The story of the tragic decline of an Indian family whose members suffer the terrible consequences of forbidden love, The God of Small Things is set in the state of Kerala, on the southernmost tip of India. Armed only with the invincible innocence of children, the twins Rahel and Esthappen fashion a childhood for themselves in the shade of the wreck that is their family -- their lonely, lovely mother, Ammu (who loves by night the man her children love by day), their blind grandmother, Mammachi (who plays Handel on her violin), their beloved uncle Chacko (Rhodes scholar, pickle baron, radical Marxist, bottom-pincher), their enemy, Baby Kochamma (ex-nun and incumbent grandaunt), and the ghost of an imperial entomologist's moth (with unusually dense dorsal tufts).

When their English cousin and her mother arrive on a Christmas visit, the twins learn that Things Can Change in a Day. That lives can twist into new, ugly shapes, even cease forever. The brilliantly plotted story uncoils with an agonizing sense of foreboding and inevitability. Yet nothing prepares you for what lies at the heart of it.

The plot centers on the seven year old fraternal twins Esthappen (Estha) and Rahel and is told from the point of view of Rahel.

A strange and eccentric cast of characters rounds out the family with whom Estha and Rahel live. There is Blind Mammachi, the twins' grandmother and founder of Paradise Pickles and Preserves. Blind Mammachi is a virtuous violin-playing widow who suffered years of unwarranted abuse at the hands of her highly-respected husband and who now has a fierce one-sided Oedipal connection with her son, Chacko.

There is Estha and Rahel's grandaunt, Baby Kochamma, who totters on air cushions for feet while playing out the bitterness of her lifetime of unrequited love for an Irish Roman Catholic priest; she even converted to Catholicism in order to win him...just as he was converting to Hinduism. Now, a spiteful, spirited spinster, Baby Kochamma spends her days savoring soap operas and satellite television wrestling matches.

And then, there is Velutha, the title character, an ebulliently talented handyman, tainted by his Paravan lineage.

Chacko, who is now divorced from his English wife and who hasn't seen his baby daughter since her infancy, runs Paradise Pickles and Preserves with the iron hand of what he deludes himself into thinking is communism, even as he flirts with and beds his female employees.

The twins' mother, Ammu, is a divorcee (and a devotee of divorce), who fled her tyrannical husband's alcoholism and incessantly insistent demands, and yet Ammu, herself, is a wilfull woman with a wickedly wild side that will prove to be the undoing of both herself and her unsuspecting family. A feminist before feminism, Ammu cannot decide on a last name, because as she says, "choosing between her husband's name and her father's name didn't give a woman much of a choice." At all.

Roy's characters are both fun and funny because "They broke all the rules. They crossed into forbidden territory. They tampered with the laws that lay down who should be loved and how. And how much. The laws that make grandmothers grandmothers, uncles uncles, mothers mothers, cousins cousins, jam jam and jelly jelly." With the exception if Ammu and Chacko, though, they are, unfortunately, made of plaster already filled with cracks and holes and ready to crumble, rather than solidly constructed of flesh and blood and, therefore, they suffer the fate of the not-very-believable.

The tragedy in this book revolves around the visit of Chacko's ex-wife, now a willing widow courtesy of her second husband, and Chacko's daughter, Sophie Mol. Together this eclectically and fatally-fractured family will endure an inexorable egress toward disillusion, madness, guilt, betrayal and death. Lives, of course, will be forever fragmented as the one aspect all the characters share is their own vulnerability; the ability to be physically and psychologically wounded.

Lovers of Hemingway should definitely eschew this book, for this is no linear, spare story. A densely-woven tapestry made of constantly undulating, heavily-layered plots and lush torrents of newly-minted words and phrases, The God of Small Things is told in flashbacks and flashforwards and twists and turns that are as fresh and original as a newly-hybridized tomato, straight off the vine. This is good, brilliant even, when there is a story to tell. The God of Small Things, however, might just be a little short on story and a little long on style.

Although Roy's dazzlingly daunting and agile ability to turn a phrase cannot be denied, it is her breathtaking aptitude for summing up a damaged life in one or two felicitous phrases that constitutes her major talent, for instance, the description of the great-grandmother's portrait: "With her eyes she looked in the direction her husband looked. With her heart she looked away." Or, "Baby Kochamma had lived her life backwards. As a young woman she renounced the material word, and now, as an old one, she seemed to embrace it. She hugged it and it hugged her back."

As brilliant and original as this book is, it is certainly not a masterpiece. Despite its fine, often heady, writing, there remains something of the formulaic about it. Evocative and sensual descriptions aside, the tragedy that occurs and the love affair that ensues are both predictable and implausible, in part, because they spring from neither characterization nor the needs of the unfolding (sort-of) non-plot.

The word play and the all-pervasive use of children's lingo, devices that serve to make the beginning of the novel sparkle and shine like sunshine on sea water, begin to wear as thin as a poor man's watered-down gruel after one hundred pages (more or less), and become both predictable and tedious.

And, of course, there are several scenes (the most glaring taking place in a theatre) that seem quite gratuitous, something that Roy seemed to have inserted simply to shock for shock's sake. In a day and age when nothing shocks but the unvarnished truth (and even then, not always), these scenes are simply irritating and definitely detract from the would-be charms of the novel.

The bottom line, for most readers, will not be the plot, or even the lack thereof, but their view of Roy's original prose style. Is it ostentatious or is it brilliant? Readers who find The Old Man the Sea the pinnacle of style should probably stay away. But those who enjoy working their way with a machete through a veritable forest of a book, filled with lush, densely-growing undergrowth, should find The God of Small Things nothing short of fantastic.


Absolutely Astounding   January 11, 2001
 43 out of 47 found this review helpful

Roy's mastery of metaphor and creativity in wordplay may just be among the best in the English language today. In The God of Small Things she tells a haunting tragedy in hauntingly beautiful prose that borders on poetry. Almost every scene painted itself visibly in my mind, but in particular I find myself dwelling on the OrangedrinkLemondrink Man, and on the airport scene: Ambassadors E. Pelvis and S. Insect; Rahel wrapping herself in the dirty curtain to escape the reeling changes in her life. I'm so impressed by Roy's ability to see a child's-eye view of the world, and it's so easy to believe that Rahel and Estha would assume that "love had been reapportioned." It's also a remarkable achievement in non-linear storytelling for a first-time novelist.

Having said all that, I confess to loving non-linear narrative. If you don't like it, you probably won't think much of this book.

Finally, and coincidentally, just before I read The God of Small Things I read Green English, by linguist Loreto Todd. It's a nonfiction book and I won't go into her thesis. But at one point she suggests that some of the best literature of the 20th century comes from countries where one language (usually a colonizing language, as in India, Ireland, New Zealand, numerous African countries...) has overlaid and been adapted to fit an earlier language, pushing the boundaries of expression. This book seems to me to be a prime example of that idea.


Tough Read-Not for Everyone   April 1, 2002
 43 out of 82 found this review helpful

The God of Small Things is a Booker Prize recipient & I hoped that I would enjoy it as much as the many raving reviews said I would. Unfortunately, I did not find this to be a book that I enjoyed. The book was well written and full of a lot of lyrical/poetic prose. This is a book that requires much focus and concentration and despite my best efforts, I can't say that I enjoyed it. The novel, set in India does flashbacks from past to present around an Indian family. Rahel & Estha are twins, born into a family that owns a pickling company. Most of the story is set during the 1960's and portrays a life of deep poverty and sadness. Through flashbacks from the past as well as current information, we learn the painful history of this family and the secrets that destroyed it. I had hoped to gain a better understanding of Indian culture, but personally felt the author only grazed the surface of this issue and never felt I got to really know or understand any of the characters. This is a book that I may have enjoyed more reading it in an English class to gain a full appreciation and understanding of the writing. While many may love this book, I don't think it's for everyone.


One of the best books I've read...innovative language   October 4, 2000
 36 out of 37 found this review helpful

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. It takes a few pages to get to the heart of the story, but once there you will be enthralled. If you are open to an innovative use of language and story telling, along with complex, emotional narrative, you will enjoy this book. I highly recommend it.