THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS

A brilliantly constructed first novel that untangles an intricate web of sexual and caste conflict in a vivid style reminiscent of Salman Rushdie's early work. The major characters are Estha and Rahel ... Read full review

The god of small things

This "piercing study of childhood innocence lost" mirrors the growing pains of modern India. Twin sister and brother Rahel and Estha are at the center of a family in crisis and at the heart of this "moving and compactly written book." (LJ 4/15/97) Read full review

This book explores big themes- .Tragic family. Forbidden love. Communism. Innocence. Jealousy. Infinite joy. Hope. Death and the effect it has on the people around it. Here is a writer who puts together the amalgam of these emotion by creating her own language to tell a tale filled with unfairness and anguish.
On one level the book is about freespirited Ammu, our very own Madame Bovary. It's about Rahel and Estha, Ammu's twin children, their innocent childhood infringements and the soarings and stiflings of their little hearts, their complex entwined lives which are governed by the Love Laws, that lay down who should be loved. And how. And how much. And how long.
On another level, it's about the idea of men being social constructs. About our lives not really being in our hands. About our lives really being goTverned by the forces of the invisible big bad things, a sadistic child holding a horshoe magnet to the disparate iron filings of our small, insiginificant lives. In short, a History lesson. A lesson in Indian caste dynamics and the communist movement of Kerala. About how the Really Big Things often seep into the Small Things, like tea from a teabag.
Overall, an excellent and tragic book with unforgettable characters. Definitely worth the read. 

siply good

I am 1/3rd though this book and I am currently wondering whether this book is really worth spending a significant period of my life reading.
The prose is spectacularly seductive but with tenuous connections between not only chapters, but paragraphs and sentences too, there is no story. Merely an empty exhibition of cleverness
With all its glowing plaudits I really felt I was missing something, so I am trying to work out why this book won a prestigious book prize.
Well sorry guys I am not stupid, this book is crap. It has an obligatory yucky child-abuse scene to give it some credibility and to top it the author also forgets who is related to whom when she describes Rahel as the daughter of her daughter( Kochamma) . Well she isn't. She is the daughter of her dead son, and when you have spent the first 4 chapters grappling with the who's who, only to realise that the author does not know either then it is difficult to rescue this book from the depths of its own ridiculousness.
What does this book tell me? Never trust a Booker prize winner book again. 

An unconventional love story for once breaking the rules of society and exploring the untouched aspects of love.

For the first time, I just read the first few paragraphs of Arundhati Roy's "The God of Small Things"...I feel I have been introduced to a sublime and enriching energy. Her prose is like that far yet near destiny we all think belongs to someone else, but I believe lies at the core of all living things. It is as if she speaks to that destiny...makes me desire so to answer.