Arundhati Roy
Although this was a highly acclaimed bestseller in the late 1990s, I've never read it until my book-swapping friend A. lent it to me a while ago. Unintentionally, it is very rare for me to read a book either by an Indian author or set in India - or both; the last one I can remember was "The White Tiger" by Aravind Adiga, read in 2010 and strangely enough not reviewed on my blog.
The God of Small Things has its own wikipedia entry here.
It is a great book, but also a terrible one; I felt the same with "The White Tiger" and also with the two books I have read by Khaled Hosseini ("The Kite Runner" and "A Thousand Splendid Suns") and never written reviews on my blog, so I guess it must have been before 2010. Yes, I know it's a different country and different culture, but there are parallels.
Back to the story:
Twins Rahel and Estha are raised by their mother, divorced from their father, in the family home in southern India with their grandmother, uncle and great-aunt. The family are reasonably well off, owing a small pickles factory.
Their uncle studied in Oxford, married an English woman and they had a daughter; when they divorced, he returned to India. When his ex-wife's second husband dies in a car crash, the uncle invites her and their daughter to India for a holiday.
From the start of the book - which jumps back and forth between the 1960s and the 1990s - it is clear that terrible things will happen, and the lives of everyone who survives will be changed forever, including the twins.
But what actually DOES happen and how the family and others around them handle those events is revealed slowly, with the reader having that feeling of inevitability, like a river running its unstoppable course to a waterfall.
The author uses language like architecture, with recurring elements and designing known words into different spellings; for example, to describe a child waking up from her afternoon nap as being A Live, A Wake, A Lert.
Much of what the children think, feel and do is plausible, based on my own experience as a child; you understand some things instinctively on a deep level while others remain a mystery; you use some words the way they are supposed to bbut at the same time create your own; you do as your told but you also do what YOU think you have to do; you get into trouble without meaning to but you can also mischievously create trouble deliberately.
I am not going to tell you more about the plot, in case you wish to read this for yourself. Look up Arundhati Roy on wikipedia to learn more about her and her work; she is a fascinating person.
I don't think I will read this one right now, Meike. It sounds sad and the world is sad enough right now. I wishing for peace for all but don't know how we will get there...
ReplyDeleteI know what you mean, Ellen. More often than not, what I want from a book is to be entertained, and if - like from a good work of non-fiction - I learn something at the same time, all the better.
DeleteYes, this story is sad, and I have little hope that things have improved much for poor people, especially women, in India (and elsewhere).
The Caste system was officially abolished when India gained independence from Britain in 1947, and this war further emphasized with the Civil Rights Act in 1955, but it is still very much alive - and not just in some backwaters and remote villages.
A lot, if not all, of the terrible events in the book are based on the Caste system.
I read it way back in 1999 - according to a note in my paperback copy (in Swedish) still sitting in my bookcase. Can't say I recall much detail now, but I still feel I have a sort of lingering sense of the "atmosphere" in it.
DeleteYes, sometimes that's what we remember from a book; not the details, but the "feel" of it, the atmosphere; a bit like a dream we can't fully recall.
DeleteArundhati's memoir, Mother Mary Comes To Me was engaging and painful.
ReplyDeleteCover art : Arundhati smoking. It troubled me, not for moral or aesthetic reasons.
My younger sister has emphysema and is on very strong antibiotics without end.
These have side effects. She started smoking in France at 17. She quit age 50 + .
Books as entertainment : Thrillers, SF, Fantasy, Comedy, Romance, Children's Lit.
Laurie Colwin's fiction has been republished including her food column for Gourmet.
A Big Storm Knocked It Over is a laugh. She died in New York at the age of 48.
India's caste system is why I never went there. A friend went to Goa for six weeks.
A year later she still had abdominal problems. Same with a friend who was in Mexico.
My Dad smoked ever since he was a young man and only stopped when he became housebound and was in and out of hospital during the last couple of years of his life. Both my first and second husbands were smokers; my first husband quit but my second didn't (he did not die of smoking, though). O.K. does not smoke, and I am glad to say that I have never even tried one, not even as a teenager when there was some peer pressure.
DeleteChildren's books are much more than entertainment. A good book given to a child at the right time can make a huge difference to the child's view of the world. I should know because books and reading dominated my childhood, and I am forever grateful to my sister for teaching me to read a year before I started school.
I read this book back in the '90s when it came out and LOVED it. The only thing I can remember now is the "orangedrink-lemondrink man." Roy IS a fascinating person and I've read some of her other books, but she's never been able to top this one.
ReplyDeleteIt was her first novel, and sometimes it is like that, isn't it - when the first book/film/record is great, it's hard to top or even keep up the high level.
DeleteYes, the orangedrink-lemondrink man is influential, although in person he only appears that one time.