The last book i read was The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy.
Obviously it was a very acclaimed book, and winner of Booker Prize too. So there were infact a lot of expectations leading up to the book. Like perhaps it would be highly addictive, or amazing story, or something good.
But somehow, for me, the book turned out to fall way short of the hype that was around it. There were perhaps 2 major reasons why this happened . The first one was the content of the book. The story in parts was well written and captivating, but such parts very rare and random in the book. And for me almost half the book was skippable. In the sense, that if some incident occurs then 2-3 pages are spent in some totally random unconnected things, which even if you skip, you can understand what is going on correctly.
The second reason was the timeline. The book had a weird timeline. It went on in 2 times. The present and the past childhood experiences. In the past also, its not straight forward time. Suddenly the author writes about something that occurs 2 weeks later in ’current’ past, and then moves to some other point of past. So it gets very confusing which is when.
The book, is a story, of the childhood memories and experiences of 2 ’two-egged’ twins called Rahel and Estha. Their mother Ammu, marries the wrong man, who she divorces and returns to her home with her 2 kids , in Ayemenem in Kerala ( India ). All her family are Syrian Christian and hence she is looked down upon and disregarded for her divorce and also for marrying a Hindu. Their cousin, Sophie, daughter of Margaret and Ammu’s brother Chacko and her mother arrive in India from UK. And after the tragic incidents of the past Estha is sent to his father in Kolkata and Rahel marries an American and moves to US. The present is about when both Estha, who does not speak anymore, and Rahel, who already divorced the American and was just living in US, return to Ayemenem. The present is 1993 and the ’current’ past was in 1969.
The story does give us insight on the Marxism in Kerala and the caste system and Untouchability norms in their past. But still the story cannot hold you for 300 odd pages that it is.