Review: 5 stars
Along with many of my friends, I am turning 30 this year! To commemorate the occasion, I am gifting each of my dearest girlfriends one of my most memorable reads to date. To my friend Charlene, I shared "The God of Small Things". When I first read this over five years ago, I remember being so taken by the style of writing and the story, that I knew it would be an all-time favourite...however, I had forgotten much of the story in the years since! I decided to re-read it, and was treated to the piercingly original and charming narrative of Ms. Roy.
Her most obvious talent is her ability to mould and shape words to tickle the reader's imagination, and to capture the effervescent innocence of youth. Phrases like "Orangedrink Lemondrink Man", "fountain in a Love-in-Tokyo", "Loved from the Beginning", "Esthappychachen Kuttappen Peter Mon" are clever mantras repeated throughout the novel, ways to ground you in what has passed, and prime you for what is to come. At first blush, these are mischievous descriptions, but later, the waves of nostalgia that accompany these catchphrases remind you of when life was simpler, brighter.
The novel is centred around Estha and Rahel - a pair of brother-sister twins living in Kerala, India, and the fateful summer when their cousin Sophie Mol visits from abroad. What follows is an unspeakable tragedy, "the Terror", that is heavily foreshadowed and revealed piece by piece through the eyes of each main character. Caste, political ambition, childhood recklessness and stubborn pride, all conspire to tear apart the beautiful, magical youth that Estha and Rahel have crafted with their powerful imaginations.
Roy is such a clever writer, that I found myself smiling and laughing to myself throughout, interspersed with pauses of genuine sadness. I've never found an author as confident and as willing to break the rules as her, and this is what makes the novel so successful. Her ability to conjure up emotions in the reader is astonishing. When Ammu warns Rahel that "When you hurt people, they begin to love you less", I feel like a child admonished myself. Near the end, when Estha cries out from the accelerating train: "Ammu! Feeling vomity!", I began to cry, intimately grasping the despair of being unable to comfort my child in need.
I also loved her ability to immortalize small truths about life that I've always felt, but never succeeded in articulating. For example, when she describes how Velutha, an Untouchable that works for Ammu's family, plays with Rahel, Estha and Sophie Mol:
"It is only now, these years later, that Rahel with adult hindsight recognized the sweetness of that gesture. A grown man entertaining three racoons, treating them like real ladies. Instinctively colluding in the conspiracy of their fiction, taking care not to decimate it with adult carelessness. Or affection. It is after all so easy to shatter a story...To let it be, to travel with it, as Velutha did, is much the harder thing to do."
Re-reading "The God of Small Things" cemented the novel in my canon of most treasured books. I turned the final page with tremendous regret and with deep satisfaction. I highly recommend this to anyone looking for a refreshing, original read.