There’s something so delicate about this book. The God of Small Things was Arundhati Roy’s first novel, and it won the Booker Prize. It’s a tragedy that follows the lives of a brother and sister living in India. What struck me most was Roy’s ability to recall and capture how it feels to be a child. The author is meticulous with her details, and her characters never ring false. Highly recommended; it will leave you bereft. A few excerpts: “Kochu Maria’s laugh had that slightly cruel ring to it that young children’s sometimes have. She was frightened by the BBC famines and television wars that she encountered while she channel surfed… She viewed ethnic cleansing, famine and genocide as direct threats to her furniture.” “The sun shone through the Plymouth window directly down at Rahel. She closed her eyes and shone back at it.” “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.”