The God of Small Things: the descriptions and choice of verbs/ adjectives

In the previous blog post about The God of Small Things, I wrote about the prose and imagery. Here is something else I love about Arundhati Roy’s novel—the descriptions, and the clever use of verbs or adjectives for humans for animals, plants, or objects. 
From chapter 1: 

“In the old house on the hill, Baby Kochamma sat at the dining table rubbing the thick, frothy bitterness out of an elderly cucumber.” 

(emphasis mine, as for the rest of the blog post) 
Later: 

“Only the vines kept growing, like toe-nails on a corpse. They reached through the nostrils of the pink plaster gnomes and blossomed in their hollow heads, giving them an expression half surprised, half sneeze-coming.” 

From chapter 4: 

“A swathe of dirty yellow sponge spilled out and shivered on the backseat like an immense jaundiced liver.” 

From chapter 5: 

“The slow ceiling fan sliced the thick, frightened air into an unending spiral that spun slowly to the floor like the peeled skin of an endless potato.” 

From chapter 7: 

“A column of shining black ants walked across a windowsill, their bottoms tilted upwards, like a line of mincing chorus girls in a Busby Berkeley musical silhouetted against the sun. Butted and beautiful.” 

Later: 

“Laughter curled around the edges of Rahel’s voice.” 

And: 

“The steel door of the incinerator went up and the muted hum of the eternal fire became a red roaring. The heat lunged out at them like a famished beast. Then Rahel’s Ammu was fed to it.” 

From chapter 8: 

“Wolves. Flowers. Iguanas. Changing shape as the sun moved through the sky. Dying punctually, at dusk.” 

Later: 

“The day that Chacko prevented Pappachi from beating her (and Pappachi had murdered his chair instead), Mammachi packed her wifely luggage and committed it to Chacko’s care.” 

Later: 

“Escaped wisps of hair were recaptured and returned to white headscarves.” 

From chapter 10: 

“It leaned backwards as though the letters were reluctant to form words, and the words reluctant to be in sentences.” 

Later: 

“In the factory the silence swooped down once more and tightened around the twins. But this time it was a different kind of silence. An old river silence. The silence of Fisher People and waxy mermaids.” 

The God of Small Things is so beloved and acclaimed not because of the tragedies, not for the damning depiction of the caste system, patriarchy, and inequalities, in India. Its power is in the striking imagery, in the author’s bold choice of words and ability to evoke smells and feelings, in the mood and atmosphere, in the haunting sadness.