Please read this book! For my sanity! (The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy)

Name: aimes

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Product:	The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy
Date:	02/02/03 (1031 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Unique, Beautiful, Exceptional

Disadvantages: Everyone gets bored of you going on about it

This book is so unlike anything I have ever read before, and is everything I would aspire to as a writer. This is the example I will constantly compare to, the standard by which anything I ever write will have to be held up to. Though this is probably a useless aspiration since I doubt anyone but Arundhati Roy could create what she has with this book. To try and emulate her would be fruitless, since she has invented a truly unique voice, a genuinely new language.

'The God of Small Things' won the 1997 Booker Prize and was Roy's debut novel, so I guess this review is a little late, but despite the fact I know I sound like a gushing publicist, I have to recommend this book to everyone I possibly can.
The story is set in India, and revolves around one family. At the centre of this family is Ammu and her two-egg twins, Rahel and Estha. To try and explain what happens in this book would be to ruin it, for it is how the twins develop and grow, how they percieve the world around them and their personal thoughts that forms the basis of this book.

The descriptions are effortless, not too much, nor are you left looking for more detail. A great author provides the reader with everything they need to know without overloading the adjectives. Roy does this perfectly, managing to not only set the scene and give us the picture, but also view through the eyes of the central characters. There is always a danger when children are the focus of a book, that writing from their perspective limits what can be done with a scene. Writing from a childs viewpoint is extremely difficult to maintain, can end up cliched or far too mature to be believable, but Roy approaches the challenge with a completely different style.
We are not reading first person, which immediately frees up the writing, yet the reader gets totally involved with the character. I can't stress enough how this approach is so completely different to anything you will have read before: R
oy does not write 'she thought this, she thought that', she doesn't explain her characters' thought processes and emotions, she simply notes their reactions, notes what they notice: the small things, the kind of things a child picks up on and dwells on, the chains of thought these small things can spark. This is where the beauty and pure skill of the book really lies: in the small things.

We are taken into India, into gorgeous scenery and startling exotic imagery. It isn't hard to imagine you are there, standing with Estha and Rahel in the heavy heat, seeing what they see and encountering all they do. The only people I could ever think would not enjoy this are those who cannot read. But I'm sure you could find an audio book somewhere!

This book is beautiful, Roy's language is beautiful and for me, very few others could match it. Too often new writers try too hard to be contemporary, to be 'different' and end up just like all the other writers trying to be the same thing, but in Arundhati Roy we truly have a unique author, and can say in all honesty that she has invented an entirely new style, one that is her own and will undoubtedly survive as such.

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