Whatever I said about this book, I take it back.

It's good, it really is. Arundhati Roy has a lyrical way of describing the scene that you can almost see it, feel it, and believe you saw it through the children's eyes.

She took a simple, sad story and told it in a way that makes it seem beautiful. I didn't feel that the characters felt self-pity for themselves. But got caught along with their ambition, confusion, and Rahel's anxiety about her mother's love for her.

The first time I read the book, I knew Roy could write, could describe stuff. But was thrown off because everything seemed disjointed, didn't see the plot or point of the story.

Now I do. Am glad I re-read it for the bookring. With all the sadness that pervades the story, I'm glad she saved the most poignant part for the end. I guess I do relate with the characters when they concentrated their attention on Small Things.

Perhaps that was why I didn't like it at the first reading. Because I didn't know why the characters were driven to notice the Small Things. Or how Small Things set in motion the Big Things.

Good book. Highly recommend it. You just got to get used to the constant changing of scenes, and expect her not to tell the story chronologically.

From Amazon:
In her first novel, award-winning Indian screenwriter Arundhati Roy conjures a whoosh of wordplay that rises from the pages like a brilliant jazz improvisation. The God of Small Things is nominally the story of young twins Rahel and Estha and the rest of their family, but the book feels like a million stories spinning out indefinitely; it is the product of a genius child-mind that takes everything in and transforms it in an alchemy of poetry. The God of Small Things is at once exotic and familiar to the Western reader, written in an English that's completely new and invigorated by the Asian Indian influences of culture and language.

Released as a bookray to tantan, in Australia for her Booker Prize bookring. Keep up the good job!

Received from blurbren - thanks so much! Going on to the TBR pile to read and then send on for the Booker Prize bookrings.

Blurbren, I'm so glad you enjoyed it the second time around - isn't it wonderful when that happens! :-)

I've started this book today - only a few pages in so far. It will head off on its bookring journey once I'm done.

***

Edit November 26th, 2006: I'm still reading this one. It just isn't a book that can be read quickly. But so far I'm absolutely loving it. The language is lovely, and there are many moments of pure joy and also intense sadness that just jump off the page. If the book continues in this way it will definitely be on my list of best books of the year.

I'm not sure any journal entry I can make can do justice to this incredible book. It's gone straight to the top of my list of best books of the year, and is an absolutely worthy winner of the Booker Prize! (In my humble opinion, of course).

The writing is lyrical and powerful, and what seems like a jumbled mess of barely intertwining stories to begin with is drawn tightly together by the end. It's mostly a story about love and small things... all told so beautifully. There's a recurring passage (a number of them, actually) throughout the book that is particularly poignant:

"... Where the Love Laws lay down who should be loved. And how. And how much..."

There were so many passages throughout the book that I had to read over and over again (no wonder it took me so long to read the book! :-)), but this was one of my favourites (it gives me goosebumps every time I read it):

"What Vellya Paapen (who knew most things) didn't know was that Kari Saipu's house was the History House (whose doors were locked and windows open). And that inside, map-breath'd ancestors with tough toe-nails whispered to the lizards on the wall. That History used the back verandah to negotiate its terms and collect its dues. That default led to dire consequences. That on the day History picked to square its books, Estha would keep the receipt for the dues that Velutha paid."

Beautifully wrought, and like many times through-out the book you don't fully understand until later on.

What more can I say...?

Claimed on BookMooch, and passed along in person in Budapest.