My R Author

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

My rating: 1 of 5 stars


"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."
~`back cover.

I always feel so odd, so substandard, when I don't like a book the rest of the world is raving about. What did I miss? What didn't I see?

But I didn't much care for the book. I'm not a big fan of a plot disjointed in time (except for The Time Traveler's Wife, where the disjointedness of time was essential to the plot.) You get the plot in dribbles and drabs, never enough to anchor you in the story. Why is Baby Kochamma so jealous of Ammu? Who is the mysterious person to whom Estha is Returned? etc.

The book is a very elegant political commentary on the caste system, and human nature. But dark, bloody, vicious.

I didn't like it.