November / India Reading: The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

[Scheherazade]

Finished!

[Pensive]

Have just completed about fourty pages yet. In the very start, I had little idea about what was going on but slowly it started to make more sense. Have especially enjoyed the characters of Estha and Rahel. As for the 'flowery description' (as Virgil mentions), I quite agree that it is there but am not sure if it's there in an unpleasant way. In fact in some places there are some very interesting comparisons (wish I could remember them exactly though).

As for the title, don't think have any idea about the 'small Gods' part as soon as yet...hope it will make more sense later.

[Bitterfly]

I liked this book too, but found it rather gimmicky. Obviously she put a lot of work into crafting imagery and resonances, as well as symbolism (I think the novel took her two years to write). As a result, she's very "studyable", but "spontaneous genius" is lacking, ha ha! I wonder whether that's why she hasn't written anything else since then... and whether that's not why you found her descriptions too flowery.

She was also influenced quite a lot by Salman Rushdie, and it might be interesting to compare their styles, ideas etc.

[Virgil]

Ok, I’ve finished the first chapter, which is not much, but let me see if I can throw my comments in here. The flow of the narrative seems choppy. The shifts are so frequent that sometimes it seems she doesn’t fully develop one scene before she’s onto another. Characters get introduced before we can even grasp the previous one. This may not be a negative, but it does make for a confused atmosphere. Perhaps that’s what she is after.

As to what Big God and Small God mean, I certainly don’t know yet, but perhaps this passage from the first chapter (page 20 in my edition. Do we all have the same pagination?) will be significant later on.

He [McCaslin, Rahel’s American husband] didn’t know that in some places, like the country Rahel came from, various kinds of despair competed for primacy. And that personal despair could never be desperate enough. That something happened when personal turmoil dropped by at the wayside shrine of the vast, violent, circling, driving, ridiculous, insane, unfeasible, public turmoil of a nation. That Big God howled like a hot wind, and demanded obeisance. The Small God (cozy and contained, private and limited) came away cauterized, laughing numbly at his own territory. Inured by the confirmation of his own inconsequence, he became resilient and truly indifferent. Nothing mattered much….

And it goes on, I won’t copy the entire thing out. But I have no idea what any of that means. I can only hope it becomes clear at some point, or I think the novel fails.

As to the writing, I would have to say it’s mixed. Some beautiful passages and then some I think really bad writing. Here’s some bad writing in y opinion:

She [Baby Kochamma] was frightened the BBC famines and television wars that she encountered while she channel surfed. her old fears of the Revolution and the Marxist-Leninist menace had been rekindled by the new television worries about the growing numbers of desperate and dispossessed people. She viewed ethnic cleansing, famine, and genocide as direct threats to her furniture. (p.28-9)

Huh? Threats to her furniture? Come on. That is trying to be artsy with such a stretch that it’s ridiculous. And here:

Rahel tried to say something. It came out jagged. Like a piece of tin. (p.29)

Hahaha, like a piece of tin? I can understand how words can come out jagged, but like a piece of tin? The comparison is ludicrous.

But there is good writing, even brilliant writing.

Aleyooty Ammachi looked more hesitant. As though she would have liked to turna around but couldn’t. Perhaps it wasn’t easy for her to abandon the river. With her eyes, she looked in the direction that her husband looked. With her heart she looked away. Her heavy, dull gold kunukku earings (tokens of the Little Blessed One’s Goodness) had stretched her earlobes and hung all the way down to her shoulders. Through the holes in her ears you could see the hot river and the dark trees that bent into it. And the fishermen in their boats. And the fish. (p. 30)

A little bit of a stretch with the imagery there, but I can really visualize that. And here’s another:

In a purely practical sense it would probably be correct to say that it all began when Sophie Mol came to Ayemenen. Perhaps it’s true that things can change in a day. That a few dozen hours can affect the outcome of whole lifetimes. And that when they do, those few dozen hours, like the salvaged remains of a burned house—the charred clock, the singed photograph, the scorched furniture—must be resurrected from the ruins and examined. Preserved. Accounted for.

Little events, ordinary things, smashed and reconstituted. Imbued with new meaning. Suddenly they become the bleached bones of a story.

Still, to say that it all began when Sophie Mol came to Ayemenen is only one way of looking at it. (p. 32)

Nice!

[Scheherazade]

And it goes on, I won’t copy the entire thing out. But I have no idea what any of that means.

Well, no need because I already have! See post #4.

[Virgil]

Well, no need because I already have! See post #4.

Oh I missed that. I think you wrote it before I started reading and never went back to that.

[Virgil]

You know I'm really getting into this novel. I'm about 40% through. She's done a wonderful job of laying down expectations and shifting through time. That scene in the fourth chapter where that Orange-Lemon Drink man makes Estha do what he does (unmentionable and repulsive) and Roy's contrasting that with the scene from The Sound of Music was brilliant and captivating. She is a really fine narrator. I wish she would curb her similies. I still find them ridiculous at times.

Comrade Pillai uncrossed his arms. His nipples peeped at Rahel over the top of the boundary wall like a sad St Bernard's eyes.

That is so terrible it is funny. But then you come across wonderful writing as this:

Rahel searched her brother's nakedness for signs of herself. In the shape of his knees. The arch of his instep. The slope of his shoulders. The angle at which the rest of his arm met his elbow. The way his toe-nails tipped upwards at the ends. The sculpted hollows on either side of his taut, beatiful buns. Tight plums. Men's bums never grow up. Like school satchelss, they evoke in an instant memories of childhood. Two vaccination marks on his arm gleamed like coins. Hers were on her thigh.

Girls always have them on their thighs, Ammu used to say.

Rahel watched Estha with the curiosity of a mother watching her wet child. A sister a brother. A woman a man. A twin a twin.

She flew these several kites at once.

He was a stranger met in a chance encounter. He was the one that she had known before Life began. The one who had once led her (swimming) through their lovely mother's c***.

Both things unbearable in their polarity. In their irreconcible far-apartness.

I just love how it builds to those two sentences, actually to the key words: "unbearable," "polarity," "irreconcible," "far-apartness."

One other thing. I am confused wth the historical stuff in the novel, especially the communists. I don't know the history of India and its flirtation with communism, but it seems integral to the work. Are the names Roy mentions(Comrade this and Comrade that) are they real historical figures or fictional? Can someone help me with this? I can't even tell whether Roy is sympathetic or comic or neutral with this.

[symphony]

This is a book i'll save for later. Started it once when i was 15, couldnt continue. Too many personifications and metaphors. I agree her language is pretty, but perhaps a bit too pretty for me to find interesting. So far I havent liked books that drags too much. This dragged and distracted. I'll probably give it a try after 3 years from now.

[Bitterfly]

One other thing. I am confused wth the historical stuff in the novel, especially the communists. I don't know the history of India and its flirtation with communism, but it seems integral to the work. Are the names Roy mentions(Comrade this and Comrade that) are they real historical figures or fictional? Can someone help me with this? I can't even tell whether Roy is sympathetic or comic or neutral with this.

She seems rather critical of it, I think. I don't remember the comrades, so cannot help you out with that question, but there's this site about Indian communism that seems interesting:
http://www.english.emory.edu/Bahri/communism.html

[Niamh]

*sighs* i really am a terrible participant of this read!! I will read it as soon as i've got the Twilight Saga out of my system.....

[Virgil]

Roy is losing me in the second half of the novel. I won't get into it much now, but I just don't see the relationship between several narraitves. For instance what's Sophie Mol's story have to do with Rahel's and Estha's story? And others too. Perhaps she'll pull it together. But more on this later.

[Taliesin]

Finished!

Wait, was I supposed to announce here too that I had started it?
Well, damn!

[Virgil]

Finished!

Wait, was I supposed to announce here too that I had started it?
Well, damn!

Well, what did you think? You didn't vote.

[bouquin]

Roy is losing me in the second half of the novel. I won't get into it much now, but I just don't see the relationship between several narraitves. For instance what's Sophie Mol's story have to do with Rahel's and Estha's story? And others too. Perhaps she'll pull it together. But more on this later.

What do you think now is Roy's purpose in switching back & forth among different time frames (and thus different narratives and characters)?

[Taliesin]

Easier to write?