The God of Small Things

by Arundhati Roy

Hardcover, 321 pages

English language

Published Sept. 27, 1997 by Random House.

ISBN:: 978-0-679-45731-2
OCLC Number:: 1052688666

(94 reviews)

The year is 1969. In the state of Kerala, on the southernmost tip of India, a skyblue Plymouth with chrome tailfins is stranded on the highway amid a Marxist workers' demonstration. Inside the car sit two-egg twins Rahel and Esthappen, and so begins their tale. . . .

Armed only with the invincible innocence of children, they fashion a childhood for themselves in the shade of the wreck that is their family--their lonely, lovely mother, Ammu (who loves by night the man her children love by day), their blind grandmother, Mammachi (who plays Handel on her violin), their beloved uncle Chacko (Rhodes scholar, pickle baron, radical Marxist, bottom-pincher), their enemy, Baby Kochamma (ex-nun and incumbent grandaunt), and the ghost of an imperial entomologist's moth (with unusually dense dorsal tufts).

When their English cousin, Sophie Mol, and her mother, Margaret Kochamma, arrive on a Christmas visit, Esthappen and Rahel learn that …

When their English cousin, Sophie Mol, and her mother, Margaret Kochamma, arrive on a Christmas visit, Esthappen and Rahel learn that Things Can Change in a Day. That lives can twist into new, ugly shapes, even cease forever, beside their river "graygreen." With fish in it. With the sky and trees in it. And at night, the broken yellow moon in it.

The brilliantly plotted story uncoils with an agonizing sense of foreboding and inevitability. Yet nothing prepares you for what lies at the heart of it.

The God of Small Things takes on the Big Themes--Love. Madness. Hope. Infinite Joy. Here is a writer who dares to break the rules. To dislocate received rhythms and create the language she requires, a language that is at once classical and unprecedented. Arundhati Roy has given us a book that is anchored to anguish, but fueled by wit and magic. --front flap

58 editions

chrisamaphone reviewed The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

Review of 'The God of Small Things' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

I had been reading a lot of Hemingway and I sort of wanted a break from That Style; I definitely got it with this book. Roy's writing is breathtaking. To steal a sentiment from another review I just read, she puts words together in ways that should make no sense at all but flawlessly evoke the sense of being there. It reminds me of Tonguecat or The Sound and the Fury a bit in that regard. The story is dark and sad and horrible, which I resented at times, but ultimately I forgive it for its astonishing beauty. Also, something I don't see other reviews pointing out: this book is funny! Am I the only one who took that from it? While the dominant notes are certainly pretty dismal, the children are still children and Roy shows us how they play with words and think about what the worlds …

Baltipink reviewed The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

Review of 'The God of Small Things' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

She just writes gorgeous prose.

Sharyl reviewed The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

Review of 'The God of Small Things' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

A pair of actors trapped in a recondite play with no hint of plot or narrative. Stumbling through their parts, nursing someone else's sorrow. Grieving someone else's grief.

Unable, somehow, to change plays. Or purchase, for a fee, some cheap brand of exorcism from a counselor with a fancy degree, who would sit them down and say, in one of many ways: "You're not the Sinners. You're the Sinned Against. You were only children. You had no control. You are the victims, not the perpetrators."

Rahel and Esthappen are siblings, Rahel a little girl, Estha her brother. They are bright, imaginative children. They are two-egg twins, but sometimes they are Mrs. Eapen and Mrs. Rajagopalan, or Ambassador E. Pelvis (with a puff) and Ambassador S. Insect. A boy in his beige and pointy shoes and his Elvis puff, a little fairy in her airport frock with matching bloomers. A puff and a fountain in a love-in-Tokyo (which I believe is a long name for those little black rubber bands with two beads on the end that lots of us used to make pony tails, back in the 70's)(But I digress).

There are two very different tragedies in this story that come together and ruin the happy lives of Rahel, Esthappen, and Ammu, their mother, and a special man named Velutha. The adult world, with its infinite bigotry and violence, blames and punishes them all. Ammu, a divorcee who has returned with her children to her family's village, is already not very welcome, but then she has a secret affair with Velutha, who is from a lower caste. They break The Love Laws, which define who is to be loved, how, and how much, and they pay the highest price. Rahel and Estha are not spared the trauma, especially Estha; in another stroke of random unfairness, he experiences and witnesses more that Rahel does, and is made to feel very much to blame.

Arundhati Roy tells this story in a way that reminds me of water circling round a drain before rushing downward; the narrative moves back and forth in time and tells everyone's stories before the reader is given the details of the inevitable ending. It did take me some time to really get involved with the story, since the names, family relationships, and time-shifting style took some getting used to. In the end, though, I was awed by the writing and the story, and would highly recommend it to anyone.

The God of Small Things, By Arundhati Roy, copyright 1997, HarperCollins. 321 pgs. Winner of The Booker Prize, 1997

lifted from page 182.