The God of Small Things

by Arundhati Roy

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

I first read this book in a Fiction class my sophomore year. That semester we mostly read short stories (including “The City Born Great”, the first thing I had read by Jemisin), but we also read three books; Slaughterhouse-Five, The House on Mango Street, and The God of Small Things. When people ask me what my favorite book is, I tell them it is this one. When I got home at the end of the semester, I gave it to my mom to read.

It tells the story of a set of twins and their family in India, in both 1969, when they are children, and 1993, when they reunite as adults. Roy is a masterful writer, turning the unfamiliar into the deeply intimate. She takes large social and political forces and depicts their devastation on individuals; she takes the miniscule and allows it to radiate out into catastrophic consequences.

The narration is achronological, meaning it jumps around in time, depicting events out of the order they happened. As a result, individual scenes both stand on their own and are intricately connected with every other event. Language, themes, and symbols echo through the story, rendering it emotionally captivating. The most significant, to both the book and myself, is the concept of Love Laws. These are unspoken rules which everyone must follow. Those who do not face dire consequences. This form of storytelling weaves together slowly; it takes time to see how the threads connect. But, by the end, the tapestry is breathtaking.

I would recommend this book to everyone, everywhere.