Final thoughts on The God of Small Things

1/ In The God of Small Things, I notice that all the women have bad marriages: Ammu, the twins’ mother, rushes into marriage with a man she barely knows, who turns out to be an alcoholic and (compulsive) liar; her mother Mammachi has a violent husband, who beats her with a vase; her daughter Rahel gets into a marriage she doesn’t particularly care about; and it’s not only the Indian women, who are seen as the lesser sex in India, who have bad marriages, but the white English woman Margaret Kochamma also makes a mistake when marrying Ammu’s brother Chacko, who is lazy, messy, and a Marxist.
Only Baby Kochamma doesn’t make a bad marriage—she is a spinster. As it turns out in the last chapters, if we have to single out a character (instead of certain beliefs and practices in India) as the villain of the book, it would be her—bitter, envious, small-minded, cruel, deceitful, and simply disgusting. I want to gouge her eyes out. 
2/ Now that I’ve finished the book, I realise that perhaps the real tragedy in the novel, for the twins, is not the loss of their mother, nor the trauma of watching the man they  love being beaten to (near) death, nor the sense of dishonour and people’s contempt, and not even the separation. It’s the combination of all these things, but I think the thing that really makes one go mute and the other go through life aimlessly is the guilt, the self-blame, the feeling that they are complicit. 
Again, I must say that I do hate Baby Kochamma and want to gouge her eyes out. 
3/ The God of Small Things is a good book, a haunting book, a poetic book. 
4/ The sex scene of Ammu and Velutha in the last chapter is among the best sex scenes I’ve read in literature. 
5/ On a final note, look at this passage near the end of the book (or ignore the rest of this post if you don’t want spoilers): 

“… There is very little that anyone could say to clarify what happened next. Nothing that (in Mammachi’s book) would separate Sex from Love. Or Needs from Feelings.
Except perhaps that no Watcher watched through Rahel’s eyes. No one stared out of a window at the sea. Or a boat in the river. Or a passerby in the mist in a hat.
Except perhaps that it was a little cold. A little wet. But very quiet. The Air. But what was there to say?
Only that there were tears. Only that Quietness and Emptiness fitted together like stacked spoons. Only that there was a snuffling in the hollows at the base of a lovely throat. Only that a hard honeycolored shoulder had a semicircle of teethmarks on it. Only that they held each other close, long after it was over. Only that what they shared that night was not happiness, but hideous grief.
Only that once again they broke the Love Laws. That lay down who should be loved. And how. And how much.” 

The reunited twins have sex.