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Characters 

I'll discuss the characters first because this is by far the only book that I've where the characters are so vividly portrayed.

The twins Rahel and Estha, their mother Ammu, and all the others in family felt so real. It was almost that I could touch them. I knew them. I've grown up with them. The one thing I loved about the book was how real the characters were. No fake goodness, no unnecessary badness, just selfishness, what the world is made of.

I saw so much of me in Rahel, so much of my own mother in Ammu and made me wonder whether life tried giving me a twin brother like Estha but he couldn't slip through and find me. I understood so much of their grief. Many of their conversations I've lived and heard.

Writing

But it's the writing that stole my heart. It's tragically, disgustingly and disturbingly beautiful. It has the power to make someone uncomfortable. But laugh at the same time. The book is so real, raw and free.

It reminded me how trauma shapes someone. What consequences of some actions in childhood can lead to.

The story or plot in itself doesn't have much to it. It is the writing. The way the mundanity of chaos was described and how chaos was described so mundanly.

It gave me what I call the 'tragic eyes'. I saw everything with the same mundanity. I tried describing them in my head the way Roy would have in her book (at which I probably terribly failed). It also captured the time that it depicted perfectly. The Communist movement, the conservative Christians and Hindus alike and more.

But the writing isn't for everyone. I can see it putting people into a reading slump very easily plus how the chapters are pretty long for my taste. But for the first time the long chapters didn't bother me because the book flowed so easily. But I'll never recommend this to a beginner who wants to read more Indian literature. Never. It's too much for a beginner to get used to in my opinion.

The three days that I read this book, my heart was heavy. I laid in bed like always but couldn't move because of the heaviness. I ate like always but lost my appetite because the heaviness from my heart seeped into my intestines (or my grandmother likes overfeeding me). I sat in the balcony like always at night but wished the wind to blow harder so that I could feel myself again and not my heart sinking in me.

My emotions were flowing all over and turned me stone, silent and irritable.

Another thing that the book did to me was to take me to Kerala. It reminded me of as a kid I begged, cried and pleaded to be sent to the Kerala trip my school was organising. How after a month I begged and pleaded again to go to Kerala as family. To visit the own country of the gods, the country of Alleppey's back waters, the country where my friend moved a year ago. It woke the eagerness in me to travel to Kerela and experience the beauty of it. Even though it was not a round trip to Kerala, I got to experience a spec of the state which for me for now, is enough.

Even though I don't consider this as the best book I've read this year, but it gave me a feeling unlike before.

It freed all the memories of my brain like butterflies that circled around me. Some butterflies I caught. Some I talked to. Some I kept in my pocket for later and some that flew away.

Maybe it was because I related to some parts of the book so much or I am just used to taking everything so personally that happens in a book.

Over-all it a good book that I don't really see myself recommending to anyone. It raw, subtle yet hard hitting. It's all real like a piece of life was cut and made into a book.

One line review: Raw, real and jeweled with ugly life.

Favourite characters: Rahel and Estha