Josh’s Reviews > The God of Small Things > Status Update

The River in the Boat is, quite possibly, the best chapter ever written. Nothing short of magic.

"Ammu saw that he saw. She looked away. He did too. History's fiends returned to claim them. To re-wrap them in its old, scarred pelt and drag them back to where they really lived. Where the Love Laws lay down who should be loved. And how. And how much."

"Centuries telescoped into one evanescent moment."

"Maybe you'll be a midget," Sophie Mol suggested. "That's taller than a dwarf and shorter than a... Human Being."
The silence was unsure of this compromise.

"Things can change in a day."

"There are things you can't do—like writing letters to a part of yourself. To your feet or hair. Or heart."

"[She was] surprised that her child seemed to have a sub-world that excluded her entirely. A tactile world of smiles and laughter that she, her mother, had no part in. Ammu recognized vaguely that her thoughts were shot with a delicate, purple tinge of envy. She didn't allow herself to consider who it was that she envied. The man or her own child. Or just their world of hooked fingers and sudden smiles."

"Anything's possible in Human Nature," Chacko said in his Reading Aloud voice. Talking to the darkness now, suddenly insensitive to his little fountain-haired niece. "Love. Madness. Hope. Infinite joy."

Of the four things that were Possible in Human Nature, Rahel thought that Infinnate Joy sounded the saddest. Perhaps because of the way Chacko said it.

"Some things come with their own punishments. Like bedrooms with built-in cupboards. They would all learn more about punishments soon. That they came in different sizes. That some were so big they were like cupboards with built-in bedrooms. You could spend your whole life in them, wandering through dark shelving."

"When you hurt people, they begin to love you less. That's what careless words do. They make people love you a little less."

Following the molestation of Estha (orangedrink lemon drink), Roy presses us to consider the double-sided coin of harshness and (white egg white) honesty.

“Dad-a-chum? Dum-a-chum? Ded-a-chek? Did-a-chick?”