THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS - arundhati roy

The God of Small Things
Author	Arundhati Roy
Country	India
Language	English
Genre(s)	Novel
Publisher	Flamingo Pubs (UK)
Publication date	9 June 1997
Media type	print (hardback & paperback)
Pages	321 pp

The God of small things...

the god of small things a novel by arundhati roy

By Anne-Marie Sampson

Published: Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Most college students look forward to spring break as a period of calm in a storm of stressful exams and thesis deadlines. Many students use their week of spring break to loaf and catch up on the much missed quality pillow time. Few think of spring break as an opportunity to travel to another country and into the depths of human nature to return marked and changed. I hardly expected more than extra sleep time and a relaxing way to burn up a week when I began reading a novel by Arundhati Roy called "The God of Small Things."

"They all crossed into forbidden territory. They all tampered with the laws that lay down who should be loved and how, and how much?"

It is 1969 in Kerala, India. The local canning factory, Paradise Pickles and Preserves, shut down for the afternoon for the welcoming of the owner\'s half-English daughter Sophie Mol. Inside the quiet, dark factory sits a pair of two-egg twins; one rowing and one questioning, both exhausted by the struggles they have faced in their short lives.

The twins are armed only with innocence and a mother who dares. They fashion a childhood for themselves using the salvageable parts of a broken family . The twins have only their lonely mother who is wonderful but unfortunately loves a forbidden man in secret, their blind grandmother who plays the violin, their loved uncle Chako who is welcoming his old life, along with his ex-wife and daughter, and their enemy Baby Kochamma, the incumbent grandaunt.

With the arrival of their cousin and her mother, the twins learn that "Things can change in a day." They learn that lives can twist and writhe into new ugly shapes never to be remolded into a false sense of security again. They learn that life can cease beside their river "graygreen." "With fish in it. With the sky and trees in it. And at night, the broken yellow moon in it."

The narrative brilliantly told from the perspective of these two young children, "eddies along toward the secret of Sophie 's death, but ultimately it flows into the drowning depths of history," according to Shulin Nishant, of the Indian Institute of Technology. This novel makes a statement about the struggle of humans in oppressive situations. Roy addresses a history of human nature that is easily forgotten. "The God of Small Things" breaks the rules of humankind and molds them into lessons to learn from. It is a story about cross-caste love and what a community will do to protect old ways. ';

Most college students in the U.S. have felt prejudice or oppression at one time or another but few have lived it as a way of life. Roy's unique ability to give details in a very poetic manor allows the reader to feel oppression as it is in a society with the caste system. Roy shows you what it means to live your life by rules that are created from prejudice and oppression. Then, she breaks those rules. She changes the way you think in thirty pages.

Roy tells an old tale with new words. She uses verbal innovation and creates her own majestic style. Regarding Roy's style Nishant writes, "She runs words together, 'thunderdarkness, '  'echoing stationsounds, ' and plucks nouns from verbs and verbs from thin air." She displays her ability to portray the perspective of a child with believable accuracy. When the twins ' mother tells them to "stoppit," they "stoppited."

Overall, this book which meanders through time and history arriving at a powerful ending is an experience every spring breaker should experience. It takes you not only to another land but teaches you a philosophy lesson you won 't soon forget.