The God Of Small Things

I have had a copy of this book in my ‘to read’ boxes for absolutely ages, for some reason despite what I think is quite a stunning cover, I have never really had the urge to read it. That’s another reason why Book Group is so good, sometimes you have the books on the list you just haven’t gotten round to them so you get a little extra push.

I had heard mixed reviews on this Man Booker winner, some people (my Gran included) have said it’s one of the best books that they have read. People on Amazon, which I sometimes check to gage how good a book may or may not have been, are very mixed about it. Some say that the prose is some of the most beautiful that they have ever read, others say that it is over done and far too ‘flowery’. So I was intrigued as to what I would make of it.

As it goes I am very much in a confused state about this book, I would say 75% of me loved it and overall feel it is one of the best books I have ever read and the other 25%? To be honest I think there are far too many characters and too little concise clear explanation of who they are in relation to whom. I mean for most of the book I just could not work out who ‘Baby’ was, I have to say she is a brilliantly written mean bitter old woman. There were also various neighbours of the main family who actually had no bearing on the book and therefore seemed to be ‘fillers’ to the book and added to my state of confusion.

The story centres on the childhoods of Estha and Rahel (for ages I kept getting the boy and girl mixed up) and a certain few months that on several levels change their lives forever. You have flashbacks into the family before the twins were born and in their infancy and also the future and the aftermath of events at the start ‘unknown’. Its not written in chronological order which ordinarily I would not have a problem with, I managed fine with the epic craziness of ‘The Book of Dave’, I just found that where Roy is fantastic at her descriptive similes, she is not so good at letting the reader know where in the order of history there are. No the author should not do all the work for the reader but they should help.

Here descriptions are amazing ‘history the smell of old roses on the breeze’ and ‘dark blood slipping from his skull like a secret’ are examples of where it works, there is also the brilliant scene where they park a car amongst others in a car park which is compared to ‘gossiping’. The problem is that there seems to be a simile in every sentence and occasionally it gets too much and doesn’t quite work ‘Margaret Kochamma found herself drawn towards him like a plant in a dark room towards an edge of light’ it appears like Roy is trying too hard and that she is over comparing and it put me off occasionally. The Man Booker judges seemed to like it though.

However despite the slightly confusing story and over egging off descriptions when I had finished the novel and let it settle with me a while I started to marvel at how clever, well written, moving and beautiful a book it was. The more I thought on it afterwards the better I think it was a very confusing place to be in after reading a book.