The God of Small Things

Review ''A work of highly conscious art -- A Tiger Woodsian debut -- the author hits the long, socio-cosmic ball but is also exquisite in her short game. Like a devotionally built temple, The God of Small Things builds a massive interlocking structure of fine, intensely felt details.'' --John Updike, The New Yorker''A gorgeous and seductive fever dream of a novel, and a truly spectacular debut.'' --Kirkus Reviews''With sensuous prose, a dreamlike style infused with breathtakingly beautiful images and keen insights into human nature, Roy's debut novel charts fresh territory in the genre of magical, prismatic literature -- Roy's clarity of vision is remarkable, her voice original, her story beautifully constructed and masterfully told.'' --Publishers Weekly (*starred review)''A work that is complex in structure, sophisticated in its handling of time, and bold in its themes. But perhaps what is most remarkable is Roy's deft use of language.'' --Maclean's''A compelling tale of forbidden love and its catastrophic consequences, wonderfully vivid -- Arundhati Roy's novel has a magic and mystery all its own.'' --The Toronto Star''Roy weaves her bold and startling narrative in sequences of luminously rendered scenes -- remarkable.'' --The Globe and Mail''Drenched with poetic image and saturated with wisdom, the book's rich tapestry is a tour de force in good storytelling, a book to savour and remember.'' --The London Free Press''A first novel of remarkable resonance and originality --like Rushdie she is a dazzling stylist, someone who loves the sound and play of words --The God of Small Things is both funny and insightful.'' --The Edmonton Journal Product Description [Read by Sneha Mathan] This brilliantly plotted novel takes place on the southernmost tip of India, where two twins fashion a childhood for themselves in the shade of the wreck that is their family. When their English cousin and her mother arrive for a visit, the twins learn that things can change in a day. Likened to the works of Faulkner and Dickens when it was first published twenty years ago, this extraordinarily accomplished debut novel is a brilliantly plotted story of forbidden love and piercing political drama, centered on the tragic decline of an Indian family in the state of Kerala, on the southernmost tip of India. Armed only with the invincible innocence of children, the twins Rahel and Esthappen fashion a childhood for themselves in the shade of the wreck that is their family -- their lonely, lovely mother Ammu (who loves by night the man her children love by day), their blind grandmother Mammachi (who plays Handel on her violin), their beloved uncle Chacko (Rhodes scholar, pickle baron, radical Marxist, bottom-pincher), their enemy Baby Kochamma (ex-nun and incumbent grandaunt), and the ghost of an imperial entomologist's moth (with unusually dense dorsal tufts). When their English cousin and her mother arrive on a Christmas visit, the twins learn that things can change in a day. That lives can twist into new, ugly shapes, even cease forever. The brilliantly plotted story uncoils with an agonizing sense of foreboding and inevitability. Yet nothing prepares you for what lies at the heart of it. About the Author Arundhati Roy, author of The God of Small Things, was trained as an architect. She has worked as a production designer and has written the screenplays for two films. Audiobook Narrator Bio: Sneha Mathan spent a peripatetic childhood in India, punctuated by a short spell in the Seychelles. Now fixedly based in Seattle, she works as a voice actor and audiobook narrator. Her audiobook work has received several Earphones Awards, and she is a two-time finalist for the Audie Award.