The God of Small Things

“The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They 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. In the Great Stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn't. And yet you want to know again.” –218

Kerala and nearly all of the characters expand into three dimensions in a story that weaves between past and present and addresses class and patriarchal structures, colonialism, family dysfunction, and the beats of a butterfly's wing. It's cluttered however with poetic turns of phrase that founder and repeat and grow overshadowly wearisome.

This novel is masterful. Roy's prose is poetry, or near as. With coinages, imagery, and heartbreaking emotion, she transports you to rural Kerala and places you among the cast of the novel across the generations they span. I've just put the book down, and am attempting to extinguish the lingering feeling of oppressive, impending doom that has sat with me throughout the book. More incredibly to me, I enjoyed it, as someone who tends to avoid doom and its impending arrival at as many opportunities as possible. Roy boldly tells you what is going to happen in the very first pages, and unfolds the path to get there beautifully, keeping you entranced not by suspense but with the weight of inevitability. I didn't think it would work until I read it.

Inevitability is not just the feeling of the book, it's also a theme. There is history, and there is History. We might take the former as a set of facts, and the latter as facts personified, empowered to affect the ways in which we live. The titular God of Small Things is a the personal tragedies that fall victim to History, when the things we want and need are unreachable because of History's designs and strictures. How free are we, when we live amidst ideology, tradition, family, society? Are we free to live, to love? I won't say this novel gives me hope that we are. I don't even think it makes it clear that we will be; this is a tragedy and History can be ruthless with those that rebel against it. What it does do, is remind me that we should be, because the cost of living constrained thus is far too high a price to pay.

This is not a book I would have willingly chosen to read, its not really a genre I tend to gravitate towards. But saying that, I enjoyed this book more than I was expecting to. Yes, parts were difficult to read, without getting into too much detail there are some taboo things in this book. But at the heart of it it is a story of love and loss, of grieving for the life you though you were going to have but didn't, how the bitterness that some people hold onto when their lives don't turn out the way they wanted can poison future generations.

Would I recommend this book to others? Yes, but with warnings about the taboo sections.

What a beautifully written book this is. Perhaps it is “overwritten,” as a friend of mine has said, but for me its lushness is part of its charm. It's the story of a pair of twins, Rahel and Estha (a girl and a boy, “two-egg twins”) and the rest of their family, living through the tragedy of the death of their cousin Sophie Moll, and the complex aftermath. Embedded in this story is a look at India's caste system, at the political morass, the socio-economic divide, at education and race and the role of women.
I have owned a copy of this book for a long time—I try to read the Booker Prize winners, and this one won in 1997—but I didn't get around to “reading” it until I came into possession of the Books on Tape version (which, sadly, apparently isn't available commercially). It is narrated by Donada Peters, a gifted actress, if her reading of this book is a good measure. She's fantastic. And now, having come to the end of the tapes, I'm ready to dip into the actual text.

I didn't know what this book was gonna be about when I got it but I knew I wanted to read it since I had heard it talked about previously as well as the fact that the setting was for the first time geography and culture that I knew first hand.

I spent a portion of my life in Kottayam and, regardless of whether I asked for it or not, have been steeped in the world this book portrays. This book is very real to me, it's characters, it's setting, its premise. They all comprise of bits and pieces of information I've picked up and experienced through the years forming my picture of the place I grew up and the people I grew up with. The actions, motivations and internal thoughts for these characters are what I've come to understand to be true of the people around me and recently on returning to visit I find that to still be accurate to the point where reading this embarrassed me deeply as though I was being exposed by every new page I read. Offhand comments through the years by people close to me have informed me of the bigotry this book represents as well as the insecurities of the characters it portrays. It reflects such a picture of this place that I'm bewildered that anyone outside of this place can truly understand the depth of this book in how damning it can be at times. But that would assume that these themes aren't universal which I've also learned from leaving this place that they are. Universal. And so I understand how this book, written almost like a Shakespearean tale could cut through the divides and relate to people of its contents.

What struck me most about the book was how it felt as if we were given puzzle pieces without reference and slowly but surely start putting them together until we have the full picture. Reading every page felt like another piece slotting into place.

I'm glad I read this book. I'd recommend it heavily though I'd also understand if it turned another person off due to the dense language and themes as well as the characters, but for everyone else I hope this book excites you as it did me.

Abandoned, at 24%. This is not good for my 2021 reading challenge: I'm already two books behind. If I were younger I might slog through... but now, with fewer moments left in my life, I choose to enjoy those moments more — and I am not enjoying this book. At all. Disjointed the timeline is, confusingly so. The characters (so far) only superficially drawn: no depth nor feeling, except for (the author's) heavyhanded scorn toward the Bitter Spinster and the Drunken Ex-Husband. The prose, awkwardly florid at times. (Lovely at times, too, but not enough of a balance for me).

A book with ‘small' in its title tackled some big subjects at its core. The book's narrative is not chronologically smooth some even can say it's disjointed and confusing but for me, it was near perfect although I a few times got confused on the timeline It didn't make any impact on my experience cause the events and memories that Roy has written are most memorable not only for the individual characters but the way they're presented in, I would say it becomes somewhat memorable to the reader too. The prose was excellent, I just loved the metaphors she used and her humour. for me, the prose is a big thing for a book and this book has the perfect pH level for that. Neither too descriptive like some of the old classics nor too simple and bare-boned. Roy addressed so many sociological, cultural, and religious aspects here, sometimes the negative part. Even with All of this, her book didn't feel too saturated to the point of being careless and it didn't feel like somebody read a bunch of articles of societal and religious hypocrisy and dumped them at the same place.
I accept that some of the middle portions seemed rather mundane to the whole story that's why it doesn't become a 4.25 star read.
some might say that I enjoyed it more cause I'm pretty familiar with the political and social structure of that time, of Indian society but I think anyone who has a little knowledge about the political situation of that time along with keen observation and introspective thinking would be easily able to understand it pretty clearly.
so parts can be pretty triggering to some, but it was;t too gory in my opinion do check the trigger warnings before that. Otherwise, I am pretty sure I will recommend it pretty much to anyone who is looking for a realistic literary fiction book. It took me only 4 days even though I was only reading it on my breaks.
p.s- Now I understand why the hype and why it became a booker winner

I highly recommend checking out the trigger/content warnings for this book. Frankly, the descriptions in this book were too graphic for me, making me uncomfortable and with the disjointed narrative, it confused me a lot, as I tend to struggle with narratives that jump back and forth in time.
I enjoyed reading some parts, especially since it addresses certain things and problems of their society. I didn't find any of the characters likeable but interesting enough to read about them, so it wasn't too bad, but the writing really wasn't for me.

A hauntingly despairing tale of a family, of a culture, of an era that leaves the reader with desolate, empty feelings. I'm surprised the content/trigger warnings of this book aren't as as emphasised as certain other books, for I feel there is a need for it. The book left me with disgust and loathing for beings that scar the face of humanity.

Told in lush and lyrical words, full of colors and sensory perceptions, this is the story of a family in India, of twin siblings Estha and Rahel and their beloved mother Ammu, and the tragedy that befell them all. The story is told by drawing circles through time, closing in on that one terrible thing that broke everyone apart.

I am sure this structure is what contributes to the allure of the book, as you know what's coming, and so tints everything with ominous tones, but at the same time it was also slightly frustrating, because it kept withholding the details for so long. I also felt it went on tangents towards the end of the book where it should just have focused on the main event. I am also of the mind that that reunion between the twins wasn't necessary.

Nevertheless, this was a beautiful book and I'll miss hearing stories about the two-egg twin ambassadors, ambassador Elvis Pelvis and ambassador stick insect. The language was so playful it worked really well for being consumed in audio-form, especially with all the children's singsong rhymes.

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy is a book I first bought over 20 years ago. Back then, I eagerly tried to read it but soon found myself frustrated, eventually abandoning it altogether. The intricate narrative, the unfamiliar structure—it all felt too overwhelming.

Fast-forward two decades, and there it was again, buried on my bookshelf. Its pages browned with age, coffee stains marking its journey with me, and my children's scribbles dancing across its margins. After finishing 100 Years of Solitude, I felt a renewed curiosity, a sense that maybe this was the right time to pick it up again. And this time, it was different.

The fault hadn't been the book's, I realized, but mine. I hadn't been ready. The God of Small Things is not a book you read casually. It's raw, unflinching, and deeply emotional, especially for someone like me, who grew up in South Asia.

With every page, memories long buried resurfaced. I could feel the sensation of boarding a crowded bus, gripping a metal railing, and inhaling the sharp, sour tang it left on my hands. Roy's prose stirred something deep within me—she captures the sensory experience of South Asian life in a way that is so visceral, so palpable. From the small, seemingly inconsequential details to the larger, more profound explorations of family, love, and loss, this novel cuts through the skin and reaches right into the bone.

This time around, I was ready for the ache it created. I understood its emotional weight in a way I couldn't have, all those years ago. Roy's ability to weave together the personal and the political, the small and the grand, is nothing short of masterful.

Ultimately, The God of Small Things is a masterpiece. It's not an easy read, but it's one that stays with you, seeping into the corners of your memory, like the sour smell of metal. This time, I could let myself sink into its depths, and what I found there was haunting, beautiful, and utterly unforgettable.

I listened to this on audiobook and it was hard to follow because the book goes back and forth in time. If I were reading it I could flip back and remind myself where I was in time, but I wasn't able to do that listening to an audiobook. So, though it was beautifully written and the characters were well-done, it was too much of a chore because of the time changes that weren't immediately evident. It was also really sad.

I wasn't sure what to think about this book when I finished. While it was beautifully written, the plot was sometimes hard to understand. Yet, weeks later as I think about it, I appreciate more the intricate story of the twins Rahel and Estha, and what happened when their cousin Sophie Mol visited one summer.