The God of Small Things (Arundhati Roy)
Meet two-egg (fraternal) twins Estha and Rahel, two kids growing up in the India state of Kerala in the turbulent 1960s. Welcome to the imaginative, confusing, flowing world of two connected siblings, who see the world through each others’ (vibrantly, innocently descriptive) eyes, yet understand only shallowly the events unfolding around around them. Join them as they discover — over the course of childhood and with the distance of adulthood — “the laws that lay down who should be loved, and how. And how much.”
This Booker Prize-winning novel definitely deserved its accolades. Though it took me much, much longer than normal to get through the book (my fault, not the novel’s), I loved every little description, every meaningful encounter, every private thought. Though the story ostensibly revolves around a tragedy of youth where a young relative visiting from England dies, the tale encompasses so much more and paints a thoughtful portrait of India during that time period.
Communism and unions and the division of wealth are seen in the family’s ownership of Paradise Pickles and Preserves. Gender roles appear in the “men’s needs door” allowed in the uncles bedroom, contrasted against his sister who left her drunken husband, who is considered immoral. Westernization: Is everything foreign more valuable than what comes out of India, including people?
But yet, the overwhelming theme is loss, tragedy and guilt. Not an uncommon theme, I admit. But the talent of Roy, her offbeat yet poignant descriptive ability, brings the theme to a higher level. Take, for instance, her description of Estha, who retreats into silence in reaction to his cousin’s death:
Once the quietness arrived, it stayed and spread in Estha. It reached out of his head and enfolded him in its swampy arms. It rocked him to the rhythm of an ancient, fetal heartbeat. It send its stealthy, suckered tentacles inching along the insides of his skull, hoovering the knolls and dells of his memory, dislodging old sentences, whisking them off the tip of his tongue. It stripped his thoughts of the words that described them and left them pared and naked. Unspeakable. Numb. And to an observer therefore, perhaps barely there. Slowly, over the years, Estha withdrew from the world. He grew accustomed to the uneasy octopus that lived inside him and squirted its inky tranquilizer on his past. Gradually the reason for his silence was hidden away, emtombed somewhere deep in the soothing folds of the fact of it.
I absolutely love the irreverence of Roy’s language. Random capitalization. Repetition. Her unique titling of people and things: Estha becomes Ambassador Pelvis with his special-occasion puff; Rahel is labeled a fountain in a Love in Tokyo due to her hairstyle. Roy reaches into the brain to pull out descriptions I would never have dreamed of, but that immediately bring images to mind. For example, the twins’ mother’s appearance is gauged in toothbrushes. As she stares in the mirror, she thinks she could definitely hold one under the fold of her bottom — several even — but her smaller breasts couldn’t support one.
And unlike heavier works by just-as-gifted authors, the words alone are not the only joy of the novel. The story itself will make you ache, both in its occasional sweetness and innocence as well as its tragedy. The guilt, whether deserved or not — in this world, tragedy almost seems inevitable — is palpable. But sometimes the best of books make you feel the worst, right? And despite it being the author’s first novel, this is definitely one of the best.
Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - Buy the hardcover
5 out of 5 Star Books, Award-Winning, Book Reviews, Fiction |