This is a turbulent time to grow up because there is political unrest and uncertainty in the country, and financial and other hardships, as well as all kinds of injustice, are seen as just part and parcel of life. It takes a cross-generational approach to tell the story, but at the heart of the plot is a pair of twins – brother and sister – seven-year old Estha and Rahel respectively – who grow up in Ayemenem, part of Kerala, India, in the late 1960s.
The notable feature of the book is that it is a debut novel which won the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1997. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy is that book to me. Instead of speaking of the huge taboo they are breaking or the impossibility of their future, the two lovers focus on the bugs in the jungle around them and look no farther than “tomorrow.” While the “Big Things” eventually reveal themselves, it is the small things of the novel that make the story so poignant and human, and Roy’s writing style so intimate.Once in awhile a book comes your way which is so powerful in its message, so inexplicably poetic in its presentation and so wondrous in its understated emotion that you may wonder how come you have not read it yet. The most important example of this is in Ammu and Velusha’s relationship at the end of the book. Within the narrative itself, Roy often points out that small talk is a mask for large, hidden feelings. Through this lens, Roy dwells on small things like Rahel’s watch, Estha’s “Two Thoughts,” and the little Marxist flag instead of straightforwardly describing the plot of the story.
This leads to many words written oddly (like “Bar Nowl” or “Locusts Stand I”) but also to an emphasis on the innocent way a child sees the world, focusing on certain images and words. Much of The God of Small Things is written in a kind of free indirect discourse, a style where the third-person narrator partly perceives the world in the childlike way that young Estha and Rahel do. In both the novel’s title and in her writing style, Roy emphasizes the small moments, objects, and changes that symbolize and lead to the “Big Things” in life, like death, love, and political upheaval.
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