The God of Small Things, by Arundhati Roy

Some people write mysteries, some write biographies, some write tragedies. Some write masterpieces.

What happens when a social activist with a knack for literature spends four years writing a semi-autobiographical novel of her native India?

Usually, not much. Unless the author happens to be Arundhati Roy. In 1997, she released The God of Small Things, a coming-of-age story about a pair of twins in backwoods India. Although it was a debut novel by someone with little-to-no literary pedigree, it won the Booker Prize, England’s highest award for fiction, and induced a frenzy of lettered hype around the world.

It deserved the accolades. The novel is pure quality.

Ms. Roy masterfully weaves post-modern attention to insignificant details through a entrancing and real narrative about the loss of innocence. Bouncing about time and space, the narrative skips between India, Oxford, and New York, 1969 and 1993. Fraternal twins Estha and Rahel find themselves in the middle of something they cannot understand, in a family that somehow seems to function despite a wealth of dysfunctional characters. Lust, death, racial prejudice, culture conflict and childhood unreality make it a page-turner you don’t have to feel guilty about. There is a subtle beauty in the prose which is not fully realized until some time later.

But it is the language that Roy uses which makes the book so special. She invents an idiom seemingly out of thin air that is unique to the work. It isn’t just the mixing of English and the local Malayalam tongue which makes it so very exceptional. It’s the way she manipulates the languages to create an atmosphere of surrealism. “Lush” is the closest I can come to describing it. It feels as if Ms. Roy spent years constructing each stunning sentence, although it is by no means a dense text. You’ll have the read the book to really understand. It is worth it.

The only question left is why did she only write one? Did the muse evaporate? Was it a case of burn-out? Or did she simply feel that the one organic novel was sufficient?

After the book appeared, she returned to her original job promoting social justice, using her new celebrity to bring attention to causes which affect India’s poor and working classes. It’s been all nonfiction and politics for Roy, who is a vehement critic of globalization, American imperialism, and the nuclear policies of the Indian government. Imagine if Dave Eggers quit writing to picket outside Starbucks. An extremely noble choice, but a massive loss for the literary community.

Maybe it is better this way. No sophomore slump to disappoint us, no sequel to let us down. Nothing to sully or distract from the near-perfection of Small Things.

We’ll never know anyway.

Or will we?

So maybe by now you have guessed the reason for this review, more than 10 years after the original publication of The God of Small Things. In 2007, Roy announced she would begin work on a second novel.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/books/an-activist-returns-to-the-novel/2007/03/08/1173166881043.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap2

There is no release date set, but let us hope that it doesn’t take quite four years. Although, it might take that long to requite the excellence of The God of Small Things.

It will be hard to best the first effort. But if there is any justice in literature, we’ll soon have another classic from this once-in-a-generation talent.

The God of Small Things at Powell’s Books