Despite the title of this blog post, I actually enjoy the set up of this book very much. When I read the first chapter, I remember feeling like there was a lot going on, but not in a hectic way, more like a lot of events were being thrown out with not a lot of details. Going in to class the next day, we were informed that everything talked about in the first chapter was actually the events of the rest of the book. I have never read a book even remotely like that, and at first, I didn’t know what to think.
But the more I read and the more I thought about it, that is a great way to get readers interested in the book. Especially recently, I have struggled with the motivation to read my English books, but the sneak peak that was revealed to us at the beginning, made it a lot easier to get hooked and want to know what happens next.
The one event that sticks out to me more than the others is the one with Estha and the Orangedrink Lemondrink Man. This name is mentioned in the first chapter, and as one might be, I was confused and intrigued. I did not know what this story would lead to and the dramatic events that would unfold, but the brief mention of these characters and their encounter prompted me to read a lot further.
I don’t think that this style and structure of writing is something that would work in every book. Obviously in a fiction or dystopia series, this structure would be very hard to manipulate without ruining the whole thing. But in this sense, Arundhati Roy did a fantastic job at telling a good story in a way that made it even more interesting and dramatic to read.
Great points, Maya. As I mentioned in a few other comments I’ve made, one of the things that happens in that first chapter is that the past and present get blended. That’s part of the confusion, for sure, but it’s also part of how the novel sets up how we cannot separate our adult lives from our childhood experiences/traumas.
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