'The god of little things', a book that you will not let go

August 25, 2021 at 12:19 p.m.

 

Un book that is unmissable to read is that of The god of little things, the first and most successful novel by the writer Hindu Arundhati Roy.

With this work, he became a best sellers law Because he published in more than 30 countries, Roy won the Man Booker in 1997.

El story takes place in India that, despite being such a geographically distant country, it may be familiar to us because of its third worldism.

The characters of The god of the little ones things seem to be related to those of Salman Rushdie, especially in The Midnight Children, and, perhaps, with those of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. 

One example among many: the son Chacko, a man returning from England to the family home. There he stops one of the frequent beatings that his father (Pappachi) pokes at his mother (Mammachi) and warns him that they will never be repeated. 

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The enraged father beats up a chair and, sure enough, never hits his wife again, but he doesn't speak to her again. 

The novel shows a high level of sensitivity, usually, but particularly of linguistic sensitivity. 

Arundhati Roy's prose is carefully polished, almost handcrafted, and looms large alongside the stories he tells. 

Both the descriptions and the language are highly visual, as well as acoustic. 

The assembly of the novel is fundamental because if it had been narrated chronologically, the story would acquire a less shocking meaning. 

The disorder with which the story tells, those great leaps that it gives in time, is fundamental for the effect that you want to create on the reader. 

Unlike other works, The god of little things it narrates in its first pages almost everything that has happened.

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The twins Estha and Rahel are now adults, Chacko (the uncle) emigrated to Canada, Ammu (their mother) has died, as well as other characters. Survives her great-aunt, Baby Kochamma, a renegade nun, eternally in love with a dead priest. 

All participated and were involved in a terrible story that happened when the little ones were 7 years old and that affected everyone, forever. 

The life of the Kochamma family changed in the course of two weeks, But if you analyze more thoroughly, the threads of the plot of the changes come from more time ago, centuries ago, because what happened does not refer only to the Kochamma circle. 

Thus, although most of the family world in Kerala is narrated from the child's point of view, of the twins Estha and Rahel, who will be both protagonists and victims of their intimate microcosm, it is inevitable to insert their small area within others. macrocosm: the ethnic, linguistic, social, religious, regional, national and international.

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The first pages of The god of little things they refer us to the past and offer the keys to what will happen next, or before, according to the disorder of this book itself. 

This work It is a kind of mystery novel, where at the beginning it is known what happened, but not why or how, so the body of the novel will offer suggestions to the reader, but never total or absolute solutions.

In this book there will always be dark and incomprehensible areas, because Arundhati Roy knows that many things are almost impossible to approach and much more to explain. 

If you dare to read this novel, you will feel the need to go back to the beginning (the end) and start over, in order to round out the plot and try to understand more precisely what happened. 

 

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