‘God of Small Things’ by Arundhati Roy

We had mixed reviews about this 1997 Booker Prize winning first novel by Arundhati Roy. It's set in Aymanam, a village in Kerala, India, and has a somewhat disjointed plot spanning several decades. It's a book that really challenges the reader and has some horrific passages, but the characters were likeable and the writing clever and enjoyable.

It was easy for some of our group to see why it won a Booker Prize and was worth persevering with; even though they saw faults in it, they still gave it a thumbs up. On the other hand... some of the group gave it a firm thumbs down. There is so much flowery language that is complicates the actual story. Over-use of Capital Letters for Emphasis added to the Confusion for some of our Members. One likened it to a jigsaw puzzle, another to a crime novel... all the clues of the story are there, you just have to find them amongst the words. So Many Words.

One of us agreed wholeheartedly with the opinion of Carmen Callil, founder of Virago Press and chair of the previous year's Booker jury, who declared it "execrable" and should never have reached the shortlist.

Those who did persevere, and the one reader for whom it was a third read, said they were gripped by it. They cared about the characters, loved the clever use of words and the authors’ ability to write from a child’s viewpoint, and described it as a book that juxtaposes beauty and cruelty with brief flashes of much-needed humour.
 

We gave ‘The God of Small Things’ 6  thumbs up, and 4 thumbs down.

Given how divided we were, we suggest you give it a try. If you don't get on with it, you should probably give her second and third novels (‘The Ministry of Utmost Happiness’, 2017, and ‘My Seditious Heart’, 2019) a miss.