The God of Small Things
Arundhati Roy (1997)
“A family in Kerala is destroyed by the one law that matters most to the world around them: that some people are too small to be loved.”
EraContemporary / Postcolonial
Pages340
Difficulty★★★☆☆ Challenging
AP Appearances7
Character Analysis
The novel's most fully drawn character. Divorced, marginal, precise, and finally reckless in the best sense — she chooses love knowing the cost. Her death at thirty-one (offscreen, in a cheap hotel room, trying to get a job) is the novel's most damning indictment of the world it describes. She did not lose; she was destroyed by a world that had already decided she was disposable.
How They Speak
Precise, controlled, occasionally bitter. Her speech is educated — Syrian Christian upper middle class — but her position is marginal. She knows the rules and refuses to perform them in private.