The God of Small Things

"It didn't matter that the story had begun, because Kathakali discovered long ago that 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."

The God of Small Things is Arundhati Roy's bitter, funny, and heart-wrenching novel about the ruin of an Indian family through a mesh of tradition, prejudice, politics, and the meddling of a jealous, obese, virgin great-aunt. It is told out of sequence, spanning several generations, with the bulk of the story centered around the childhood of Rahel and Estha, fraternal twins who are separated at the age of seven after the death of their cousin, Sophie Mol.

Half-English and all-privileged, Sophie Mol arrives in Ayemenem, India, after the death of her stepfather. Her mother's sensationalizing of the local customs infuriates Ammu, the mother of the twins; filled with the conflicted indignation with the rape of her culture simultaneously as that culture repeatedly stifles and nullifies all that she is as a woman and a single mother, she runs for comfort to the arms of the beautiful untouchable servant working for her family. Baby Kochamma, the spiteful great aunt who hates Ammu's ability to cope with life without a husband, finds out about the affair and, petrified of what consequences it could have on the family name, decides to put a stop to it.

Luckily for her, the disappearance of Sophie Mol in a heavy storm gives her a pretext on which she can have Velutha the Untouchable carted off to prison and out of their lives, but what she does not account for is that Velutha's political party makes him a very dangerous target. Forced to either provide corroboration or admit her lie and be legally responsible for a false accusation, Baby Kochamma coerces the twins into testifying against Velutha by telling them that their mother's freedom depended on their account. Estha agrees to testify and does so, only to realize that Velutha is present in the room - unrecognizably beaten, irreparably broken, and dying.

Tropes used in The God of Small Things include:

• Abusive Parents: Pappachi.
• Arc Words: Take your pick. "A [fill-in-the-blank]-shaped Hole in the Universe," and "seye rieht ni nataS" are common. Plus, for some unfathomable reason, everything associated with The Sound of Music is described as peppermint. No exceptions.
• Brother-Sister Incest: Twincest, to be exact.
• Divergent Character Evolution: Played for Drama. Much of the book's present-day passages deal with how Rahel and Estha no longer share the bond they once did, and the book ends with them trying to reconnect in the only way they feel able--through sex.
• Domestic Abuser: Pappachi, and Ammu's husband.
• Dysfunction Junction
• Emotionless Girl: After Estha is separated from her, Rahel turns into this. Her husband thought she was a Kuudere. He was wrong.
  • After the separation, Estha qualifies for this trope even more than Rahel (just switch "girl" to "boy"). There are hints that he's more emotionally repressed than truly emotionless, though.
• Fat Bastard: Baby Kochamma.
• Half-Identical Twins: Estha and Rahel.
• He's A Man He Can't Help It: Mammachi's reasoning for tolerating Chacko's harassment of women from lower classes - his "Man's Needs."
• Hot for Preacher: When she was young, Baby Kochamma fell desperately in love with Father Mulligan, an Irish missionary in India.
• I Was Quite a Looker: Baby Kochamma and Mammachi. Even Chacko was handsome before he let himself go.
• No Pregger Sex: Averted: Margaret Kochamma's affair with Joe, which ended her marriage with Chacko, happened when she was pregnant (and physically, at her most attractive).
• One-Book Author
• Rape as Drama: Estha's molestation at the hands of a food vendor.
• Single-Minded Twins: Rahel and Estha, played for drama (they're described as two-egg twins that are two halves of the same soul.)
• Star-Crossed Lovers: Ammu and Velutha know from the start things will not go well if they get together.
• Stepford Smiler: Mammachi
• Show Within a Show: The Kathakali plays.
• Shrinking Violet: Estha, who's always been a quiet child. And then...

"Estha occupied very little space in the world."

• There Are No Therapists
• Train Station Goodbye
• Twincest
• Type Caste
• Uptight Loves Wild: This was Margaret Kochamma and Chacko's relationship. At first.
• The Voiceless: After he is Returned, Estha becomes this.