52 Books, Book 4

I recently picked up The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy. It was a New York Times Bestseller and winner of the Man Booker Prize so I thought it would be a good read. While the writing is beautiful, I had an extremely difficult time getting into this book. It jumped around and danced between the past and the present. I kept waiting for the parts to connect. I kept waiting for the silver lining. But there wasn't one. The entire story was tragic, full of melancholy and sadness.

The story is one of love and betrayal, death and loss, blame and separation. Ultimately it is the innocent who pay the price.

Excerpts from the book:

They all broke the rules. They all crossed into forbidden territory. They all tempered with the laws that lay down who should be loved and how. And how much.

...a few dozen hours can affect the outcome of whole lifetimes. And that when they do, those few dozen hours, like the salvaged remains of a burned house – the charred clock, the singed photograph, the scorched furniture – must be resurrected from the ruins and examined. Preserved. Accounted for.

"D'you know what happens when you hurt people? When you hurt people, they begin to love you less. That's what careless words do. They make people love you a little less." – Ammu

And once again, only the Small Things were said. The Big Things lurked unsaid inside.

The twins were too young to know that these were only history's henchmen. Sent to square the books and collect the dues from those who broke its laws. Impelled by feelings that were primal yet paradoxically wholly impersonal – civilization's fear of nature, men's fear of women, power's fear of powerlessness.