Review: The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"... the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don’t surprise you with the unforeseen. They are as familiar as the house you live in. Or the smell of your lover’s skin. You know how they end, yet you listen as though you don’t. In the way that although you know that one day you will die, you live as though you won’t. In the Great Stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn’t. And yet you want to know again. That is their mystery and their magic."

This one begins at the end and ends in the middle. You know how bad the ending is, but you just keep reading it. An excellent book, highly recommended!

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Review: The Ministry of Utmost Happiness - Arundhati Roy

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I thought this would be another one of my unfinished novels. Got stuck in middle parts of this book because some are not as interesting as the beginning. Glad I continued and reach the ending :).

This is a story of many--Anjum, Sadam, Zainab, Tilo, Naga, Musa, and others-- intertwined by the story of Miss Jebeen the 2nd. Sometimes it is hard for me to know which story is which. Here, they represented "the unconsoled", the marginalized, those who've rejected by society and how they find happiness in Duniya.

...think about it, what are the things you normal people get unhappy about? I don’t mean you, but grown-ups like you – what makes them unhappy? Price-rise, children’s school-admissions, husbands’ beatings, wives’ cheatings, Hindu–Muslim riots, Indo–Pak war – outside things that settle down eventually. But for us the price-rise and school-admissions and beating-husbands and cheating-wives are all inside us. The riot is inside us. The war is inside us. Indo–Pak is inside us. It will never settle down. It can’t.’

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