The Nature of Things

I loved The God of Small Things , Arundhati Roy's first novel, and I fully expected to love this one, her second, that was written twenty years after the first. I was disappointed to realize that I didn't. It was not because the writing was not beautiful. Of course it was beautiful. Roy's prose is poetic and musical. It flows, one sentence leading with the inevitably of rushing water into the next. It was not because there were no sympathetic characters. Indeed, the pages are filled with so many sympathetic characters that at times it is hard to focus. Every single one of these sympathetic characters is at the center of a tragic story. There is so much unrelenting tragedy in this book that I began to feel overwhelmed and oppressed by it. And I think my main problem with the book is related to that. The overarching tragedy here that touches every character's life and becomes the theme of some of them is Kashmir. Bleeding Kashmir. That bit of territory that Pakistan and I...

Arundhati Roy has a new book, her second novel, out this year and much acclaimed. I want to read it, but in thinking about that book, I remembered her remarkable debut novel, The God of Small Things , which was published twenty years ago in 1997. I had read the book back then, but in recalling it today, I found that its details had blurred and I wanted to read it again. And so I did.  It was even better the second time around. Perhaps my life experience in the last twenty years has given me a greater appreciation of the story. Roy's luminous prose makes reading an unadulterated pleasure, even when she is describing the tragic events of this tale. The story of fraternal ("two-egg" in the language of the book) twins Esthappen and Rahel and their childhood in the state of Kerala in the southern tip of India, as they try to understand and come to terms with their fractured family and as they learn to their eternal sorrow that the events of one day can change things forever, i...