September review: 'God of Small Things'

Book: The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy

Publication date: 1997

WCRG meeting: 13 September 2017

Rating: 7.7



Thank you for all who managed to attend our meeting last week, and to all who sent in reviews and kind regards to Christine attending her last ‘formal’ meeting with us. Our discussions, as always, were varied and interesting, exploring the issues and characters of The God of Small Things, (1997) by Arundhati Roy.

Several members of the group had started this novel some years ago and had given up; a couple of our readers also almost gave up this time, but they fortunately persevered and, in the end, were not disappointed.

It is a story about the childhood experiences of fraternal twins whose lives are destroyed by the "Love Laws" that lay down "who should be loved, and how. And how much." The book explores how the small things affect people's behaviour and their lives. 

Nearly all felt the use of language was wonderfully descriptive with a wealth of rich metaphors and similes. Several readers did not like the structure of the novel, the constant jumping around in time, but they kept going as they wanted to find out how the pieces of the seemingly individual stories fitted together. The characters were engaging and all had a part to play in the novel, from the lowly Velutha, an untouchable in the service of the wealthy Mammachi. (Paradise Pickles and Preserves). The language of the twins as children was delightful and fun to read, even their game of spelling words backwards.

The story starts with the funeral of Sophie Mol. The narrative then slowly unwinds with the twins’ story shaped by events that they do not understand, and they do not have anyone to ask. The relationships and romantic involvements of the characters show a consistency of what is deemed socially as the ‘wrong type’ of love and therefore doomed to failure and tragic endings.

The group discussed the sense of the village being claustrophobic and closed – even when characters escape to other characters they almost all returned; the colonial influence on the area was evident in the politics discussed in the novel. Seen as a fractured society, this still seems relevant today where many people in small communities are still imprisoned by their background and gender. The death of Velutha at the hands of the police was seen as an act of prejudice and was shocking in its violence. 

The final average score from thirteen readers was 7.7.