This is undoubtedly one of my favorite books. I have actually read it twice now. Though I don't really think I understood it the first time (I was in the 8th I think). This time around, I took my time, paused, re-read the good parts, underlined my fav. sections. Smiled, cried, laughed. It was special.
I am deeply drawn towards stories which are at a tangent to the typical. Love stories that do not follow the rules laid down by the world. Where those involved are pushed apart by everything and still manage to come together.
The God of Small Things is exactly that. I don't know about other books written by Arundhati Roy but this one is surely a reader's delight.
As described at the back, the book is about "the tragic fate of a family which tampered with the laws that lay down who should be loved and how." And it is as simple and as complex as that.
Here are a few lines I loved from the book and these sum up the book for me:
"Her own grief grieved her. His devastated her."
"It is curious how sometimes the memory of death lives on for so much longer than the memory of the life that it purloined."
"She drifted into marriage like a passenger drifts towards an unoccupied chair in an airport lounge."
"...choosing between her husband's name and her father's name didn't give a woman much of a choice."
"..new teeth were waiting inside her gums, like words in a pen."
"Smells like music, hold memories. She breathed deep, and bottled it up for posterity."
"That's what careless words do. They make people love you a little less."
"Somethings come with their own punishments. Like bedrooms with built-in cupboards."
"Man's subliminal urge to destroy what he could neither subdue nor deify."
"Once again they broke the Love Laws. That lay down who should be loved. And how. And how much."
The book was a wonderful journey into the lives of the two twins and their twisted tales. The backward reading. The silly games. The strange, yet not so strange, deep connection. The author weaves magical words around their eventful but tragic life. Ah those words. Her analogies are so realistic, you can understand at once what the character feels. The effortless way in which she goes about describing mundane things is what takes this book from normal to extraordinary.
I could re-read it. Again and again. I am sure I will find more parts to underline every time. I could not quote many parts, had to choose the best. But there are so many more to discover. Read it to know for yourself.
