Sometimes you read a book and like it within the first couple of pages... and you don’t feel like putting it away... something like that happened to me when I started reading The God Of Small Things.
They say well begun is half done... However a good beginning cannot make up for average content and a below average conclusion so the book came across as half baked incomplete and inconclusive. It is as if Roy lost her conviction or interest to finish in the same style.
The story begins in a small town in Kerala and is centered on Rael one of the fraternal twins. The story charts their turbulent childhood in the backdrop of the turbulence of the society in which they were growing up. The narrative is punctuated with sarcastic remarks directed at the communist characters in the story and the Communist party leadership. At times these become repetitive and irritating and it seems like the author has a personal grudge against all comrades. This becomes more apparent with the portrayal of most non-communist characters as relatively innocent often stupid when compared to the cunning comrades and the rest of the establishment.
The narrative loses direction and becomes iterative towards the middle of the 275-page tome and never recovers. The end of the story leaves you wondering as to what went wrong with it. No excuses or explanations... close the book and forget everything if you can, for there are just too many if only and what ifs scenarios that could have made it such a lovely book.