Aug 08, 2005 01:23 PM
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(Updated Aug 08, 2005 02:21 PM)
“God of Small Things”: countless reviews have been written about this book and I don’t think I have the requisite qualifications to be a critic. All I am writing in the paragraphs below is my experience with the book…
If I were to describe the book in one word then it will be – weird. But take that word in a positive sense. It is a weird story told in a weird way using the SIMPLE English in weird manner but in the end all that hits you is weird simplicity and commonness of the this weird story.
Well if you are confused whether I am recommending this book or not then trust me even I am confused whether I liked it or not… Well decide for yourself when I am finished narrating my experiences.
The book is filled with analogies and descriptions of the things around you like ‘a door’, ‘the shadows’ or things so irrelevant to your attention. But it is essentially a story of a family in a traditional setting of Kerala. The customs, the beliefs and the “you should behave like this’ rules. How a family is torn apart and what happens to them after the years for separation. Who survives it and who doesn’t. The emotions at play; expressed and unexpressed. The story follows the thoughts and memories of one character of the book (in third person) and like the thoughts and memories the events don’t follow the chronological sequence. They are scattered along the pages but somehow you understand when it all happened and know if you were to think about your past life it definitely won’t be much different, not by date, month or years but by events and the importance of them in shaping you in the present form; one memory leading to the other in the form a web.
It is a beautiful narration of the life in a small village in Kerala. There are four main characters Rahel, Estha, Ammu and Baby Kochamma. Some of them manipulate the lives of the others. In between, many characters come and go leaving their marks on the lives of these four. The book tells you how the events in their lives unfold and how just one day changes their lives forever. The book is an excellent description of the life in those times when untouchables were made to walk backwards sweeping their own footprints lest some higher caste walks over them.
The language captures the essence of the emotions including their non-expressibility. Some researches have suggested that our memories are stored in visual form and the book narrates them in pictorial descriptions. The language is simple English but written so differently that it makes you think can we really experiment with the language and make it sound so different, so Indian.
It seems to have a language of its own, a language which you and I can learn and talk… like the show KBC… when someone says, “lock kar diya jai”, “are you confident”, “Afsos yeh galat jawaab” we know what they are talking about and the talk makes sense to people who have watched the show… similarly this book has language which can be understood be people who have read it… I give the author Arundhati Roy all the credit for this creative manipulation of the language.
I will not test your patience by writing more about it. In the end I recommend that you should read the book once and then form your own opinion.
My comment: This book definitely deserved the BOOKER PRIZE it got!
