SOURCE: "But What about this Year's Barbados Novel?" in New Statesman, June 27, 1997, p. 49.

[Craig is a South African-born English journalist. In the following review, she contends that, while The God of Small Things suffers from Roy's somewhat overwrought style, the book demonstrates the author's talent and promise.]

This year's India novel is … but stop. Where did that sneering phrase creep in? We do not speak of this year's Ireland novel, or Africa novel, or any other former British colony on which our culture was imposed.

The Indian novelist is confronted with a paradox. Our feelings about India are so complex that a novel is rarely judged on its own merits rather than on a mixture of guilt, anger, defiance and sneaking envy. Those such as Rushdie, who stress the exotic, profit by it; Rohinton Mistry, on the other hand, is accused of writing flat prose—presumably because critics...