The God of Small Things

by Arundhati Roy

book data

18,596 ratings, 3.96 average rating, 2,198 reviews (more data...)

rating	frequency	%
5		37%
4		33%
3		18%
2		6%
1		2%

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published

April 22nd 1997 by Random House

binding

Hardcover, 321 pages

literary awards

Booker Prize Winner 1997

isbn

0679457313 (isbn13: 9780679457312)

description

In her first novel, award-winning Indian screenwriter Arundhati Roy conjures a whoosh of wordplay that rises from the pages like a brilliant jazz impr...more

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03/25/08

Adrianne Mathiowetz rated it:

Read in April, 2008

recommended to Adrianne by: Jan
recommends it for: adjective-lovers, women who sometimes fantasize about Going A Little Nuts

Lush, gorgeous prose: reading The God of Small Things is like having your arms and legs tied to a slowly moving, possibly dying horse, and being dragged face-down through the jungle. I mean, like that, only nice. You can't stop seeing and smelling everything, and it's all so foreign and rich. Potentially ripe with e coli.

The similes and metaphors Roy employs are simultaneously tactile and surreal, like an overly vivid dream, and her storytelling style is somewhere between Joseph Con...more

Like this review? yes (22 people liked it)

10 comments

08/18/07

Mandy rated it:

Read in December, 2007

recommends it for: those who thrive on tragedy

I picked this book up at a book fair with my friend. I had heard wonderful things about it, but the lesson I have learned is to do your research if the book you choose to read is without a synopsis on the back.

I'm not giving this book a one-star rating because of the quality of Roy's writing - on the contrary, her work is incredibly moving and beautifully poetic - but my rating is the result of disappointed expectations. As an optimist, I had picked up this book hoping that it would...more I picked this book up at a book fair with my friend. I had heard wonderful things about it, but the lesson I have learned is to do your research if the book you choose to read is without a synopsis on the back.

I'm not giving this book a one-star rating because of the quality of Roy's writing - on the contrary, her work is incredibly moving and beautifully poetic - but my rating is the result of disappointed expectations. As an optimist, I had picked up this book hoping that it would be densely packed with theme of hope and overcoming struggle, a la 'The Alchemist' but perhaps with a subtler message. Yet Roy's novel is about a family - specifically, two small twins - and how their lives revolve around one horrific moment which the author aptly calls 'The Terror.' In fact, all 321 pages are a compilation of tragedies, disappointments and loss that all culminate in 'The Terror.' I finished this book in a week and a half on a packed schedule, and I believe that I finished the novel as quickly as I did because I constantly hoped that the next page would provide some sort of salvation for the protagonists. Yet as the plot develops, the lives of two innocent children unravel into a history of abuse, hurt and neglect that leaves them as empty and hopeless as traumatized war veterans.

Roy's writing is incredibly effective in the sense that the reader cannot help but form strong opinions about each character- you love, hate, and pity them strongly. The very worst (and sometimes the best) of human nature is revealed. I would compare Roy's writing to abstract art and her story to the artist de Kooning's portrayal of women: her words are sharp, graphic and broad. They wander and you wonder how they can make sense, yet her writing strikes at one's deepest emotions. At the same time, her writing is a portrait of the worst and scariest life experiences. As a whole, reading the book feels like dreaming a nightmare that is too realistic and personal to dismiss as "just pretend."

So to sum up, certainly not a holiday book. And not a book for the optimist. But for someone who wants to read a great and tragic work of art? Absolutely. :) (less)

Like this review? yes (13 people liked it)

2 comments

12/17/07

Tim rated it:

Read in November, 2007

recommends it for: Everyone who can handle it

Okay, it won the Booker prize and everyone has said it before - but god damn is this one melancholy piece of work, and that's actually why I like it.

It's melancholy, not depressing, and it answers more questions about the characters than it first seemed to, although, I have to say, the characters on the whole are quite two-dimensional. Then again, so are a lot of real people: this is an indictment of human life if ever I saw it.

The language is brilliant, the running toget...more Okay, it won the Booker prize and everyone has said it before - but god damn is this one melancholy piece of work, and that's actually why I like it.

It's melancholy, not depressing, and it answers more questions about the characters than it first seemed to, although, I have to say, the characters on the whole are quite two-dimensional. Then again, so are a lot of real people: this is an indictment of human life if ever I saw it.

The language is brilliant, the running together of words to form themes, the lack of any explanation when shifting around in time that isn't needed, because the style and/or perspective is changed so fluidly that it takes only half a second to readjust yourself. I think perhaps the pacing in the final quarter, leading up to The Incident, was the best piece of work I have read although one or two things seemed out of place, allowing us to guess too early what happens, once or twice.
Still, that adds to the picture we build, and assists the final drama in being oh-so-very dramatic.

My favourite/least favourite aspect of the story is the same exact thing: Baby Kochamma's fate. If you've read it you'll know that what she deserves she would deserve only at the hands of a gang of cops, but the way she spends the vast majority of her life, her unbending belief and continued pathetic existence, is actually her just punishment.
But by god I wanted to lean into the pages and throttle the hell out of her come the finish.

Anyway, yes it really is a magnificent book, fully deserving of all five stars, but while it isn't actually depressing, it is melancholy as hell.

Can't say enough about some of the characters because they are painted so richly, the two protagonists especially, but even though the actual events, while brutal, tragic and realistic in their consequences, are important and could very well devastate so many lives as the lives in this book were so devastated, they were hardly `epic` as so many reviewers like to claim.

Worse things happen at sea, still.(less)

Like this review? yes (8 people liked it)

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04/26/08

Siria rated it:

bookshelves: 20th-century, by-poc, indian-fiction

Read in September, 2004

Please excuse me while I go sit in this corner and be dreadfully underwhelmed.

The God of Small Things won the Booker Prize in 1997, and I'd heard very good things about it. And yet I really didn't like it. It's not a bad book - far from it. The characters she has created are really wonderful, and she has succeeded in evoking all the noises and sights and smells of Kerala, even for someone like me who's never been further east than Poland. The narrative structure is disjointed, wander...more

Like this review? yes (7 people liked it)

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02/04/08

Maggie rated it:

Read in February, 2008

"Nothing mattered much. Nothing much mattered. And the less it mattered, the less it mattered. It was never important enough. Because Worse Things had happened. In the country that she came from, poised forever between the terror of war and the horror of peace, Worse Things kept happening."

"Perhaps it's true that things can happen in a day. That a few dozen hours can affect the outcomes of whole lifetimes. And that when they do, those few dozen hours, like the sa...more

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07/28/07

Don rated it:

(review of isbn 0060977493)

bookshelves: cantfindthisbooknow, favorites, fiction, india, to-read-again

Read in January, 2004

It's interesting that Roy said in an interview that she'd never read Rushdie when compared to him. In retrospect that makes sense. I'd been struggling with "The Moors Last Sigh" when a friend from India gave me this book. I didn't pick it up for a few months and then fell into it, doing little else for days while I read it. At first I found that hard to believe, because she plays with language in ways that I thought Rushdie did, but later I could see that the way he works language i...more

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08/14/08

Choupette rated it:

bookshelves: 1001-books, ab-fav, indian, own-or-access, studied, to-review

Read in May, 2009

recommended to Choupette by: Angus & Robertson

This poor book has it tough. It is pretty famous, but it is so, so underrated. Firstly, it has this odd reputation for being one of those 'literature-for-the-masses'-type books, one of those that is literary, in a way (the critics will admit it only grudgingly), but is nonetheless designed for mass consumption by the type of people who buy the complete works of Shakespeare to sit on a shelf in the living room and who are only a couple of steps up from the Picoult fans.

Secondly, no on...more This poor book has it tough. It is pretty famous, but it is so, so underrated. Firstly, it has this odd reputation for being one of those 'literature-for-the-masses'-type books, one of those that is literary, in a way (the critics will admit it only grudgingly), but is nonetheless designed for mass consumption by the type of people who buy the complete works of Shakespeare to sit on a shelf in the living room and who are only a couple of steps up from the Picoult fans.

Secondly, no one can seem to look at it as separate from Salman Rushdie, or more specifically, as anything more than a direct, but slightly inferior, descendent of Midnight's Children. I've been studying this in class and yesterday's lecture was more about Midnight's Children than The God of Small Things, and all the criticism I've read about it is all like Rushdie Rushdie Rushdie (Roy)!

Now, I loved Midnight's Children, but it was by Salman Rushdie, which means it suffered from the same problems as the rest of his work, namely that it is largely impenetrable and largely insufferable. Basically, The God of Small Things is better. It's a lot better. I'll accept that it was probably inspired by Rushdie and that Midnight's Children paved the way for its existence and popularity. But it's just as beautifully written, with just as many brilliant insights and wonderful turns of phrase, and it is just as profound and symbolic and important and meaningful and engageful with the pertinent issues, but it is also entertaining and easy to read and enjoyable and you don't feel like you're drowning in a mixture of pulped paper and ink and molasses. It is so good! Rushdie should learn a lesson or two from it before he gets assassinated, preferably before he publishes another book.

I'm a big fan of Arundhati Roy. She's very smart, extraordinarily talented, and her political essays (or at least the single one I've read) are of an excellent standard. And she had the crazy strength of will to abandon writing after this, her first novel, for political activism. When she could have written any other book and sold millions of copies the world over.

Token discussion of literary technique: the weird, fragmented plot structure irritated me this time around. The constant hints and excerpts from scenes that would take place at the end of the story were annoying in the extreme. But they meant that when events finally came to a close, they had an eerie, tragic sense of inevitability. As if they had been foretold, which indeed they had, from the moment the love laws were broken. And from then fate proceeded in all its unstoppability with the machine-like precision of the Greek gods. And you know that there is no other way, because thus is the world in which we live. And there is a feeling that it will all happen again. That it has been happening, over and over, since the beginning of time and that it will continue happening, until the end of time.

Chilling, beautiful, profound. Superb.

(except the sex scene at the end).(less)

Like this review? yes (10 people liked it)

12 comments

06/10/07

Alec rated it:

(review of isbn 0060977493)

bookshelves: literature

Read in May, 2007

Rhythm and repetition are as powerful in prose as they are in poetry and music. Arudhati Roi's writing in The God of Small Things is hyper-aware of that. Rhythmic structures dominate the novel at all levels, from the riffs and variations of "If he touched her he couldn't talk to her, if he loved her he couldn't leave, if he spoke he couldn't listen, if he fought he couldn't win," to the larger rhythm of foreshadowing backed by detailed reminiscence that drives the narrative while not...more

Like this review? yes (5 people liked it)

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10/29/07

Amytyr rated it:

(review of isbn 0006550681)

bookshelves: have-read

recommends it for: No-one.

This is, without a doubt, the single worst book ever written.
It makes virtually no sense, jumping from past to present tense so often and without warning that you have no idea whats going on. Out of nowhere the writer mentions filthy disturbing sexual things for no reason. I could not even find a story in there, just meaningless jibberish.
The thing that amazes me most though, is that while i am yet to meet a single person that LIKES this book, it makes it onto all the top 100 lists ...more

Like this review? yes (5 people liked it)

1 comment

06/03/09

Choupette rated it:

(review of isbn 0006550681)

bookshelves: 1001-books, own-or-access

I still love this book unreservedly, but would like to note (for posterity, and fun, and procrastination) some strange, or possibly not so strange, inconsistencies.

- All the bad guys are ugly and/or fat, while all the good guys are beautiful.
- Velutha has no personality. He is a screen on which other characters' desires and stuff are projected.
- This novel won the Booker in 1997. Coincidence much? (this was exactly fifty years after Indian independence). Not having read ...more

Like this review? yes (5 people liked it)

2 comments

12/27/08

Spamiola Kikita rated it:

(review of isbn 0060977493)

Read in January, 2009

A story from real life (even though it's fiction)about the struggles of the diffeent classes and casts in a polarized, politicized, and mysticised Kerala of South India.

The story told about two-egg twins and their family caught up in a whirlwind of coincidences that all conspired to create the biggest event: the death of two people at the very opposite extremes of the social continueum (the little white girl who was loved by everyone even before arriving, and an untouchable communist...more

Like this review? yes (4 people liked it)

2 comments

01/01/08

Molly rated it:

(review of isbn 0060977493)

I first read this book several years ago, but I've since revisited it many times. I think I keep coming back to it because it solicits such strong emotion from the reader. This is due both to the socially relevant and duly complicated story, and the intuitively realized characters. Narrated in retrospect, the novel spins the tale of the the manner in which Estha and Rahel, child twins living on the very edge of a still-socially respectable and economically-stable family in Ayemenem (in the Ke...more

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11/09/07

César rated it:

(review of isbn 0006550681)

bookshelves: fiction

Read in July, 2007

i know i'm alone on this one. i've never heard a single negative comment about the good of small things. plus, i love arundhati roy. i've read several of her books of essays, heard her speeches, read her occasional newspaper colums, never without utter amazement at the beautiful arrangements she composes with words.

when i finally got around to reading the god of small things i had high hopes. that might be part of the reason why i was so disappointed with this novel. maybe i'd pla...more

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07/09/07

Lysia rated it:

(review of isbn 0006550681)

Read in August, 2007

The author talks about the God of Big Things and the God of Small Things, but it seems to me that the more important of the two is Small Things. The little things that are said in passing, a look, a perception - all of these things are usually the trigger for the Big Things... the culmination of the events leading up to it. That is what this book is all about.
As with most books that I love, I finished it with a feeling that I wanted just a bit more. I wanted to know whether Rahel and Es...more

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06/22/07

Heather rated it:

(review of isbn 0060977493)

Read in June, 2002

recommends it for: the open-minded

This book blew my mind. The story itself is a little bit ... um ... dingy, I guess. It's very raw and paints a picture most people probably wouldn't sympathize with that much. The writing, however, is absolutely superb. The story is told in a ver poetic prose that shifts dramatically in tone to highlight character and scene differences. It does this so effectively in some places that transitional phrases and punctuation aren't even particularly necessary. For example, when the story flashbacks t...more

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03/22/07

Maya rated it:

(review of isbn 0006550681)

bookshelves: 2007, desireads, myfavorites

Read in January, 2005

I literally long for Arundhati Roy to write another fiction book, even if it will only be half as beautiful as "The God of Small Things." This is one of those books that has left an indelible mark on me. I never thought one could realistically portray childhood innocence while also depicting haunting tragedy, that a book filled with so many "grown-up" issues could be narrated by a child. This isn't a book that you barrel through to find out what happens next, this is a book...more

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11/15/08

Bonnie rated it:

bookshelves: reviewed-books

If this book hadn't been recommended to me to read, I doubt I would have finished reading it. But I did finish, and in the end, was glad I had read it; found it praise-worthy. (It has been a while now, though, so can't recall any more than that to offer!)

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04/07/08

Andrea Fortwendel rated it:

Read in June, 2008

Okay so I just finished The God of Small Things. It is a truly excellent story written in the most beautiful language. The words dance, melt, and imbibe such sad memories lingering in bright colors. The story is tragic, but hopeful in a way. The hopefulness rests in the possibility of new beginnings. It brought up questions about love and how I prescribe it and it what doses. The God of Small Things serves as a mirror reflecting my fears concerning motherhood, the poignancy of my words to my c...more

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5 comments

03/30/08

Carmen rated it:

Read in June, 2007

recommended to Carmen by: Claire Schagerl & others

This book has sat on my shelf for close to ten years. Well, it has sat on various shelves of various bookcases in seven different homes of four different cites in three different states. Ten years ago (yes, really!) when I was an undergrad and worked at a bookstore I brought home book after book after book (weekly, at least) and slowly over the years I have read through what seemed like an endless supply of unread books. Often distracted by new releases, library loans, and must-purchases-from-in...more This book has sat on my shelf for close to ten years. Well, it has sat on various shelves of various bookcases in seven different homes of four different cites in three different states. Ten years ago (yes, really!) when I was an undergrad and worked at a bookstore I brought home book after book after book (weekly, at least) and slowly over the years I have read through what seemed like an endless supply of unread books. Often distracted by new releases, library loans, and must-purchases-from-independent-bookshops, I do always return to my supply of books from the bookstore days and get to reading their now-yellowing pages. There are now exactly only seven unread books from the bookstore days, waiting for someday to be read. But today I have completed this one.
I am unsure exactly how many times it has been recommended to me, several, from older readers and readers my age (both now and ten years ago) and book reviews in magazines. Even after I started reading the book, I received home a full slam recommending that I choose this book to read.
So I finally chose it, and it was indeed a beautifully written book. If anything, the God of Small Things refers not to a character or plot point in the book but to the author's incredible gift for description. The details are rich and abundant, but alas, perhaps it was not the right book for me at the right time (and after so many years!). My mood in life has been too joyous and adventurous lately to completely welcome this melancholy circular story. I felt the need to pursue the story, to read to the last page, to ponder all of the Small Things in the text, but always thinking about how I would like to finish this disconsolate tale and move on to other tales that are waiting for me (perhaps less patiently than this one has). Nonetheless, I am glad I read it, but not sure I fully appreciated it.
A quote: "The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. The don't deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don't surprise you with the unforeseen. They are as familiar as the house you live in. Or the smell of your lover's skin. You know how they end, yet you listen as though you don't. In the way that although you know that one day you will die, you live as though you won't."(less)

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01/28/08

K Z rated it:

bookshelves: 2008, owned

Read in January, 2008

Arundhati Roy
The God of Small Things
1997, Flamingo
340 pages

Seldom while reading have I found my heart aching and my eyes watering when only at page 5.

The God of Small Things, set in India, is a story of a family torn apart by the wish to love, but more so, the desire to be loved.

Seen through the eyes of Estha and Rahel (twins, one soul), the story, which starts off with the funeral of the twins’ cousin Sophie Mol, unravels through memories and the...more

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Best Booker Prize Novel from India?

Midnight's Children

2 votes, 66.7%

The God of Small Things

1 vote, 33.3%

The Inheritance of Loss

0 votes, 0.0%

The White Tiger: A Novel

0 votes, 0.0%

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