The God of Small Things (Paperback)

~ (Author) "May in Ayemenem is a hot, brooding month..." (more)
Key Phrases: baby grandaunt, inflatable goose, spoiled puff, Baby Kochamma, Sophie Mol, The God of Small Things (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In her first novel, award-winning Indian screenwriter Arundhati Roy conjures a whoosh of wordplay that rises from the pages like a brilliant jazz improvisation. The God of Small Things is nominally the story of young twins Rahel and Estha and the rest of their family, but the book feels like a million stories spinning out indefinitely; it is the product of a genius child-mind that takes everything in and transforms it in an alchemy of poetry. The God of Small Things is at once exotic and familiar to the Western reader, written in an English that's completely new and invigorated by the Asian Indian influences of culture and language. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

With sensuous prose, a dreamlike style infused with breathtakingly beautiful images and keen insight into human nature, Roy's debut novel charts fresh territory in the genre of magical, prismatic literature. Set in Kerala, India, during the late 1960s when Communism rattled the age-old caste system, the story begins with the funeral of young Sophie Mol, the cousin of the novel's protagonists, Rahel and her fraternal twin brother, Estha. In a circuitous and suspenseful narrative, Roy reveals the family tensions that led to the twins' behavior on the fateful night that Sophie drowned. Beneath the drama of a family tragedy lies a background of local politics, social taboos and the tide of history?all of which come together in a slip of fate, after which a family is irreparably shattered. Roy captures the children's candid observations but clouded understanding of adults' complex emotional lives. Rahel notices that "at times like these, only the Small Things are ever said. The Big Things lurk unsaid inside." Plangent with a sad wisdom, the children's view is never oversimplified, and the adult characters reveal their frailties?and in one case, a repulsively evil power?in subtle and complex ways. While Roy's powers of description are formidable, she sometimes succumbs to overwriting, forcing every minute detail to symbolize something bigger, and the pace of the story slows. But these lapses are few, and her powers coalesce magnificently in the book's second half. Roy's clarity of vision is remarkable, her voice original, her story beautifully constructed and masterfully told. First serial to Granta; foreign rights sold in France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Italy, Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Estonia, Holland, India, Greece, Canada and the U.K.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial; Reprint edition (May 6, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060977493
• ISBN-13: 978-0060977498
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (888 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #44,038 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

34 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Amazing Book, December 2, 1999

By	Claire Harrison (Hong Kong) - See all my reviews

"May in Ayemenem is a hot, brooding month," and so is Arundhati Roy's novel The God of Small Things. Imagine a cold piece of butter slowly melting in a frying pan, setting the scene for the cooking to come, and you can see the way Roy's prose works. Words that are hot and brooding reel you into an intricate web of family politics and social mores, evoking a feeling similar to a written stream of consciencness. Roy writes in layers, except that the layers are both added and taken off; I was reminded of my childhood when I would eat wafer chocolates from the bottom and the top, leaving the middle until last, because that was the best part. Roy kindly dispells the, often torturous, anxiety of what happens in the end early on in the book. The reader is told what happened before it happened, what happened after it happened, and saves what happened for last. A format that seemingly would put off a reader becomes its most appreciated quality. This book is for everyone; murder mystery, love story, epic saga all in one. Even if you're not the romantic type, the social scrutiny of Indian customs provides for interesting reading. However, if you're interested in brain candy, forget it. There is too much to absorb. Emotion and intellect are needed in order to understand the emotion and intellect that are related. You could take in only what is superficially presented, as the plot alone is worthwhile, but you would be missing so much. Rahel, a dizygotic twin returns to the place of her childhood and subesequently a place of unhappiness to see her brother, the other twin, after more than twenty years of separation. Esta, the brother, has stopped talking, and Rahel has stopped feeling. Their reunion allows for the remembrance and grieving of their disasterous youths. They recall small things, seemingly unimportant, yet vital to the reconstruction of their sense of inner peace. They are the same age as their mother when she died, thirty-one. Their house is run down and the only relatives left from the monster in their pasts are, in essence, only waiting to die. Entering their minds through an omniscient voice, we are transported back and forth in time, remembering small things, painting a big picture. We remember a cousin's accidental death, and the death of another who served as a scapegoat. We remember how fate can make the strangest families. We also remember Rahel and Esta, and how they "broke the love laws. That lay down who should be loved. And how. And how much." While the novel serves to shock the reader from time to time, the pace is slow. Roy's style would be described as somewhat verbose for the impatient, yet serves to parallel the way we deal with emotions, hurt, and love in life. Creating a paradox however, this reader went back to re-absorb certain elements of beauty or truth, due to a lack of time created by an impatience to find out what happens next. Although usually overly critical of fiction, I would recommend this book for anyone who likes to read intelligent literature. It gives the reader a chance to realize how profound those small things really are.

42 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Small is Beautiful, January 5, 2000

By	Chinmay "Chinmay Kumar Hota" (Bhubaneswar, Orissa, India) - See all my reviews

Set in Kerala during the late 1960s when communism rattled the age-old caste system, The God of Small Things begins with the funeral of young Sophie Mol, the cousin of the novel's protagonists Rahel and her fraternal twin brother, Estha. In a circuitous and suspense--filled narrative, it is a story of decadence of a family with a hoary past, trapped in a time bubble (the time on the painted face of child Rahel's watch always reads "ten to two"). The bubble is tossed like a yo-yo by the great surge of events, ready to burst any moment. Nevertheless this steady, mechanical and almost pre-ordained process of withering, stirs up great passions, with its attendant ironies and pathos. In the end, we have a classic with a tragic grandeur, albeit of small things! "A story is a simple way of presenting a complex world and in my book I have tried to create a complete world carefully with craft and detail," clarifies Arundhati Roy, the author while talking to mediapersons.

Things unfold in the Ayemenem House, now mossy, soaky and dusty, but once the symbol of pride for the Syrian Christian clan. Here, the characters inch towards their doomed destinies. Things culminate with the arrival of Sophie Mol with her mother Margaret Kochamma, to visit her `biological father,' Chacko. A stealthy jaunt, masterminded by her cousins Estha and Rahel, climaxes in her death by drowning. This incident, alongwith the exposed rendezvous of Ammu, the divorced daughter of the house with an low caste menial, lets loose all kinds of passions, rage, trickery and madness. Expulsions, separations and deaths follow, turning the place to a phantom of its old glory.

The old house had a fatal attraction about it. Every character returned there -- defeated, deserted and drained by the big, bad world, where they had dispersed earlier. The parallel here is all too discernible to miss -- of the returning Malayalees from their "unhappy" working places in the Gulf.

But once back to Ayemenem House, the characters are trapped -- just like the small bird in the Plymouth, which, unable to find a way out of the car, dies there. All these, seen through the innocent eyes of Estha and Rahel, give a coat of freshness to the narrative. The children's perspective, apart from the overdose of similes and contrived usages, sustain the readers' interests in the small things Lenin, the young son of communist schemer K N M Pillai, for instance, is described as `dressed like a taxi' because of his yellow shirt and black pants. Arundhati Roy's super sensitive antenna catches all the tiny details of her landscape -- and the thick, wet Kerala countryside has plenty to offer. The `farting slush' does not escape her, nor does the `funnel cap' created by mosquitoes over people's heads.

It is not the story element of The God of Small Things that is its strong point, but the language. The language characterised by a strange cadence -- plenty of capitals, joined words and phrases, pranky childish distortions -- supports the jerky unfolding of the story. The narration too is not linear but moves back and forth in time, each chapter briefly touching upon what has gone before or what is in store. These techniques pervade the whole story, even in describing the poignant moments like Ammu's cremation, Estha's separation from his mother and his witnessing the police interrogation. "My thoughts and language are the same things," says Arundhati Roy in an interview. "The book is not based on research, but is about some very raw, private things. It is more about human biology than human history ---- our nature is capable of extreme brutality, extreme love," she adds. As she rightly said, The God of Small Things was `a work of instinct.' She was not searching for a story, `the narrative and the structure slowly revealed itself and the book was written `sentence by sentence.' Therefore, the reader realises very soon that he can't skip over passages: every sentence has to be read and reread to get the flavour of her prose.

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48 of 53 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Absolutely Astounding, January 11, 2001

By A Customer

Roy's mastery of metaphor and creativity in wordplay may just be among the best in the English language today. In The God of Small Things she tells a haunting tragedy in hauntingly beautiful prose that borders on poetry. Almost every scene painted itself visibly in my mind, but in particular I find myself dwelling on the OrangedrinkLemondrink Man, and on the airport scene: Ambassadors E. Pelvis and S. Insect; Rahel wrapping herself in the dirty curtain to escape the reeling changes in her life. I'm so impressed by Roy's ability to see a child's-eye view of the world, and it's so easy to believe that Rahel and Estha would assume that "love had been reapportioned." It's also a remarkable achievement in non-linear storytelling for a first-time novelist.

Having said all that, I confess to loving non-linear narrative. If you don't like it, you probably won't think much of this book.

Finally, and coincidentally, just before I read The God of Small Things I read Green English, by linguist Loreto Todd. It's a nonfiction book and I won't go into her thesis. But at one point she suggests that some of the best literature of the 20th century comes from countries where one language (usually a colonizing language, as in India, Ireland, New Zealand, numerous African countries...) has overlaid and been adapted to fit an earlier language, pushing the boundaries of expression. This book seems to me to be a prime example of that idea.