Consider the first twenty pages of her Booker Prize winning debut novel, The God of Small Things . . . (this PDF has the first chapter of the novel —33 pages— and then selected the selected essays that represent her non-fiction work). Discuss the opening with a classmate, then go to your portfolio and record your thoughts in the form of a fiction —that is, imitate her style as you describe you and your classmates discussing her book. Include a knowing 3rd person narrative voice, dialogue, description of each character, and, somehow . . . the SOUND and roll and weirdness of Roy. If you can.
OR, if that’s too tough, create a post consolidating your first impressions of Roy and what you’ve observed about the profiles of her that we have in front of us. Knowing that her personality is associated with strong opinions, how are the writers’ feelings detectable in the profiles we have read?
From the first couple of pages of her novel, The God of Small Things, personally, I think it’s quite obvious that this is a well-thought-out, meticulously crafted narrative. What stuck out to me was the calling attention to the small things, especially considering the title of the book, which feels pretty significant. It seems like her style or ‘convention’ (purely based on the first 7 pages) involves constructing a childlike wonder (at least at this point while Rahel and Estha are young) by noticing small details, like the baby bat on the sari, or how Sophie Mol smelled like cologne and coffin wood. The overall gist of the scene is described just enough for readers to be able to infer what’s happening and understand the important parts, but this is understood from a third-person point of view, picking up on every detail and remaining detached from the situation.