Resumo de The God Of Small Things By Arundhati Roy

As an Indian and a writer, I was eager to read The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. I must admit that I was also influenced by all the hype surrounding the publication, the six figure advance, the fervid auction and the agent who got on a plane from London and arrived at the author's door.
This was heady stuff, heightened further by the fact that I know the author's family and so I could not wait to get my hands on the book. Unavailable in Bangkok, it was sent from India where the first edition was, I am told, sold out at the launch.
Set in a small town in Kerala, The God of Small Things is about a family, seen from the perspective of seven-year-old Rahel. She and her twin brother, Estha, live with their mother, Ammu, who was married to a Bengali, the children's Baba, but from whom she is divorced. Ammu and, therefore, the twins seem to live on sufferance in the Ayemenem house with their grandmother, uncle, and grand-aunt Baby. The family owns a pickle factory that comes into conflict with the Communists.
The family is awaiting the arrival of Sophie Mol, the twins' half-English cousin and the narrative moves backwards and forwards to the arrival and the aftermath of the death by drowning of Sophie Mol and an ill fated love affair between Ammu and the untouchable Velutha. Rahel returns to Aymanam as an adult to a decimated household, a dysfunctional twin and a decaying house.
That, as Rahel would say, is the purely practical way of looking at it. There is much more.
The book is certainly well written and some comparison has been made with Rushdie. However, unlike Rushdie's work, this is easy reading and very accessible. There are some nice turns of phrase and very interesting images. A character dies aged 31 at "a viable, die-able age."
Like most first novels, it is heavily autobiographical and the child character Rahel is so clearly Roy herself that she is a completely plausible character with whom the reader can empathise. In fact, the book's strength lies in its portrayal of the family, its weakness is the story.
So what, I asked myself, are my reservations about this book? I believe that despite the fine writing, the evocative descriptions, there is something formulaic about it. The inter-caste affair and the death of a child that lies at the heart of the book are very predictable and the love affair is not plausible, it does not spring from either the characterisation or the needs of the story. There is a sense of manipulation by the author and I thought the incest scene at the end was unnecessary but probably, it was one of the things that people look for nowadays & which makes for a successful book. The masturbation of the Orangedrink Lemondrink Man by Estha is one of these so-called necessary components of a successful book.
In this connection it must be said that Roy handles the sex scene between Ammu and Velutha with artistry. Nevertheless, Ammu's affair with the untouchable is wholly implausible, the more so because Roy does not bother to develop the relationship, it is suddenly sprung on us and we cannot imagine the motivation. This could also beone of the drawbacks of using a seven-year-old as one's narrator.
The God of Small Things is often very amusing; there is a lovely passage where a child recites Lochinvar with a Malayali intonation and pronunciation.
For those who know Kerala, it is all very interesting and for those who don't, it is certainly exotic and interesting, but despite all the fine writing, the bottom line is that one is left largely unmoved by the tragedy that unfolds. But perhaps that doesn't matter and the style's the thing.

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