Nuala recommends:
The God Of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
I love this book. It’s one of the few novels I’ve read for pleasure more than once. Set in Kerala in southern India it traces the story of twins Rahel and Estha, whose childhood is decimated by events within their family. It sets out to explore “the laws that set down who can be loved, and how, and how much”. Roy paints a vivid portrait of Kerala while highlighting the iniquities of the caste system. She skillfully evokes a small child’s perspective – their puzzlement and powerlessness.
It seems almost crass to find a novel on the mundanity of tragedy so engrossing but this is a beautiful and profound work. Even the individual sentences are exquisite, filled with rhythm and half rhyme. This is a novel alert to the deep sadness in life but also to the sheer joy of language. Fantastic.
