While not one of my favorite stories, the literary voice Arundhati Roy uses in "The God of Small Things" is one of my absolute favorites:

May in Ayemenem is a hot, brooding month. The days are long and humid. The river shrinks and black crows gorge on bright mangoes in still, dustgreen trees. Red bananas ripen. Jackfruits burst. Dissolute bluebottles hum vacuously in the fruity air. Then they stun themselves against clear windowpanes and die, fatly baffled in the sun.

The nights are clear, but suffused with sloth and sullen expectation.

But by June the southwest monsoon breaks and there are three months of wind and water with short spells of sharp, glittering sunshine that thrilled children snatch to play with. The countryside turns an immodest green. Boundaries blur as tapioca fences take root and bloom. Brick walls turn mossgreen. Pepper vines snake up electric poles. Wild creepers...

Roy continues on in this vein, slowly introducing her POV character, Rahel, who is returning to her childhood home in India. It's fully a page or so later until you finally get a taste of the heart of the story and meet Rahel's twin brother:

They never did look much like each other, Estha and Rahel, and even when they were thin-armed children, flat-chested, worm-ridden and Elvis Presley-puffed, there was none of the usual "Who is who?" and "Which is which?" from oversmiling relatives or Syrian Orthodox bishops who frequently visited the Ayemenem house for donations.

The confusion lay in a deeper, more secret place.

For the rest of the story, the imagery Roy uses as her foundation here is reignited by the gentlest touches. The character of the land is essential to the tale, and I don't think she'd be able to invoke it in quite the same way, had she not presented it like this.

Has anyone else read this? Any comments from those who haven't?

Joe