The God of Small Things

The God of Small Things

By: Arundhati Roy

I wrote the other day that I had not read anything lately that was worth posting a review about… turns out I was wrong!

The God of Small Things is above all things well written. It tells a simple story of a family in India and events that transpire to shatter their lives. The main characters are a pair of two-egg twins, one boy child and one girl child and through their eyes we see the world that Roy describes. The best part about this book in my opinion was not the semi-autobiographical story, it is a basic story of love, betrayal, and poverty, but rather the way in which the story is told. Roy leans heavily on foreshadowing while hiding enough to maintain the mystery; she lets slip the major events and then backslides to fill them in with the minor events where the meaning can be fully realized. Roy has a way of making the words dance for her, some of the phrases do jigs and quick steps and dance off in ways you wouldn’t expect but they are ultimately delighting in their pure uniqueness and this is what brings the story to life.