Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things is a Booker Prize winner, a wonderful feat for a first novel. The writing is fluid, descriptive and beautiful. Set in Kerala, India, the novel is about an Indian family that is going through a slow change in fortune. Ammu has moved back to her family's home with her twins, Rahel and Esthappen, products of an undesirable marriage that has caused great consternation within her family. Her mother and aunt run the house while her brother Chacko runs the family food business, a pickling and canning company. The novel opens with the funeral of their English cousin, Chacko's daughter Sophie Mol. The plot of the novel unfolds towards the death of poor Sophie Mol, creating great suspense even though the ultimate outcome is known. The fallout from this event shadows the lives of every member of the family. While this book in many ways can be read as an indictment of the caste system, its focus is more personal than public, and it is the character's search for forgiveness and redemption that drives the novel.
I have to say that I love the plot device in books like this: a known ending and suspense and interest that lies in how we are going to arrive at that ending. Roy's writing is very fluid, mixing a sense of traditional storytelling with very modern incursions. She builds believable and flawed characters who the reader comes to care about. There is a sense of melancholy and tragedy that hangs over the entire work, although there are lighter, almost comic moments. She does an especially good job of putting the reader at home in a part of the world that might be entirely foreign. My understanding is that Roy has given up writing to become a full-time activist. Noble as that is, it is a shame we don't have more stories like this one from her.
1 comment:
The only thing I remember about this book is how obsessed everyone was with "The Sound of Music." I had to watch the movie afterwards, just to see what the fuss was about!
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