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The God of Small Things | 
 enlarge | Author: Arundhati Roy
Creator: Diana Quick
Publisher: HarperCollins Audio
Category: Book
List Price: £10.99
Buy New: £6.04
You Save: £4.95 (45%)
New (13) Used (7) from £3.75
Rating:  153 reviews
Sales Rank: 338142
Format: Audiobook
Media: Audio Cassette
Edition: Abridged Ed
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.4
Dimensions (in): 5.3 x 4.2 x 0.7
ISBN: 0001054686
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780001054684
ASIN: 0001054686
Publication Date: October 29, 1997
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand New. Shipped from UK Mainland. Delivery is usually 3 - 4 working days from order by Royal Mail, International Delivery is by Airmail.
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.co.uk Review
In her first novel, award-winning Indian screenwriter Arundhati Roy conjures a whoosh of wordplay that rises from the pages like a brilliant jazz improvisation. The God of Small Things is nominally the story of young twins Rahel and Estha and the rest of their family, but the book feels like a million stories spinning out indefinitely; it is the product of a genius child-mind that takes everything in and transforms it in an alchemy of poetry. The God of Small Things is at once exotic and familiar to the Western reader, written in an English that's completely new and invigorated by the Asian Indian influences of culture and language.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 148 more reviews...
 Beautiful July 20, 2008
This book delicately unravels it's story through a beautifully woven thread of images and chokingly poignant language. This book lies somewhere between a novel and poetry and a work of art. There are paragraphs so wonderfully written they clutch at the back of your throat and make you gasp. Sentences which dance through your mind for days.
I can't see how the book could be described as "hard work". Read it and appreciate every word, every splash of colour, every touch of irony, the beauty of human nature and the small things.
Heart achingly brilliant.. July 13, 2008
Though slow and maybe confusing to begin with, the first half of the book is just building up to the blistering events later on, like a cat slowly playing with it's prey, it draws the reader in, and before you know it, you've invested yourself into this compelling story, and blown away by the momentous ending. The last pages still linger on me now.
It's a book about people and the human condition, about love and hate, jealousy, prejudice and redemption. It steps with such gravity, and heart - and truly makes you appreciate that life, down to the smallest things, is sacred and special. Amongst all the turmoils and triumphs of society there are snatches of pure stolen beauty, small important toasts to what it means to be human.
It is fitting that Roy is now an activist writer, you will find few writers with such sorrow, and heart, then again, some people simply find such things 'boring', which is a shame, but truly great writer's are rarely universally revered.
 boring June 18, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
It is undeniable that Roy has an individual style of writing that many more mature readers (shown by the high reviews) will enjoy. However if like me you enjoy reading a book for the plot or character development then I would warn you to stay away from this novel.
Roy at times uses some beautiful imagery and symbolism but the abundance of which she uses it and the obscurity of some of it can be dull and confusing. The beauty becomes lost and the novel is drawn out, resulting in scores of pages adding nothing to the plot that could have been summarised in a few lines. The plot is not told chronologically or in any order that I could decipher leading to added confusion, some scenes were well placed but there were far too many lines of narrative for me to keep track of and I became too confused to appreciate the tension of the plot. My biggest problem however was that most of the time there is very little going on, much of the novel is getting to know the characters but I felt unable to do this as they were introduced far too quickly and then once it actually feels as if you are getting to know one they are left and the process repeats with another character. Only at the end which I did in fact find touching did the action actually begin however by that stage I was struggling to stay awake.
 Disturbing May 23, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is not the sort of book I usually read, which is sort of why I read it, as I had mentioned to a friend that I wanted to read something a little different, hence she lent this to me & it came highly recommended.
I agree it is quite hard to get into, but I promised myself that after 2 chapters I would decide whether or not to keep going with it & I chose to finish it.
The language is very ornate & I couldn't understand all the Indian references, but still managed fine, so don't let this put you off.
I did find it really very bleak though & quite eye-opening in some respects. It actually made me gag in a couple of parts, so be warned if you are of a sensitive disposition (like me).
On the whole I would say that this tells a very downbeat tale & no-one gets what they deserve in this book, but it makes you think.
Hard work at times but all the better for it... May 22, 2008
I'd avoided reading this book for a long time as the 'blurb' delicately entices but doesn't really inspire you to read it.
Having now finished the book, I can appreciate why the book is so hard to summarize. It is a beautifully written piece of literature with some of the best repeated phrases I've ever read, (anyone who's read a Chuck Palahniuk book will know what I mean). The story itself seems a little pointless, (for lack of a better word), but thats not to say meaningless and certainly not a criticism... I basically saw the story as several snap shots, (at different points in time), of a few people who's lives are intertwined. See, I'm even struggling to review the book.
My best advice is to give it a shot. As stated above, it gets a bit hard to follow at points but we're talking paragraphs not pages and only difficult to follow as in the author has an amazing imagination and approach for describing... things... which at points led me astray, (says more about me than the author though).
I'm gonna shut up now and end on a repeat... give it a shot.
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