The God of Small Things: A Novel Author: Arundhati Roy | Language: English | ISBN:
B001NBEWN6 | Format: PDF
The God of Small Things: A Novel Description
Compared favorably to the works of Faulkner and Dickens, Arundhati Roy’s debut novel is a modern classic that has been read and loved worldwide. Equal parts powerful family saga, forbidden love story, and piercing political drama, it is the story of an affluent Indian family forever changed by one fateful day in 1969. The seven-year-old twins Estha and Rahel see their world shaken irrevokably by the arrival of their beautiful young cousin, Sophie. It is an event that will lead to an illicit liaison and tragedies accidental and intentional, exposing “big things [that] lurk unsaid” in a country drifting dangerously toward unrest. Lush, lyrical, and unnerving, The God of Small Things is an award-winning landmark that started for its author an esteemed career of fiction and political commentary that continues unabated.
From the Trade Paperback edition.- File Size: 1288 KB
- Print Length: 333 pages
- Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks; Reprint edition (December 16, 2008)
- Sold by: Random House LLC
- Language: English
- ASIN: B001NBEWN6
- Text-to-Speech: Not enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,272 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #40
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Classics > Literary - #89
in Books > Literature & Fiction > World Literature
- #40
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Classics > Literary - #89
in Books > Literature & Fiction > World Literature
"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.
What is the God of Small Things? Small things are what we talk about when the big things are too difficult and too overwhelming. This book is the story of the childhood of non-fraternal twins, Rahel & Estha - a girl and a boy, family, forbidden lovers, politics, and tradition. Ammu is the twins' mother; a woman of a priviledged family who married, then divorced her twins' alcoholic father. Baby Kochamma is their manipulative spinster aunt who pines for a priest she met as a young girl. Sophie Mol is a visting Indian/English cousin who meets her end soon after arriving. The story progresses, in a backwards and forwards manner, telling the tale(s) that ended their childhoods. The children, utimately become pawns in the cruel "history" being played out by the adults around them. We often see the result of the action, before we know what occurred; a complex puzzle unfolding. This story encorporates issues of human relationships, the complicated emotions and repurcussions of the caste system, brutality, and the ability to survive. Holding together the microcosms of the many "small" stories within this story is Roy's use of language. The silly rhymes of the children, their imaginative nicknames for adults, and their view of the love and cruelty of adults, and the interpretation of the world on their terms, creates a framework for this story. The use of "non-standard" English is widely used, which some reviews seem to believe is unintentional. For instance, verbs are sometimes capitalized in order to emphasize the inevitability, the concrete-ness, of the action. Sentances are often framented in order to express a thought, especially a child's thought. (I certainly don't think in complete, grammatical sentances myself). It's really quite beautifully written.
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