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Adrianne Mathiowetz's Reviews > The God of Small Things
The God of Small Things
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by
Adrianne Mathiowetz's review
Mar 25, 2008
Recommended to Adrianne by:
Jan
Recommended 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 Conrad, Emily Dickinson, and Pilgrim's Progress (if you actually read That Particular Gem). Key sentences reappear a few chapters later multiple times throughout the book: the main one, of course, being "Everything can change in the course of a day." And if you're going to repeat a sentence multiple times in a book, that's certainly not a bad one.
The one thing that makes me hesitant to go all out with the five stars is the whole backwards plot development thing. At least early on in the book, it struck me as a little gimmicky, especially since the end result is so dramatic. Estha doesn't talk any more. Why doesn't Estha talk any more? Something must have happened to him. When did it happen to him? As a child, something very bad happened to him as a child. You're probably wondering what that is now, right? Well now let's talk about his aunt. He's got a mom too. This is what their garden is like. Hey, remember Estha, that kid you're wondering about? Yeah, something definitely happened to him as a kid. Keep reading, suckers!
But I shouldn't say that, because, of course, it turns out you're not a sucker for reading this book, and the joke is on me for ever thinking so in the first place.
The similes and metaphors Roy employs are simultaneously tactile and surreal, like an overly vivid dream, and her storytelling style is somewhere between Joseph Conrad, Emily Dickinson, and Pilgrim's Progress (if you actually read That Particular Gem). Key sentences reappear a few chapters later multiple times throughout the book: the main one, of course, being "Everything can change in the course of a day." And if you're going to repeat a sentence multiple times in a book, that's certainly not a bad one.
The one thing that makes me hesitant to go all out with the five stars is the whole backwards plot development thing. At least early on in the book, it struck me as a little gimmicky, especially since the end result is so dramatic. Estha doesn't talk any more. Why doesn't Estha talk any more? Something must have happened to him. When did it happen to him? As a child, something very bad happened to him as a child. You're probably wondering what that is now, right? Well now let's talk about his aunt. He's got a mom too. This is what their garden is like. Hey, remember Estha, that kid you're wondering about? Yeah, something definitely happened to him as a kid. Keep reading, suckers!
But I shouldn't say that, because, of course, it turns out you're not a sucker for reading this book, and the joke is on me for ever thinking so in the first place.
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Reading Progress
March 25, 2008
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April 1, 2008
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Apr 08, 2008 10:07PM
You are such a great book reporter.
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I've been giving away copies of this book since high school, but lately I've wondered: is it really as good as I thought eight years ago? I'm glad to hear that it might be.
My favorite sentence in this book talks about her seeing her wedding photo: "she had permitted herself to be so painstakingly decorated before being led to the gallows. Seems so absurd. So futile.
Like polishing firewood."
I read the book six years ago and I can still remember where that sentence lands on the bottom right of the page.
That sentence terrified me.
I read than sentence and thought, "Wait? I can be pretentious and hilarious? Then I want to be a novelist!"
Hah. Really? There are a lot of ways I'd describe that passage, but "hilarious" would be one of the last things to come to mind for me.
I think you've just helped me come to grips with one of my biggest problems. I think everything is hilarious. I laughed out loud when I read that.
I'm beginning to think that my reaction to it reveals an unnaturally high fear of marrying the wrong person. Who needs Rorschach and Myers-Briggs when you've got fiction?
this review made me laugh out loud! it's true! it was like being dragged slowly by a potentially dying horse
I read this comment before reading the book. Only until after I finished it did I realize how true you've described it.and the chronology - its both my favourite and least favourite aspect of the book. the experience wouldntve been the same.
And the whole word play? the Heart of Darkness references?
heart of darkness.
dark of heartness.
heart of dark.
dark of heart.
WHAT THE HECK IS HEARTNESS.
i loved it.
its just. sick.
I had a similar feeling about the chronology when I finally turned the last page. Especially since the tragedy had practically been drawn in silhouette by foreshadowing. I've come to think of it this way:Had it been written in another way I can think of two great losses that would have occurred. 1. Small Things (the novel and things which are small) would have culminated, rather than swirled and juxtaposed. 2. The final scene would have, at best, lost it's magic; at worst it would have been a ludicrous and trite lover's climax, with Sophie Mol the tragic consequence and denouement.
I much prefer the gut-punched, heart-crushed, teeth-broken, Reader-shaped Hole in the Universe this book makes of me before offering up this last shred of calm. In some ways it seems like the only way to truly partake in the majesty of the Small Things.
I love this line from you: "I much prefer the gut-punched, heart-crushed, teeth-broken, Reader-shaped Hole in the Universe this book makes of me."
Loved the review. Totally haven't read this book. I wanted to comment because I've wrote reviews on a couple of books lately that I feel have received excessive backlash over the way they were written and the book not delivering as expected."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."
That is the key! So many people pick up a book because they were told it was good and about such and such. A synopsis or summary is the worst thing to be reading about some books (like Never Let Me Go, which I just finished). Some books cannot be summed up in 5 sentences and those sentences tend to be plot driven whereas some novels are not about plot at all. Surely this book has a plot, but it sounds like, if I were to read it for that particular purpose, I would be bored to tears. Some novels are worth reading simply for the sake of reading and thinking. Sometimes you have to be patient, go with the flow, and get increasingly irritated when the author doesn't supply the information you want but gives you everything else.
I love your description, "...and being dragged face-down through the jungle." Exactly how I felt reading this book, and loving every minute of it.
This is great. You hit the nail right on the head!
I felt a bit manipulated for a while, too, and I feared the ending would piss me off, but instead it made me it all come together structurally and emotionally.
Your expresses my thoughts exactly. Thank you.
very nice simile there, yourself
This is one of the best reviews of my favorite book, which i will always remember.I really loved it. Thanks much.
Parthiban wrote: "This is one of the best reviews of my favorite book, which i will always remember.I really loved it. Thanks much."Thank you!
I also love her language. I heard her read one time and it was lovely to close my eyes and listen. I opened them when she said that she had never, ever, edited a single sentence, or changed anything. Given the complex structure you note in your review, I wonder....but I suppose it is possible.
"Possibly ripe with e coli" cracked me up big time.
I felt this way too until I remembered that this book was written mid-nineties. The plot structure that seems passe now was not so common then!
Your review definitely makes me want to read this book now. I have noticed that me and the Booker Prize Winner books get along very well.
Ahahaha I love that "being dragged by a horse" metaphor! xD
Years after, I still come here to read your opening paragraph to relive reading this book!
Parthiban wrote: "Years after, I still come here to read your opening paragraph to relive reading this book!":)
This is my favorite review ever. It’s exactly like that. What was WITH that eons-long description of Baby’s life?
What a metaphor!! Might I add to it, that while you are being so dragged, face down, you smell the forest floor. Grasses, fresh and trampled, wildflowers, mosses, the soil, small animals, smaller ones being eaten by them. It fills your senses up. I have long struggled to describe this book until today.
I went on with five stars because of the language it talks in. It sticks. Like the traces of those smells.
What a metaphor!! Might I add to it, that while you are being so dragged, face down, you smell the forest floor. Grasses, fresh and trampled, wildflowers, mosses, the soil, small animals, smaller ones being eaten by them. It fills your senses up. I have long struggled to describe this book until today.
I went on with five stars because of the language it talks in. It sticks. Like the traces of those smells.
