Arundhati Roy - The God of Small Things

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This highly stylized novel tells the story of one very fractured family from the southernmost tip of India. Here is an unhappy family unhappy in its own way, and through flashbacks and flashforwards The God of Small Things unfolds the secrets of these characters' unhappiness. First-time novelist Arundhati Roy twists and reshapes language to create an arresting, startling sort of precision. The average reader of mainstream fiction may have a tough time working through Roy's prose, but those with a more literary bent to their usual fiction inclinations should find the initial struggle through the dense prose a worthy price for this lushly tragic tale.
Rahel and Estha are fraternal twins whose emotional connection to one another is stronger than that of most siblings:
Esthappen and Rahel thought of themselves together as Me, and separately, individually as We or Us. As though they were a rare breed of Siamese twins, physically separate, but with joint identities.
Now, these years later, Rahel has a memory of waking up one night giggling at Estha's funny dream.
She has other memories too that she has no right to have.
Their childhood household hums with hidden antagonisms and pains that only family members can give one another.
Blind Mammachi, the twins' grandmother and founder of Paradise Pickles & Preserves, is a violin-playing widow who suffered years of abuse at the hands of her highly respected husband, and who has a fierce one-sided Oedipal connection with her son, Chacko. Baby Kochamma, Rahel and Estha's grandaunt, nurses deep-seated bitterness for a lifetime of unrequited love, a bitterness that plays out slyly against everyone in the family; in her youth she fell in love with an Irish Roman-Catholic priest and converted to his faith to win him, while he eventually converted to Hinduism. Chacko, divorced from his English wife and separated from his daughter since her infancy, runs the pickle factory with a capitalist's hand, self-deluding himself all the while that he is a Communist at heart even as he flirts with and beds his female employees. Ammu, the twins' mother, is a divorcee who fled her husband's alcoholism and impossible demands, a woman with a streak of wildness that the children sense and dread and that will be her and her family's undoing.
The family's tragedy revolves around the visit of Chacko's ex-wife, widowed by her second husband, and his daughter, Sophie Mol. It is within the context of their visit that Estha will experience the one horrible thing that should never happen to a child, during their visit that Ammu will come to love by night the man the children love by day, and during their visit that Sophie Mol will die. Her death, and the fate of the twins' beloved Untouchable Velutha, will forever alter the course of the lives of all the members of the family, sending them each off on spinning trajectories of regret and pain. The story reveals itself not in traditional narrative order, but in jumps through time, wending its way through Rahel's memories and attempts at understanding the hand fate dealt her family.
The God of Small Things has been favorable reviewed all over the place, generating a lot of excitement in the current literary establishment. What you think of it will depend heavily on your opinion of Roy's prose style – is it ostentatious, or is it brilliant? Whether or not you fall in love with her style, the truth of the heartbreaking story she tells and the lovable/hate-able characters who people it make this novel an experience not to be missed.

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“`ho,” Sophie. Mol said.

She was taller than Estha. And bigger. Her eyes were bluegrayblue. Her pale skin was the color of beach sand. But her hatted hair was beautiful, deep red-brown. And yes (oh yes!) she had Pappachi’s nose waiting inside hers. An Imperial Entomologist’s nose-within-a-nose. A moth-lover’s nose. She carried her Made-in-England go-go bag that she loved.

“Ammu, my sister,” Chacko said.

Ammu said a grown-up’s Hello to Margaret Kochamma and a children’s Hell-oh to Sophie Mol. Rahel watched hawk-eyed to try and gauge how much Ammu loved Sophie Mol, but couldn’t.

Laughter rambled through the Arrivals Lounge like a sudden breeze. Adoor Basi, the most popular, best-loved comedian in Malayalam cinema, had just arrived (Bombay-Cochin). Burdened with a number of small unmanageable packages and unabashed public adulation, he felt obliged to perform. He kept dropping his packages and saying, “ Ende Deivoinay! Lee sadhanangal!

Estha laughed a high, delighted laugh.

“Ammu look! Adoor Basi’s dropping his things!” Estha said. “He can’t even carry his things!”

“He’s doing it deliberately,” Baby Kochamma said in a strange new British accent. “Just ignore him.”

“He’s a filmactor,” she explained to Margaret Kochamma and Sophie Mol, making Adoor Basi sound like a Mactor who did occasionally Fil.

“Just trying to attract attention,” Baby Kochamma said and resolutely refused to have her attention attracted.

But Baby Kochamma was wrong. Adoor Basi wasn’t trying to attract attention. He was only trying to deserve the attention that he had already attracted.

“My aunt, Baby,” Chacko said.

Sophie Mol was puzzled. She regarded Baby Kochamma with a beady-eyed interest. She knew of cow babies and dog babies. Bear babies-yes. (She would soon point out to Rahel a bat baby.) But aunt babies confounded her.

Baby Kochamma said, “Hello, Margaret,” and “Hello, Sophie Mol.” She said Sophie Mol was so beautiful that she reminded her of a wood-sprite. Of Ariel.

“D’you know who Ariel was?” Baby Kochamma asked Sophie Mol. “Ariel in The Tempest?”

Sophie Mol said she didn’t.

“Where the bee sucks there suck I’?” Baby Kochamma said. Sophie Mol said she didn’t.

“In a cowslip’s bell I lie’?’ Sophie Mol said she didn’t.

“Shakespeare’s The Tempest?” Baby Kochamma persisted.

All this was of course primarily to announce her credentials to Margaret Kochamma. To set herself apart from the Sweeper Class.

“She’s trying to boast;” Ambassador E. Pelvis whispered in Ambassador S. Insect’s ear. Ambassador Rahel’s giggle escaped in a bluegreen bubble (the color of a jackfruit fly) and burst in the hot airport air. Pffot! was the sound it made.

Baby Kochamma saw it, and knew that it was Estha who had started it.

“And now for the VIPs,” Chacko said (still using his Reading Aloud voice).

“My nephew, Esthappen.”

“Elvis Presley,” Baby Kochamma said for revenge. “I’m afraid we’re a little behind the times here.” Everyone looked at Estha and laughed.

From the soles of Ambassador Estha’s beige and pointy shoes an angry feeling rose and stopped around his heart

“How d’you do, Esthappen?” Margaret Kochamma said.

“Finethankyou,” Estha’s voice was sullen.

“Estha,” Ammu said affectionately, “when someone says How d’you do? You’re supposed to say How d’you do? back. Not `Fine, thank you.’ Come on, say How do YOU do?”

Ambassador Estha looked at Ammu.

“Go on,” Ammu said to Estha. “How do YOU do?”

Estha’s sleepy eyes were stubborn.

In Malayalam Ammu said, `Did you hear what I said?”

Ambassador Estha felt bluegrayblue eyes on him, and an Imperial Entomologist’s nose. He didn’t have a How do YOU do? in him.

“Esthappen!” Ammu said. And an angry feeling rose in her and stopped around her heart A Far More Angry Than Necessary feeling. She felt somehow humiliated by this public revolt in her area of jurisdiction. She had wanted a smooth performance. A prize for her children in the Indo-British Behavior Competition.

Chacko said to Ammu in Malayalam, “Please. Later. Not now.”

And Ammu’s angry eyes on Estha said: All right. Later.

And Later became a horrible, menacing, goose-bumpy word.

Lay. Ter.

Like a deep-sounding bell in a mossy well. Shivery, and furred. Like moth’s feet.

The Play had gone bad. Like pickle in the monsoon.

“And my niece,” Chacko said. `Where’s Rahel?” He looked around and couldn’t find her. Ambassador Rahel, unable to cope with seesawing changes in her life, had raveled herself like a sausage into the dirty airport curtain, and wouldn’t unravel. A sausage with Bata sandals.

“Just ignore her,” Ammu said. “She’s just trying to attract attention.”

Ammu too was wrong. Rahel was trying to not attract the attention that she deserved.

“Hello, Rahel,” Margaret Kochamma said to the dirty airport curtain.

“How do YOU do?” The dirty curtain replied in a mumble.

“Aren’t you going to come out and say Hello?” Margaret Kochamma said in a kind-schoolteacher voice. (Like Miss Mitten’s before she saw Satan in their eyes.)

Ambassador Rahel wouldn’t come out of the curtain because she couldn’t She couldn’t because she couldn’t Because Everything was wrong. And soon there would be a Lay Ter for both her and Estha.

Full of furred moths and icy butterflies. And deep-sounding bells. And moss.

And a Nowl.

The dirty airport curtain was a great comfort and a darkness and a shield.

“Just ignore her,” Ammu said and smiled tightly.

Rahel’s mind was full of millstones with bluegrayblue eyes.

Ammu loved her even less now. And it had come down to Brass Tacks with Chacko.

“Here comes the baggage” Chacko said brightly. Glad to get away. “Come, Sophiekins, let’s get your bags.”

Sophiekins.

Estha watched as they walked along the railing, pulling through the crowds that moved aside, intimidated by Chacko’s suit and sideways tie and his generally bursty demeanor. Because of the size of his stomach, Chacko carried himself in a way that made him appear to be walking uphill all the time. Negotiating optimistically the steep, slippery slopes of life. He walked on this side of the railing, Margaret Kochamma and Sophie Mol on that.

Sophiekins.

The Sitting Man with the cap and epaulettes, also intimidated by Chacko’s suit and sideways tie, allowed him into the baggage claim section.

When there was no railing left between them, Chacko kissed Margaret Kochamma, and then picked Sophie Mol up.

“The last time I did this I got a wet shirt for my pains,” Chacko said and laughed. He hugged her and hugged her and hugged her. He kissed her bluegrayblue eyes, her Entomologist’s nose, her hatted redbrown hair.

Then Sophie Mol said to Chacko, “Ummm… excuse me? D’you think you could put me down now? I’m ummm… not really used to being carried.”

So Chacko put her down.

Ambassador Estha saw (with stubborn eyes) that Chacko’s suit was suddenly looser, less bursty.

And while Chacko got the bags, at the dirty-curtained window LayTer became Now.

Estha saw how Baby Kochamma’s neckmole licked its chops and throbbed with delicious anticipation. Der-Dboom, Der-Dboom. It changed color like a chameleon. Der-green, der-blueblack, dermustardyellow.

Twins for tea

It would bea.

“All right,” Ammu said. “That’s enough. Both of you. Come out of there, Rahel!”

Inside the curtain, Rahel closed her eyes and thought of the green river, of the quiet deep-swimming fish, and the gossamer wings of the dragonflies (that could see behind them) in the sun. She thought of her luckiest fishing rod that Velutha had made for her. Yellow bamboo with a float that dipped every time a foolish fish enquired. She thought of Velutha and wished she was with him.

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