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GradeSaver(tm) ClassicNotes The God of Small Things

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I've taught The God of Small Things for more than a decade. I bought this study guide, along with several others, because I was seeing consistently wrong factual information in my students' analyses on tests and papers and suspected that they were not reading the book itself. I am not against study guides, per se. They have a useful place in helping students to better understand difficult texts. This one is a complete waste of money. It is riddled with factual errors, from the spelling of characters' names (it's "Baba" not "Babu") to plot details (Velutha and his father and brother do not live in the History House, they live in a laterite hut on the same side of the river as the Ipe family). It is wrong on its analysis of narrative technique (there's no protagonist? are you kidding me?) and on theme (there's no "definitive moral"? Really? How about: "It's immoral to sexually abuse children, or to force them them to lie for your own personal gain"?) It's so wrong about everything that in the summary of chapter 2, the author laughably tells you that a blind woman drives (!) her family to the movies. And that's just in the first twenty pages, which made me so angry I came on-line to see what idiot wrote this (from her resume, someone who really ought to know better). On top of that, the book is perfectly dreadful in its publication details. Every apostrophe is missing, with a blank space in its place, along with every quotation mark and most commas. It makes it nearly impossible to read. No titles are correctly punctuated. Arundhati Roy's name is actually misspelled on the cover, the title page, and the table of contents. Trust me on this one, kids. The God of Small Things is a great book. You should read it. It's easier to read than this piece of crap. The people responsible for this don't care about books--they just want your money. If this is the general quality of these guides, I'd never buy another product from this company.