This Booker-Prize winning novel (2010) is an extremely complex and challenging work that impresses and infuriates in equal measure. I don’t quite know yet what to make of it. So these are just some first impressions – I am sure I will have more to say when I have read it again.
The story is set in Kerala, in the extreme southwest of India. The main events take place in the 1960’s, whilst there is a sort of ‘epilogue’ where we encounter several of the key characters quarter of a century later. Not that the story unfolds in a linear fashion – just as in ‘Everything I Never Told You’, we are pulled back and forwards in time.
The story is framed by the cultural and political history of the Indian sub-continent. We are in post-colonial times (the British left in 1947) and Chinese-inspired communism is galvanizing the country, frightening the wealthy, be they landowners or landlords. Social structure is complicated not just by politics, but by religion. The bulk of the people are Hindus whilst many of the wealthy are from other religions – in this case the family at the centre of the story are Christians. But the religious groups themselves are split into factions or castes to create an extremely complex human backdrop to the story. At the very bottom of the pile come the ‘Untouchables’ one of whom is a key character in the story. Complex social rules govern the interaction of people from different religions and castes; breaking the rules leads to social exclusion or (much) worse.
To further complicate things there is also the divide between men and women: men hold essentially all the property rights and the power, whereas women are merely required to get married and bear children. All this gives rise to a permanent, seething tension that drives the events of the story.
There are numerous essential characters in the story, so to say it is ‘about’ one or two of them in particular would be misleading. But the first among equals in the tale is Rahel, twin of Estha, daughter of divorced Ammu. Rahel and Estha are seven years old when the main events unfold in 1969. Their age brings yet another important strand into this complex novel – as children Rahel and Estha have not yet absorbed all of the social rules that they will be constrained by as adults. Rahel befriends the ‘Untouchable’ Velutha as she does not yet understand why she shouldn’t. She and Estha regularly cross the river to visit him, although they have been expressly told not to. One such crossing, after a wounding argument with her mother leads to the central tragedy of the story.
Roy deals with universal themes and the events she describes seem to unfold ineluctably from the rotten society in which they occur. Not just contemporary society but of the whole history of the country. Throughout the book individuals struggle against the stifling social structures which trap them in unfulfilled lives. Rahel’s mother Ammu, for example feels her life, at 27, is over because she is divorced with two children. This frustration leads her to a reckless liaison with tragic consequences.
Roy’s story is fascinating and rings largely true. But it is in the telling that the story may starkly divide readers. There are many verbal foibles in the book – particularly when the children, Rahel and Estha are centre-stage. Words are spelt phonetically, or in CAPITAL LETTERS or sdrawkcab. Letters migrate from one word to another – Bar Nowl anyone? Phrases reappear verbatim throughout the book without adding much to the story. These techniques have been praised my several accomplished novelists, so who am I to disagree? But how much you enjoy the book will definitely depend on your attitude to these conceits.
The other thing I wasn’t sure about was the whole overwhelming India thing, the incorrigible plurality of the plants, the animals, the people, the rivers, the rain, the stench, the poverty, the cultural cringe (once Britain, now the US), the metaphors the similes..all heaped one on the other as if this would help you understand the sheer uniqueness of India.
But it would be unfair to end on a low note; this is easily the most ambitious book we have read thus far. The time-shifts for one thing are infinitely more complex than in ‘Everything I Never Told You’ – keep your wits about you between paragraphs or you might miss what decade you are in. She also manages the large cast of characters, all of whom are key in their own way to the tragedy of the story, with great skill. And in quoting from great writers throughout the book (Shakespeare, Kipling, Wilde, Scott Fitzgerald, Conrad) she is asking to be judged by high standards. Does she meet them?
Joe Brannan's Blog 
Looking forward to reading !
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I did it, I finally finished reading this book – I loved the first page but made very slow progress through most of the rest of the book – I am not really sure why it seemed to be such hard going – I enjoyed the magical play with words – particularly from the perspective of the two-egg twins. Has this book been made into a movie yet – it reads like Bollywood is about to meet Hollywood.
The interweaving, chopped up plot was vivid, engaging and tense – I was tempted to read the last page to cut to the chase but that would not have helped in this case. I found the awful barbaric, ickiness of the Indian landscape – gripping but repulsive. This is another book that deals with, big social issues, family and death, and touches us personally in points of time and place – as an example, the Oxford hangover breakfast – and the teashop in all its ickiness. And, as for the witch Baby Kochamma – did she get her just desserts?
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Its good to see that someone else has managed to finish the book! I was leafing through it again and, like Debbie trying to figure out why it was so hard to read. I think it is, at least in part, the sheer descriptive overkill. Although I get that this is an attempt to portray the ‘overwhelmingness’ (is that a word?) of India it does rather get in the way of the plot. So were you or I might write ‘The pickling stopped’ Roy fells obliged to add that ‘the squashing, the slicing boiling and stirring, the grating, salting, drying, the weighing and bottle sealing stopped’. You either enjoy that kind of thing or you don’t. To me Roy is so intoxicated by words that she feels it necessary to write down every phrase that crosses her mind. Thus the metaphors and similes pile up until you are crushed into surrender – or slumber. One critic, I think, compared her style to an unfortunate accident in a creative writing class – and although that is perhaps a bit over the top, it gets to the point that less really is more when it comes to good writing. I don’t mean by all that to say that this is a bad book. The later chapters were she describes the doomed flight across the river are extremely powerful and are alone enough to show what a very good writer she is. But in those key chapters she eases back on the florid language because the events are so powerful that they speak for themselves. I think the book would have been so much better (and easier to read) had the rest of it been written in the same spirit.
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Hopefully this appears as comments from Jeanette rather than ‘anonymous’.
I too found this to be a bit of a slog to begin with and I felt bad for suggesting it – but I like a challenge. I was about a third of the way through when a friend of mine, who had read it, said it was rather like poetry. It’s strange but once I’d thought about this, it became that much easier to read and I started to enjoy it. The book is very descriptive and I just love her way with words. I like to reflect on books and it is now a week or so since I finished it and I now appreciate how clever it was – it is only when you read a lot of rubbish that you appreciate a good book when it comes along.
It took me quite a while to remember the different characters (probably due to their names) with the exception of the twins, and it was a while before we were properly introduced to Velutha, especially considering he played an important role in both the lives of the twins and their mother. I don’t feel his character was as fully developed as it could have been. There were several instances that I will remember – the incident with the Orangedrink Lemondrink Man, the arrival of Sophie Mol and how this affected the twins, and the treatment of Velutha by the police, not to mention the twins coming together at the end.
All in all a good read and something different for me. Would I recommend it – only if I knew someone had staying power!
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Well. I’m glad at least a few of us got through it. I’m still not convinced by the writing, but I guess that is a personal thing. I also thought the time-shifts were too frequent and, for me at least, got in the way of empathising with any of the characters. And I had the strong feeling that Roy was trying too hard to write the ‘Great Indian Novel’ so that every scene had to be weighted with symbolism. This worked in the brutal treatment by the police of Velutha, where the caste-system is shown to be more important than the life of an ‘Untouchable’ – but elsewhere it could be a bit intrusive. I like Jeanette’s coy remark about the twins ‘coming together’ ( how do you know?? – freudian slip?) – it seems that every book I’ve read recently with twins in it has to end up with incest. Not sure what it added here, or is it just one more example of the ‘otherness’ of India.
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