There was no reasoning with this book. It caught me with its word-shaped eyes and wanted to lock horns. It threw me to the ground and thrashed me every time I picked it up. During some of these thrashings I came out on top, but most of the time I was overwhelmed by the book’s overpowering strength in spite of its meager spine. In the last match, as if it had been training me, I overcame the book. I had naught to do but reflect upon the struggle that had brought me to slamming shut the final pages in victory and

I Found Myself Confused

In the wake of this book I found myself asking a question I had asked myself before, but never properly answered. Not to say that I will answer it properly here. Not to say that there is a proper answer. The question:

Can I forgive a book for a painful read if it pays off in the end?

My fiancé gifted Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things to me for Christmas because:

a) It was a Booker Prize Winner
b) It was written by an author not from Canada, the US, or the UK.
c) She read reviews that both praised and bemoaned this book

She knows me well! Indeed, the book hit a lot of my personal tick-boxes. The God of Small Things had been on my radar for a long time and as I settled in to the first chapter I was blown away by how difficult it was to follow. The writing, floral and descriptive, was of such density that I was taken aback. Of course, this subsided after a while and I became adjusted to Roy’s prose. With that said, there’s a lot going on and it isn’t explained in a manner that could be described as linear.

The story starts, stops, and jumps around with enough regularity that it almost demanded to be read it long sittings. Roy slips backwards in time within paragraphs, at times forcing me to go back and read what I had just read to make sure I was interpreting the passage correctly. Roy also jumps around between characters frequently. Since she playfully gives her characters variations on their names or uses parts of the story that have passed to inform their description, it can be tough to get a handle on the cast.

But once you let go of your expectations and go along for the ride, the book has many rewarding qualities. The characters are each well developed, understandable, and are tied together by a shared fate. Though the novel read as disjointed throughout, Roy brings everything together quite well. The novel’s first chapter serves as an odd synopsis that is obscure enough that you wouldn’t be able to point out its intricacies, only identify the major tragedies. The character-driven plot becomes rewarding when the artifice of the fragmented timeline is laid bare by the novel’s end. Whether or not that reward is worth the strain is another topic.

Certainly, it isn’t all strain. Roy took home the Booker Prize in 1997 for this novel, and it is easy to see why it might have come out on top. It has a unique format, but more importantly, really, really attractive, if extravagant, writing. Some of the descriptions in this novel are so vivid that they’ll have you basking in their beauty and horror. In that way Roy has done an impressive thing: shown the beauty and the terror inherent in the real world. Of course, it also makes for an exhausting read.

I’m sure reader opinion will vary on this one since appreciation of style is such a subjective matter, but Roy’s prose both works for and against her. It makes for some pretty mind pictures, no doubt. It also had me putting down the book to take a break more often than I do with novels. The book is layered with metaphor, endlessly self-referential, and sometimes obscure enough that I’ll admit, unembarrassed, that I had no idea what it was supposed to mean.

So, did the tying together of everything justify the reading? Well, certainly I’ve learned things from the reading about prose that are beneficial. However, the struggle never made me feel rewarded like I have been with other challenging works. There’s a lot of beauty and great thought to behold in this novel of India, but I always felt a little removed from the proceedings. Somewhere amidst a struggle with stream of consciousness, appreciation of writing, bafflement at a timeline, and enjoyable characters you'll find my opinion.

She remained sitting for awhile. Long after the song had ended. Then suddenly she rose from her chair and walked out of her world like a witch. To a better, happier place.



Arundhati Roy (1951- )

It’s been twenty years since the book was published. It changed the author’s life. It may have changed some readers’ lives also. Who can tell?

I don’t care to try to actually review the book. What I thought of it is revealed by the rating.

The structure of the narrative is a work of wonderful artistry though. It centers on a span of two weeks which occur in the childhood of a brother and sister. The climax of the tale occurs over a day and night – or night and day more accurately.

Yet the novel, not particularly long, approaches the telling of this intensely human story in a roundabout way, weaving back and forth from before the main events, to many years after, slowly getting ever closer to the crescendo, slowly revealing more details. It’s not a mystery, really. Roy isn’t at pains to keep the reader guessing about what happens. One gradually learns more and more, the arc of the story becomes clearer. To me it seemed something like a beautiful symphony, built of themes that come and go, that coalesce in the final movement to something you could almost, but not quite, anticipate from what comes before.

For real reviews, see these – the four most liked reviews by friends.

Samadrita: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Rowena: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Cecily: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Dolors: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...


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Previous review: Plato's Dialogues
Next review: Richard III Shakespeare
Earlier review: Dictionary of Cultural Literacy what you need to know if you live in the U.S.

Previous library review: Half of a Yellow Sun
Next library review: A Suitable Boy

This isn't a bad book, it's just not a book for me. I feel like I gave it a fair shot, reading over 1/3 of the novel. But I've noticed I haven't been as inspired to read lately, and when I sit down to read this one I'm just not interested or invested in the story at all. Maybe some day I will try it again because it is a Man Booker winner--and I'm in charge of the Manbookering Group which is reading this book for November (oops! sorry y'all)--but right now I'm setting it aside. Life's too short to read books you just aren't enjoying.

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.

Her writing style was wonderful. I enjoyed her unique use of grammar and punctuation. The imagery was beautiful as well; but that's about where my praise ends. This particular novel falls into a category I call "Wallowing in the Most Base and Offensive Aspects of the Human Condition Without the Slightest Hint of Hope." I'm not one to shy away from uncomfortable themes and issues, but I at least like to see something constructive being done with them: a moral, an opinion, a solution, or at least an argument of some kind. Without one of these, we're just punching ourselves in the emotional face for days (or weeks, depending on how fast you read) for no reason. And that's how I felt at the end of this book. I haven't read anything else by this author, but I hope her other works offer something more than just the regurgitation of what I see on the news.

Arundhati Roy - image from Slate

This is a wonderful, image-rich novel told over several generations of a family in India. The central event is the death of a young girl, and how racism, and petty, CYA politics, results in the death of an innocent for a crime that was never committed. The central character is a girl/woman, a twin, with an almost surreal connection to her other. Their family life is told. There is much here on Indian history, the caste system and how that continues to manifest in the modern world. It won the Booker prize, and is very satisfying.

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.

One of the best books I have read in recent years. The story unfolds in an intricate way; and therefore demands attention. It goes back and forth in time; most names are difficult to pronounce and sound unfamiliar. But once you are into the story, everything else falls into place.

The story revolves around 'Ammu', an upper-class, divorced woman, and her two kid, Rahel and Estha. Ammu, along with her kids, returns to live with her parents where she is not really welcomed. The story takes a very dangerous turn when Ammu falls in love with a lower caste man 'Velutha.' Such a transgression brings disaster in their lives. The twins Rahel and Estha are separated, Velutha is tortured to death in police custody for loving an upper caste woman, and Ammu's reputation further goes down the drain and she dies an anonymous death in a cheap lodge.

What is so remarkable about this book is how it is structured, how it is told. It is truly 'unique.' She uses language the way an accomplished dancer uses body movements and gestures. The story is hers and what she brings to the paper is fiercely her too. I cannot think of any other Indian writer or from elsewhere whose writing I can quickly recognize when I see it.

Many people think that she became an activist after winning the Booker in 1997. Anyone who has read this book knows that her politics has always been there in her very first book. One has to read a bit deeper because it is hidden in her poetic prose. Almost whatever she wrote afterwards, all her non fiction could be traced to her first novel.

This consistency of heart, of vision, of politics, is an achievement; especially in a world where everything is tied to profit making. A world in which politicians, journalists, writers take sides depending on their 'needs.' One day globalization is good, but another day it is bad. Sometimes multiculturism is great, but now it is not. Sometimes they like Obama, and on nostalgic days they cheer for 'Adolf Trump' and the list goes on. So we need writers like her; and we need stories that connect, that make us see how things are.

One of the best contemporary novels I've read. Trying to fault it craft-wise would be like taking a toothpick to a fortress.

Winner of the Booker Prize 1997

I am currently reading or re-reading the whole of the 1997 Booker shortlist for a discussion in The Mookse and the Gripes group, and this is my fifth of the six - after this I only have Grace Notes to go. My first read was over 20 years ago, and my memories were very hazy. I remembered the lively language and the wordplay, but I had forgotten just how tragic and moving the central story is. The political subtext is never far from the surface, unsurprisingly given Roy's subsequent decision to abandon writing to work as a political and environmental activist. If anything I was even more impressed this time - I can easily understand why it won the prize, and although my memories of Grace Notes are positive, this one may end up top of my list.

Almost everyone in the story is the victim of some kind of forbidden love. The story is told by an omniscient narrator. The youngest and most central character is Rahel, a twin and product of a failed marriage living in the family home in Kerala. At the start of the book she is a young adult - her brother Estha has been "re-returned" by their father having been banished by the family following the tragic incident that forms the emotional core of the story. Their mother Ammu is now dead, and they are living with their embittered great-aunt Baby Kochamma.

The narrative spans a longer time period and there are frequent time shifts and digressions, but the story never loses its momentum. The tragedy starts when their cousin Sophie Mol and her divorced mother come from England to visit the family. Sophie's death is mentioned very early in the book, but the details don't emerge until near the end, along with many of the machinations that were kept secret from Estha and Rahel.

Original review:

"This is the final instalment of my attempt to write a few words on each of the many Booker winners I have read. Once again my memory is hazy - I remember finding this a compulsive read - a family story that says a lot about contemporary India. It is interesting that Roy abandoned creative writing after producing such an accomplished novel, to spend more time on her work as a political and social campaigner - it would be interesting to read this again in the light of that."

أحببتها، كل تفصيل، كل شيء صغير انتبهت له وكل شيء كبير تغاضيت عنه من فرط الألم، ورغم قصور الترجمة وقفزي العشوائي بين العربية والإنجليزية إلا أنها أدهشتني تماماً، وكأنني أطفو في عقلٍ كليٍ هو في الحقيقة عقل طفلة/طفل .. توأمي بيضتين.

رواية ملائمة للتسبب بالقشعريرة، كالفراشة على قلب راحيل، ترفع ساقيها الباردتين وتعيد إنزالهما .. مراراً وإلى الأبد.

Είναι από αυτά τα βιβλία που στέκονται χρόνια και χρόνια στη βιβλιοθήκη σου, το ξεσκονόπανο έχει βαρεθεί να παίρνει τη σκόνη από πάνω τους, όλο το τραβάς έξω για να το διαβάσεις κι όλο τελευταία στιγμή παίρνεις κάποιο άλλο και το αφήνεις πάλι να σκονίζεται μέχρι την επόμενη φορά… (όχι βέβαια πως είναι το μοναδικό τέτοιο βιβλίο…)
Παρ’όλα αυτά, επιτέλους ήρθεν η ώρα του και ο «Θεός των μικρών πραγμάτων» αποτελεί πλέον μία από τις αναγνωστικές μου εμπειρίες…
Δυο λόγια για την ιστορία, αν και η ιστορία δεν είναι αυτό που έχει σημασία σε τέτοιου είδους βιβλία. Στο Αγιέμενεμ, μια περιοχή της Ινδίας, δύο δίδυμα, η Ράχελ και ο Έστθα και η χωρισμένη μητέρα τους, η Άμμου!!! (χωρισμένη στην Ινδία, μέγα αμάρτημα…) ζουν στο σπίτι της οικογένειας, με γιαγιάδες, θείες – θείους κι ένα εργοστάσιο με πίκλες και μαρμελάδες. Μια μέρα (όχι από το πουθενά) θα εμφανιστεί η ξαδέλφη τους από την Αγγλία η Σόφι Μολ στην ίδια ηλικία με τα δίδυμα (κάπου εκεί στα οχτώ…) και η τραγωδία χτυπάει την πόρτα τους… η Σόφι Μολ πνίγεται… και όλα αλλάζουν…
Υπάρχουν δυο εποχές… το τότε (όταν τα δίδυμα ήταν μικρά) και το τώρα (που τα δίδυμα είναι γύρω στα 35)… όμως ο χρόνος δεν είναι ξεκάθαρος… είναι ρευστός, πολύ ρευστός… στη μια παράγραφο είσαι εδώ και στην άλλη στο τότε, στη μια γραμμή κλαις για το τότε και στην άλλη αράδα γελάς για το τώρα… Εάν δεν είσαι συνηθισμένος στις ‘μπερδαγουέι’ (ελληνιστί μπερδεμένες) καταστάσεις, ίσως δυσκολευτείς να το παρακολουθήσεις, αλλά νομίζω πως αξίζει μια βουτιά στα βαθιά, ρηχά, όπως το πάρει κανείς…
Πέρα από τα συναισθηματικά και φιλοσοφικά κομμάτια του βιβλίου, η Ρόι παρουσιάζει τη ζωή και τη δομή της σύγχρονης Ινδίας, μιας Ινδίας που ακόμα η λογική της κάστας ζει και βασιλεύει, όπου υπάρχουν οι Καθαροί κι οι Ακάθαρτοι που ένας απαγορεύεται ν’αγγίξει τον άλλον, που το σκούρο χρώμα κάποιου είναι η κατάρα του… δεν είναι και το πιο εύκολο να παρακολουθήσεις τη νοοτροπία μιας χώρας για την οποία είσαι ανίδεος, όμως θεωρώ πως αξίζει η προσπάθεια…
Η γραφή μου θύμισε σε πολλά σημεία Αλιέντε και Μάρκες… ονειρική, λυρική, σουρεαλιστική, άλλα αντί άλλων… αλλά εμένα αυτό είναι το στυλ που λατρεύω τελικά, οπότε μου κάθισε κουτί…
Μέχρι τη μέση το βιβλίο κυλάει αργά, ίσως και πιο αργά από την καθυστέρηση, σαν χορός ‘κατακάλι’ (αν το λέω σωστό) κι ύστερα τα γεγονότα γίνονται καταιγιστικά (εδώ έρχεται το Bollywood…)
Προσωπικά μου άρεσε πολύ, ήταν στο στυλ μου… ωστόσο μπορώ άνετα να καταλάβω όλους όσους δεν μπόρεσαν να το παρακολουθήσουν…
Είμαι ανάμεσα στο 8.00 και στο 9.00 (άντε θα βάλω το Μ.Ο.)
8,5 /10
http://skorofido.blogspot.gr/2017/03/...
Readathon 2017: Θα μπορούσα να το βάλω σε τόσες πολλές κατηγορίες… τελικά κατέληξα…
Ένα βιβλίο που ο πρωταγωνιστής είναι παιδάκι ή έφηβος (και τρεις πρωταγωνιστές παρακαλώ…) 11/80