Equal parts powerful family saga, forbidden love story, and piercing political drama, it is the story of an affluent Indian family forever changed by one fateful day in 1969. The seven-year-old twins Estha and Rahel see their world shaken irrevokably by the arrival of their beautiful young cousin, Sophie. It is an event that will lead to an illicit liaison and tragedies accidental and intentional,

"May in Ayemenem is a hot, brooding month," and so is Arundhati Roy's novel The God of Small Things. Imagine a cold piece of butter slowly melting in a frying pan, setting the scene for the cooking to come, and you can see the way Roy's prose works. Words that are hot and brooding reel you into an intricate web of family politics and social mores, evoking a feeling similar to a written stream of consciencness. Roy writes in layers, except that the layers are both added and taken off; I was reminded of my childhood when I would eat wafer chocolates from the bottom and the top, leaving the middle until last, because that was the best part. Roy kindly dispells the, often torturous, anxiety of what happens in the end early on in the book. The reader is told what happened before it happened, what happened after it happened, and saves what happened for last. A format that seemingly would put off a reader becomes its most appreciated quality. This book is for everyone; murder mystery, love story, epic saga all in one. Even if you're not the romantic type, the social scrutiny of Indian customs provides for interesting reading. However, if you're interested in brain candy, forget it. There is too much to absorb. Emotion and intellect are needed in order to understand the emotion and intellect that are related. You could take in only what is superficially presented, as the plot alone is worthwhile, but you would be missing so much. Rahel, a dizygotic twin returns to the place of her childhood and subesequently a place of unhappiness to see her brother, the other twin, after more than twenty years of separation. Esta, the brother, has stopped talking, and Rahel has stopped feeling. Their reunion allows for the remembrance and grieving of their disasterous youths. They recall small things, seemingly unimportant, yet vital to the reconstruction of their sense of inner peace. They are the same age as their mother when she died, thirty-one. Their house is run down and the only relatives left from the monster in their pasts are, in essence, only waiting to die. Entering their minds through an omniscient voice, we are transported back and forth in time, remembering small things, painting a big picture. We remember a cousin's accidental death, and the death of another who served as a scapegoat. We remember how fate can make the strangest families. We also remember Rahel and Esta, and how they "broke the love laws. That lay down who should be loved. And how. And how much." While the novel serves to shock the reader from time to time, the pace is slow. Roy's style would be described as somewhat verbose for the impatient, yet serves to parallel the way we deal with emotions, hurt, and love in life. Creating a paradox however, this reader went back to re-absorb certain elements of beauty or truth, due to a lack of time created by an impatience to find out what happens next. Although usually overly critical of fiction, I would recommend this book for anyone who likes to read intelligent literature. It gives the reader a chance to realize how profound those small things really are.