Book Club: July 2017 Part Two

THE MINISTRY OF UTMOST HAPPINESS
​BY ARUNDHATI ROY

I hope you all enjoyed this month's book club pick! Last week I talked a bit about the first half of the novel, and asked a bunch of questions about themes and ideas that were emerging. Click on "read more" to find out what I think now that I've finished.

Last week I talked a lot about the way the novel keeps bring up characters who shift identities in some form or another, and I don't have too much more to add about that here, I do think it is important to revisit it. I think way that Roy presents identity in this novel is pretty perfectly expressed in a poem that Tilo has written in her notebook  near the end of the book:

"How
  to
  tell
    a
shattered
    story?
      By
      slowly
        becoming
everybody.
      No.
      By slowly becoming everything."

I this really encapsulates what Roy is doing with the novel - slowly presenting the reader with numerous, shifting perspectives from numerous, shifting characters in order to attempt to present a fuller picture of the "shattered story" that is Kashmir. All in all, I really loved this book. I found the way Roy presented her narrative - in fragments, through different characters and a variety of story-within-a-story pieces - to be absolutely necessary. Without these stylistic choices the novel would be very different, and would not have the impact that it did. I liked that she constantly challenged the reader to reconsider, as Tilo constantly asks in The Reader's Digest Book of English Grammar and Comprehension for Very Young Children, "who is the hero of this story?"

What did you think? Any suggestions for next month's book pick? Let me know!