I generally hate books by Indian authors cause they talk down to you about a shimmeringly pure vision of india, beautiful yet held in chains by her own fallacies. Also the flowers in the hair exotica doesn’t help too much- rohinton mistry’s awfully painful books being a case in point. But after reading GOST, it finally felt great to have lived your whole life through a book. I cannot think of a better example of a book dripping with authenticity and genuine heartfelt writing in equal measure. The Booker if you ask me was well due.
The book leaves you stunned and surprised by turn. The malayali socio-political ethos is very real in the book and some of the phrases took me right back home. The way people think and act is how I have seen them. For starters the book does an excellent job of doing away with any pretence of telling a story. it does that in the first few pages and dives right in to various junctures of the tale. We see people evolve and then proceed to rot.
I guess you could say it’s told by a child but the honesty is too inhuman for even a child to be capable of. Roy weaves her own brand of magic through a language that seems to have always been there in the air and the soil but went unnoticed by all of us. Her wistful flings with poetry are spellbinding till you are left breathless for more. The book is a haunting timepiece for the Kerala we all little know.
I for one never thought of it as God’s own country tourism ads notwithstanding but having originated from there takes half the charm away. Still kudos to Roy for exposing a deeper darker side of human nature and making it achingly clear that it’s you and me too. Some things just happen. that doesn’t make them right or wrong but it doesn’t alter the fact that they are a part of our collective being and thoughts either.
Baby kochamma, Comrade Pillai and Muthachhan-the guy of the moth fame characters so believable you have to pinch yourself. I would have been so much happier if the book didn’t go down too well cause it would lend credence to my theory of most Indian reading being treated to exotica crap by Indian authors.
To sum up ’Imported attention spans’-I would kill for a phrase like that.