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This review is going to be a short one because that’s what happens when almost two months pass after I read the book. I avoided this novel for years although I knew it was a modern classic. I read that it was pretentious and confusing due to its nonlinear structure. I also had the impression it will be very long and similar to The Midnight Children (did not enjoy that one), only written by a woman. Some said that it is the worst Booker Winner. I am happy to report that none of my fears proved to be true. It was a very fast read, not that pretentious and with just a bit of attention I did not have any problems differentiating between the timelines. So, what I am trying to say, if you are also reluctant to read this, don’t be. Until, of course, humans get their hands on it. For it is up to humans to figure out how to use this world they have been given. Those who learn too late are, well. They should have known better. The secret of being a bore is to tell everything.' Voltaire said. This book is an appropriate example of how true that adage is. Like a loving mother with only one piece of pie, she withholds information and doles it out at the most opportune moments, yet never does the plot become incomprehensible. In fact, we lap it all up and can't wait for the next serving. To even attempt to summarize the plot would be to take everything away from it because, well, surprise!, the book really is about the Small Things. And the Really Big Things.
The powerful bond of "two-egg" twins is essential to the story: "In those early amorphous years when memory had only just begun... Estha and Rahel thought of themselves together as Me, and separately, individually, as We or Us... a rare breed of Siamese twins, physically separate, but with joint identities." The things that can't be forgotten "sit on dusty shelves like stuffed birds, with baleful sideways starting eyes".
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I liked the non-linear storytelling and I am finding that that's true to life in many ways. Remembrances often aren't linear, and with each chapter more of the mystery is revealed and I find that to be an interesting metaphor in our own lives. On another level, it's about the idea of men being social constructs. About our lives not really being in our hands. About our lives really being governed by the forces of the invisible big bad things, a sadistic child holding a horshoe magnet to the disparate iron filings of our small, insiginificant lives. In short, a History lesson. A lesson in Indian caste dynamics and the communist movement of Kerala. About how the Really Big Things often seep into the Small Things, like tea from a teabag.
It's melancholy, not depressing, and it answers more questions about the characters than it first seemed to, although, I have to say, the characters on the whole are quite two-dimensional. Then again, so are a lot of real people: this is an indictment of human life if ever I saw it. In the wake of this book I found myself asking a question I had asked myself before, but never properly answered. Not to say that I will answer it properly here. Not to say that there is a proper answer. The question: Some columns did not pass what we call in journalism “the breakfast test” – is it something you wouldn’t mind reading over your cereal in the morning? My plan to write about the explosive relief of having a long-needed wee was vetoed. Perhaps, more embarrassingly, a column I wrote on spot-squeezing was deemed too disgusting. (On balance, this was probably the correct decision.) Thought is the greatest of pleasures – pleasure itself is only imagination- have you ever enjoyed anything more than your dreams? But a whole lot of this book, maybe most, is seen through the eyes of two children aged seven, so we have a lot of almost Joycean weirdness like this:
Those who decide to use leisure as a means of mental development, who love good music, good books, good pictures, good company, good conversation, are the happiest people in the world. And they are not only happy in themselves, they are the cause of happiness in others. As you become more conscious of yourself and the world around you, you begin to notice beauty, joy and happiness hidden in the most simplest of things.
Sometimes, if you stand on the bottom rail of a bridge and lean over to watch the river slipping slowly away beneath you, you will suddenly know everything there is to be known.” The year is 1969. In the state of Kerala, on the southernmost tip of India, a skyblue Plymouth with chrome tailfins is stranded on the highway amid a Marxist workers' demonstration. Inside the car sit two-egg twins Rahel and Esthappen, and so begins their tale. . . . Foxglove seeds arrive sealed in a plastic pot the size of a thimble, dangerous even to handle without gloves. Courgette seeds are satisfyingly regular and flat, but need to be planted vertically into the soil, with their narrow edge facing down, and I like the fiddling that’s required to get them in at the right angle. The idea is that focusing on small pleasures has a cumulative effect. Whether it’s Parkinson’s intention or not, The Joy of Small Things could surely be considered a credo to live by. Which is not to say that the plain can’t turn a delightful phrase or the flowery can’t think up a decent story.
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I cannot go into considerable detail about the characters, as the character development was basically non existent. There were a good amount of characters in this book, and by the end of the book, they were still just names to me.
Delightful . . . a love letter to those little moments of bliss that get us through the daily grind.'
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The matriarch, Mammachi, is their abused and blind grandmother. Ammu is the weary mother of fraternal twins, Esthappen and Rahel. Joy feels like it’s been in short supply these past 18 months. What with a global health crisis, food shortages, and the whole world literally and metaphorically being on fire, now more than ever we could all do with a big dose of happiness. Sometimes I take my children, armed with an old camera of mine. This has become a treasured time together: I love seeing what they find beautiful, literally seeing the world through their eyes as they sit for ages watching the waves to find the perfect one that catches the light, and the joy when they get a photo they love. It is a wonderful way to document this time, to treasure the connection we have with nature and with each other. It’s easy to miss these things when you are lost in your mind, living a life of delusion, but once you become present even for a few seconds, a whole new world opens up to you. And when that happens, you start to find joy in the seemingly mundane things that you otherwise took for granted. Even a simple activity like sitting in a garden, drinking coffee, watching the sunrise or reading a book can fill your senses with extreme joy and happiness. Quotes on finding joy in the simple things
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