About this title: A pair of twins in Kerala, India--Rahel and her brother, Estha--struggle to maintain a life in the midst of the wreckage of their family. Winner of the Booker Prize in 1997.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Edition: 1ST,
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Random House
Date Published: 04/1997
ISBN-13:9780679457312ISBN:0679457313
Description: Very good in very good dust jacket. Very Good, In very good dust jacket. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. With dust jacket. 321 p. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Random House
Date Published: 1997
ISBN-13:9780679457312ISBN:0679457313
Description: Very good in good dust jacket. Pages in nearly like new condition. DJ shows some slight wear. Sewn binding. Cloth over boards. With dust jacket. 321 p. Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Date Published: 1998
ISBN-13:9780060977498ISBN:0060977493
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Pages are beginning to tan. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 336 p. Audience: General/trade. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Random House
Date Published: 1997-04-22
ISBN-13:9780679457312ISBN:0679457313
Description: Very Good+ in Very Good+ jacket. VG+/VG+, a very nice copy, dust jacket has one or two small tears, edges show a little foxing else interior is clean, binding tight. read more
Description: Fair. 069451960X Quality AUDIO CASSETTES in acceptable condition. Shelf wear and damage to the case, but the tapes remain intact. HAS PREVIOUSLY BEEN USED. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Date Published: 1998
ISBN-13:9780060977498ISBN:0060977493
Description: Acceptable. A readable copy. All pages are intact, and the cover is intact (the dust cover may be missing). Pages can include considerable notes-in pen or highlighter-but the notes cannot obscure the text. Return Policy Any defects, damages, or material differences with your item, must be reported to us within 7 days of receipt of the item or 30 days from date of shipment. The returned merchandise must be postmarked within 30 days of the shipment notification. Non-deliveries must be reported ... read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Random House of Canada, Limited
Date Published: 1998
ISBN-13:9780679309413ISBN:0679309411
Description: Good. A copy that has been read, but remains in clean condition. All pages are intact, and the cover is intact (including dustcover, if applicable). The spine may show signs of wear. Pages can include limited notes and highlighting, and the copy can include "from the library of" labels. Return Policy Any defects, damages, or material differences with your item, must be reported to us within 7 days of receipt of the item or 30 days from date of shipment. The returned merchandise must be ... read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Random House
Date Published: 1997
ISBN-13:9780679457312ISBN:0679457313
Description: A wonderful copy with some minor edgewear to the cover. Dust Jacket has some edgewear present. -, Hard Cover, Very Good / Very Good. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Random House
Date Published: 1997
ISBN-13:9780679457312ISBN:0679457313
Description: A wonderful copy with some minor edgewear to the cover. Dust Jacket has some edgewear present. -, Hard Cover, Very Good / Very Good. read more
"I still love this book unreservedly, but would like to note (for posterity, and fun, and procrastination) some strange, or possibly not so strange, inconsistencies.
- All the bad guys are ugly and/or fat, while all the good guys are beautiful. - Velutha has no personality. He is a screen on which other characters' desires and stuff are projected. - This novel won the Booker in 1997. Coincidence much? (this was exactly fifty years after Indian independence). Not having read the other nominees for that year, I still think this is good enough to deserve it, but other people beg to differ. - Apparently (and I stress apparently) Roy does weird things like emphasising her similarities with Rahel, but then denying that Rahel is based on her. - Forbidden love is a bit of a cliched trope in many ways, dontchathink? - I don't know if India is really like that, and some people say she's just packaging and commodifying it in such a way that will appeal to the slavering, orientalist western audience of which I (and I'm guessing most of you) am an unashamed member. - Here's the story about the publication: she wrote this book, decided to look for publishers overseas because of something, and immediately upon receiving the manuscript two British publishers began a bidding war, while a third dropped everything, skipped vaccinations and got on a plane to India, where he bagged the deal. After all this, there was such a fuss made about it all - publicity and the like - that it was basically guaranteed to sell a whole bunch of copies, make lots of money and win some prizes. I was actually living in England at the time, but I was seven and more interested in Enid Blyton, so I don't remember any of it, more's the pity. Is there anyone here who does? - Someone please tell me where the clumsy and obvious symbolism is! Every critic mentions it, but I am notoriously, and I mean notoriously, bad at picking up symbolism, whether it be good, bad, or otherwise indifferent."
"A story from real life (even though it's fiction)about the struggles of the diffeent classes and casts in a polarized, politicized, and mysticised Kerala of South India.
The story told about two-egg twins and their family caught up in a whirlwind of coincidences that all conspired to create the biggest event: the death of two people at the very opposite extremes of the social continueum (the little white girl who was loved by everyone even before arriving, and an untouchable communist carpenter whose life was worth nothing from the very beginning).
There is a love story that is rather beautiful, there are little stories of molestation, beatings, adventures, hate, and lots of politics. Reading this helped me understand why a friend of mine from Kerala believed in what he believed, with the mix of Christianity, Hinduism, and Communism, and yet with the caste system remaining a curse.
My favorite quote really simplifies the whole political situation: "Marxism was a simple substitute for Christianity. Replace God with Marx, satan with the burgeouisie, heaven with a classless society, the Church with the Party, and the form and purpose of the journey remained similar."
The story itself was good, but I personally did not like her way of writing. it is super British and there's alot of complicated expressions and literary compounds that it becomes confusing and the story is sometimes lost in between. I felt as though someone went to Oxford and was trying really hard to show it. Not really my cup of tea. But otherwise it was a book both entertaining and rich in realities of life.
Does the person you'd like the most in the book die at the end? Yes!"
"If this book hadn't been recommended to me to read, I doubt I would have finished reading it. But I did finish, and in the end, was glad I had read it; found it praise-worthy. (It has been a while now, though, so can't recall any more than that to offer!)"
"This poor book has it tough. It is pretty famous, but it is so, so underrated. Firstly, it has this odd reputation for being one of those 'literature-for-the-masses'-type books, one of those that is literary, in a way (the critics will admit it only grudgingly), but is nonetheless designed for mass consumption by the type of people who buy the complete works of Shakespeare to sit on a shelf in the living room and who are only a couple of steps up from the Picoult fans.
Secondly, no one can seem to look at it as separate from Salman Rushdie, or more specifically, as anything more than a direct, but slightly inferior, descendent of Midnight's Children. I've been studying this in class and yesterday's lecture was more about Midnight's Children than The God of Small Things, and all the criticism I've read about it is all like Rushdie Rushdie Rushdie (Roy)!
Now, I loved Midnight's Children, but it was by Salman Rushdie, which means it suffered from the same problems as the rest of his work, namely that it is largely impenetrable and largely insufferable. Basically, The God of Small Things is better. It's a lot better. I'll accept that it was probably inspired by Rushdie and that Midnight's Children paved the way for its existence and popularity. But it's just as beautifully written, with just as many brilliant insights and wonderful turns of phrase, and it is just as profound and symbolic and important and meaningful and engageful with the pertinent issues, but it is also entertaining and easy to read and enjoyable and you don't feel like you're drowning in a mixture of pulped paper and ink and molasses. It is so good! Rushdie should learn a lesson or two from it before he gets assassinated, preferably before he publishes another book.
I'm a big fan of Arundhati Roy. She's very smart, extraordinarily talented, and her political essays (or at least the single one I've read) are of an excellent standard. And she had the crazy strength of will to abandon writing after this, her first novel, for political activism. When she could have written any other book and sold millions of copies the world over.
Token discussion of literary technique: the weird, fragmented plot structure irritated me this time around. The constant hints and excerpts from scenes that would take place at the end of the story were annoying in the extreme. But they meant that when events finally came to a close, they had an eerie, tragic sense of inevitability. As if they had been foretold, which indeed they had, from the moment the love laws were broken. And from then fate proceeded in all its unstoppability with the machine-like precision of the Greek gods. And you know that there is no other way, because thus is the world in which we live. And there is a feeling that it will all happen again. That it has been happening, over and over, since the beginning of time and that it will continue happening, until the end of time.
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