The God of Small Things–A Review

 Dr. M. Lal Goel

The University of West Florida, 1999

www.uwf.edu/lgoel 

 

I have been moved and enchanted by Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things, Random House, 1997, 321 pages.  The book won the prestigious Booker Prize in London in 1997.

 

I read the book twice; the first time for its plot and the second time for the beauty of its language.  I do not normally read works of fiction. 

 

I had difficulty following the story line initially because the story goes forward and backward in time.  It is not a linear description.

 

Set in the southern Indian state of Kerala in 1969, The God of Small Things is the story of a 7-year old girl, Rahel and her twin brother Estha.  The children live with their divorced mother Ammu, surrounded by tradition-bound relatives and neighbors. 

 

The children soon learn that their whole life can change in a day and that love and happiness can be lost in a moment.  The children’s half-British cousin, Sophie Mol, is on a visit to their home in Kerala from Britain. While playing with their cousins in the Kerala backwaters, Sophie Mol is drowned.  Their mother, Ammu, an upper-caste Christian woman, gets involved in an ill-fated love affair with Velutha, a member of the lowest caste, the Untouchables.  For this transgression, the untouchable is beaten to death by the police.  Shunned by her family and insulted by authorities, Ammu age 31 dies “at a viable die-able age.”  It is true that things can change in a day.

 

The book is autobiographical in parts.  Arundhati Roy said in an interview: “A lot of the atmosphere in ‘God of Small Things’ is based on my experiences of what it was like to grow up in Kerala.  Most interestingly, it was the only place in the world where religions coincide; there’s Christianity, Hinduism, Marxism and Islam and they all live together and rub each other down.  When I grew up it was the Marxism that was very strong; it was like the revolution was coming next week.”

 

I was enchanted by Roy’s writing style: short crisp sentences, novel and memorable idioms and cute turns of the phrase.  Roy is master of the English expression even though English is not her first language.  The work is very imaginative.  Descriptions of people, places and events are vivid.

 

Some phrases in the book repeat like the sound of a drum beat—“it is true that things can change in a day, “a viable die-able age,” “who should be loved, and how, and how much?”  “History’s laws.”

 

She impressed me by her range of knowledge on a variety of topics.  I learned from her:

 

  • about Kerala rivers and bayous, “with fish in it; with the sky and trees in it; and at night, the broken yellow moon in it,”

 
  • about the 1960s Kerala politics that brought to power the first elected Communist government anywhere in the world;

 

  • about backward walking untouchables, and color bars;

 

  • about Kerala’s Syrian Christianity community, which predates Christianity in Europe;

 

  • about the fading classical art of Kathakali dancers and their attempts at survival;

 

  • about “history’s laws,” and what happens when they are violated;

 

Arundhati Roy is the daughter of a Keralite Christian mother (Mary Roy) and a Bengali Hindu father.  She studied architecture in New Delhi and has two children.  She once taught aerobics in New Delhi.  She is socially and politically active and fights to protect the rights of tribal people in India.