A review by jocelynh
The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

challenging dark emotional slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

This is one of those books that felt healthy but deeply unpleasant to read.

Starting with the minor complaints, the extremely frequent word concatenation for the kids' POVs drove me a little crazy. "Steelshrill," "chinskin," "trainrumble," "carbreeze," "greentrees," and "daymoon" are only some of the ones in chapter 2, and it keeps going from there.

There's also a bit of overreliance on simile and metaphor. It takes a long time for Roy to get to the main thrust of any scene, and I get the mild impression that Roy came up with a bunch of these turns of phrase and couldn't bear to edit any of them out, so they tend to clash overall. For example, we have:
The gray sky curdled and the clouds resolved themselves into little lumps, like substandard mattress stuffing.

Less than a paragraph later, there's:
Raindrops slid across the curved bottom of the rusted gutter on the edge of the roof, like shining beads on an abacus.

I wish they were at least thematically consistent; all the different imagery gave me whiplash. Some others are just bizarre:
The silence gathered its skirts and slid, like Spider Woman, up the slippery bathroom wall.

I will grant that she takes so much time with these, and with describing scenes in general, that the settings and events are extremely vivid. It felt almost like I was there, seeing, smelling, feeling, and hearing everything. Whether or not every detail (e.g. the formations of mosquitoes, or the personal histories of characters we never hear of again) is needed is perhaps more of a subjective call.

About 90% of the book is spent as exposition circling and leading up to the central event, and though we learn a lot about the characters and the cultural context, the writing (see above) makes it feel like a slog.

The God of Small Things is a somewhat long-winded and extremely emotionally ugly story, and that combination makes it a miserable read. Everyone suffers, no one is ever really happy except in a bitter, spiteful, gloating way.

It's a disgusting tale told in a poetic way. I think it's a very useful and culturally informative tale and I'm glad I read it as someone who isn't very familiar with Indian cultural biases, but I can't say I really enjoyed the journey.
Expand filter menu Content Warnings