Last night I was at a book about “The God of Small Things” and I’d be tempted to say that I hated the book for the same reasons that I don’t like Jane Austen books, that I didn’t enjoy Blindness and other books. I don’t know whether readying it, rather than listening to it, would have helped.
It’s a book I didn’t like because it used vile imagery. One image is about body functions into the mud, that is then washed away by the tide. There are mentions of other body functions or body party where we feel that disgust is a desired reaction.
I read The Count of Monte Cristo, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, A Handmaid’s Tale, Beloved, Away and plenty of other books that are about negative situations but they’re not designed to be as vile. They’re designed to document a bad situation, but they’re not cynical about humanity. They offer either hope, or confidence in human goodness.
I have spent time with toddlers, and children. My experience is that they are playful and happy, and yet I didn’t get that sensatin from reading the book. For me the children were not believable as children.
It’s worth prefacing that I “read” this as an audiobook, first at normal speed, and very soon at double speed. I believe that reading this book as an audiobook was a mistake for the same reason as The Travelling Cat Chronicles. With The Travelling Cat Chronicles I felt that the reader should have been Japanese rather than English, and I partially disliked The God of Small Things for the opposite reason, but that’s minor.
I didn’t like the gratuituous cruelty. I didn’t like the repetition. I didn’t like quite a few of the books’ images.
Some people love the prose, and as I skimmed the book’s quotes I thought about how different the book would have been if I had read it in my interior voice, rather than as an audiobook. Some books come to life, via the narrator, but this one was undone by the narration, in my view.
It’s ironic that I found Gulag by Applebaum, a history book, more pleasant to read despite speaking about systemic rape aboard transport ships heading towards the Gulag and more. In Gulag it was a statement of fact with a purpose to document something. In the God of Small Things it felt deliberate, to disgust, and denounce, and possibly for revenge, rather than for providing information and insight.
I don’t like The God of Small Things for the same reason I don’t like Blindness. It uses scatophilic imagery and cynicism gratuitously, to shock, and disgust, rather than to tell a story. Some people might be immune to it, but it disturbs me. It doesn’t move the story forward or explore the human condition. It takes a juvenile approach to human bodily functions. This imagery, repeated led to my amplified dislike of the book.
Initially during the discussion my plan was to be silent, not to bias people that liked the book into disliking it. The discussion did not change my view of the book. One person didn’t like that I didn’t like the book. That person got the wrong idea that I need books to be positive but that’s not it. I don’t want to be shocked, or disgusted, and I don’t want gratuitous negativity.
1984, Beloved and A Handmaid’s Tale are all about dystopias and yet I read them in full and found them interesting to some extent. When I read a book I want people to show grit and determination to get out of their situation. I didn’t get that. I didn’t feel empathy for any of the characters.
It’s worth remarking that I would never have read this book, of my own free will, and it’s even less likely that I would have finished it, if not for the book club discussion. The fact that I remember little to nothing about the book speaks volumes.
It’s worth highlighting that I think context and emotional head space are important when discussing a book, and our enjoyment of it. I am in the right head space to read books that offer hope and enthusiasm. I am not in the right head space for books that spread fatalism and pessimism. If I read the book five to ten years from now, with a healthy family life, and job stability, then I might love the book, but within the current context this book was not the right one for me to read.
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