Imbued with new meaning…to say that it all began when Sophie Mol came to Ayemenem is only one way of looking at it.” Roy is already foreshadowing the novel’s spiraling progression. She tells readers that they will encounter “little events, ordinary things, smashed and reconstituted. Right away, Roy says there are multiple stories and multiple ways to remember, and that through this scattered division the narrative amasses meaning. The novel opens twenty-three years later, when Rahel travels home to see her brother. At this time in the family’s life, Sophie Mol, daughter to Ammu’s brother, Chacko, has come to visit India. In 1969, Ammu, mother to twins Estha and Rahel, has a forbidden relationship with Velutha, an untouchable Paravan, which results in multiple deaths and the family´s disintegration.

The God of Small Things tracks three generations a family’s history and spans three continents, but it predominantly focuses on Ammu, Rahel, and Estha, and is mainly set in Ayemenem, India. Because of this nonlinear, multilayered storytelling technique, Roy imbues her novel with deep meaning and resonance. Her narrative mixes actual events in real time, overlapping with memories and flash-forwards to create a cyclical feeling of return. Through nonlinearity, Roy weaves non-chronological-but-related moments into one cohesive structure. The story does not begin at one point in time and then continue forward until the chronological end, but instead spirals and leaps between different time periods, returning over and over again to events in the past and tying them to future consequences to reveal meaning in the characters’ lives. Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things is a compelling and powerful example of a nonlinear novel. With simultaneous access to the past, present, and future of characters’ lives, readers’ attention can be directed to associated events, resonant and repeated smells, particular remembered sensations, and thematic similarities. But in nonlinear novels-novels with scenes that jump forward and backward in time-time becomes a pivotal point of focus and importance.

The passage of time may slip silently past conscious perception, overshadowed by plot and character development. By GINA WARREN Readers sometimes overlook time in novels they may be unaware of time’s significance within a story.

The god of small things writer