The God of Small Things

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Average customer rating 5 (7 comments)

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This is a beautiful story, written in a whimsical style that is never dull. Told through the eyes of two young siblings, it is filled with their imaginative spin on the serious events unfolding around them. The narration reads at times like a dream weaving through the events of the story, from the lighthearted joys of their childhood to the bittersweet challenges of life and family.

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The storytelling ability of Arundhati Roy in her first novel is more than astounding. The complex, heart-rending tale she weaves, seen through an Indian girl's eyes in Kerala Province, is laced with incredible, witty, imaginative, intriguing language. A life-changing novel, for sure.

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I read this nearly a decade ago and it's still haunting me. The fine line between hope and despair, our desperate need for connection and love,the world's indifference to the powerless, all are explored here in astonishing scenes and events that unfold against vivid, varied Indian landscapes. From the first astonishing scene to the last, you will ache for the characters, portrayed without a trace of sentimentality, undiminished by tragedies grand or banal. This is a classic.

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best book of the decade....hope

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Brilliant first (and so far only) novel. Belongs in a class with To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.

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For poetry in prose, this is the finest example. Her words shimmer with captavating wonder. Each sentence offers such jewels, and yet she wastes no words. It's like Mozart said in the film Amadeus: "I write only as many notes as there need to be; no more, no less!" Just so with Roy's words in this novel: each word is precisely where it needs to be, what it should be and she uses only as many as needed to tell this entertaining and moving story; no more, no less. Also, her characters are at the same time interesting, entertaining, believable, and marvelous. Some are outrageous, some more one dimensional than others; but all contribute faceted elements to the story. Her main characters are well done, even though their actions, in the end, are still hard to justify. The reader expects one thing to happen, and yet another does, which leaves us to wonder long after the last chapter has been read and reread again.

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This was the first book I read after graduating from college as a literature major. I thought, "Wow! I get to choose a novel all by myself!" ...but I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Roy's book is the incredibly heart-wrenching, painful story of fraternal twins whose lives take very different paths. The misery that marks their lives is rivaled only by their mother's strife and hardship. This story is difficult to swallow and utterly painful; however, the prose is some of the most remarkable that I've ever come across. Arundhati Roy quite literally creates her own mode of discourse for this novel, and the stark contrast of the sadness of the story and the lilting, wistful beauty of the prose will leave you absolutely breathless. I cannot recommend this book enough. It is truly a masterpiece.