrement or slaughtered animals. The activist Mahatma Gandhi dared to change the vocabulary, disposing of the term "untouchables" in favor of the label "children of God." However, according to a 2013 New York Times article by Lavanya Sankaran, caste values may dictate matters of the heart even in the India of today. ( )

The God of Small Things is a dark Indian novel woven around the themes of caste, family and the complexities and misunderstandings that so often surround love (both familial and sexual).

I found it a difficult novel in many senses, but thankfully eventually my reading persistence was rewarded. In the first third I almost bailed. It took a long time to get going, and my attention kept drifting. With complex relationships between the characters I found I kept having to go back a few pages to remind myself who was who, and the story just wasn't grabbing me.

Finally, when it did get going, it became a decent page turner, but a dark one at that. We know from the beginning that a tragedy has occurred resulting in the death of a visiting child cousin from England, and as the novel develops we finally discover all the off-shoots from the tragedy and the full story emerges. The narrative alternates between the lead up to the tragedy and the present day repercussions of it within the family, which usually works very nicely for this kind of novel, but the present day side of the story didn't really go anywhere.

All in all, I'm a bit conflicted on my thoughts around this novel. It's a Booker Prize winner, and in the first third I was eye-rolling and thinking this is exactly why I often hate Booker novels (over-complex narrative lauded for its very dullness and pomposity). But it did have sparks of genius at times, and when it was good it was excellent. I just don't think I can forgive the dullness of the first third, though, so for that reason it's not on my 'one to recommend' pile. It's also a book laced with anguish and evolving horrors, so it felt somewhat a relief to get to the end of it.

3.5 stars - Marilynne Robinson darkness but without the narrative gentleness. ( )

Well written but such a tedious story about such a tedious family. I didn't think that jumping backwards and forwards in time added anything to the reading pleasure and very little actually happened for at least the first half of the book. Expected much, ended up disappointed. ( )