Review Copy of The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy #BookPost #GoodreadsGiveaway

Exciting Book Post:

I received this paperback, bookmark and tote bag in the post a couple of weeks ago, but haven’t had time to create a blog post until now. I’m really looking forward to reading The Ministry of Utmost Happiness and making the most of my new tote bag when I next go shopping 😉

I actually won this in a Goodreads Giveaway, which came as rather a surprise, as I hardly enter any giveaways now, and haven’t won anything on Goodreads for years, having only won two books in the past. I entered the giveaway, as I had this book as request pending on NetGalley for quite a while, so when I saw the Goodreads giveaway I thought I’d enter and try my luck that way 😉 The amusing thing is that shortly after winning the giveaway, my pending request on NetGalley was also approved. Does that mean I have to read and review this book twice? 😉

I shall report back on this once I’ve read it 🙂

Blurb:

A moving new novel-the first since the author’s Booker-Prize winning, internationally celebrated debut, The God of Small Things, went on to become a beloved best seller and enduring classic.

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness transports us across a subcontinent on a journey of many years. It takes us deep into the lives of its gloriously rendered characters, each of them in search of a place of safety – in search of meaning, and of love.

In a graveyard outside the walls of Old Delhi, a resident unrolls a threadbare Persian carpet. On a concrete sidewalk, a baby suddenly appears, just after midnight. In a snowy valley, a bereaved father writes a letter to his five-year-old daughter about the people who came to her funeral. In a second-floor apartment, a lone woman chain-smokes as she reads through her old notebooks. At the Jannat Guest House, two people who have known each other all their lives sleep with their arms wrapped around each other, as though they have just met.

A braided narrative of astonishing force and originality, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness is at once a love story and a provocation-a novel as inventive as it is emotionally engaging. It is told with a whisper, in a shout, through joyous tears and sometimes with a bitter laugh. Its heroes, both present and departed, have been broken by the world we live in-and then mended by love. For this reason, they will never surrender.

How to tell a shattered story?
By slowly becoming everybody.
No.
By slowly becoming everything.

Humane and sensuous, beautifully told, this extraordinary novel demonstrates on every page the miracle of Arundhati Roy’s storytelling gifts.