"The God of Small Things" is a book about which much has been written and said. A book that won the Booker. A book about an unusual and so appealing to the European reader world of strong passions, jungles, castes, ashrams, Bollywood - about mysterious India. The book, which for some reason referred to the genre of family saga, although the center and the semantic core of the narrative is just one event.
Arundhati Roy is an Indian writer who is also an activist who focuses on issues related to social justice and economic inequality. She won the Booker Prize in 1997 for her novel, The God of Small Things, and has also written two screenplays and several collections of essays.
I confess at once: I did not understand this book, apparently, so I could not appreciate it. When reading it, I experienced feelings similar to those that I have when I look at some famous paintings - "Black Square", for example, or "The Constancy of Memory". There is an understanding that in front of you something significant, original, in the opinion of many, genius. But you can't understand with your limited mind why. You don't see this genius, you don't feel it. On the contrary, it seems to you that there is something wrong with this masterpiece, but you cannot tell what it is.
So with the book "The God of Small Things" I experienced something similar. Written in terrific language, the original, deep novel made an impression on me, but not at all what I expected. Bewilderment, bitterness, stunned, disappointed, at times disgusted is what I experienced while reading. There is so much cruelty and anger in this book, so much corporeality, filth, human defecation, that feelings and experiences are reliably hidden behind them, they just get lost in the overall vile background. The nastiness, squeamishness, caused by what you read, is very disturbing, constantly distracting from the other layer of the narrative.
The main characters in the book are twins; it is their story and their worldview that is at the heart of the novel. Rachel and Esta are shown to the reader as children, when the most important events in the book take place, and almost twenty years later. These time plans overlap, the narrative is not linear, it is jumbled, unraveling in bits and pieces like a ball of old half-dry threads. The story begins not at the beginning but at the end, moves in jerks, is created from separate fragments, repetitions, details. For me, the original composition of the book, its non-linear plot proved to be one of the greatest virtues of the novel.
Back to the characters. Everyone - the twins, Amma, Velutta, Chaco, Margaret, and Mammachi - is very convincing, the characters are well thought out by the author, drawn clearly and vividly, and consist, of course, of little things that are constantly repeated and repeatedly emphasized. Despite all their dissimilarity, difference, they are united by one thing - a sense of pity, which causes the reader. Somehow it is pity that dominates all other feelings, it overshadows both sympathies and antipathies. Even Pappacci, a domestic tyrant, a cruel, duplicitous man, evokes sympathy at the end of his life.
What is the novel about? About choice, about predestination, about loyalty, about honesty, about love, about the cost of mistakes, about responsibility. A little bit about inequality and politics. And it's also about parenthood. About the price one must pay for the proud name of "mother" or "father". That no matter what a man does for his child, no matter how hard he tries to do his parental duty well, it will always not be enough.
The book is written in terrific language - reverent, vivid, sensual, with absolutely impossible metaphors and vivid imagery. You read - and like swinging on a seesaw: then beautiful, then nasty, then enthusiastic, then disgusting. But always convincing. Some paragraphs you can sit and think for a long time, and the resulting associations can lead so far away. The text gets bogged down, confused in it, stuck on one line for a long time, completely forgetting about the development of the plot. And that, for me, is the second virtue of the book - complete immersion! The atmosphere of the book is truthful, realistic, sometimes, however, for my taste too much - again, all those nasty details! If the author's goal was different, if she did not want to turn the reader inside out, if she had set other goals - what a beautiful, delightful prose could be! But no, her goal is not to delight the reader, but quite the opposite, and to do this she does not bend to any means.
I understand that the author immerses the reader into this strange and cruel world through details, details. A world of suffering, hopelessness, a world in which there is no place for Velutta, Amma, the twins. There is no room for love, trust, loyalty, humanity. There is no room for faith, for hope. Beauty, fragile childhood attachment, maternal feelings, passion between a man and a woman, love in all its manifestations-it's all broken, devalued, trampled into the dirt. And that's what I don't understand. By taking everything away, the author leaves a void in your soul that you have nothing to fill, nothing to give in return. Hopelessness, raised to the absolute - why? Searing, cruel, vile and... meaningless?!
This article was sponsored by Cynthia Vilseck
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