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Customer Reviews of The Cost of Living

Roy's values and sensitivities shines
In her newest offering Arudhati Roy , the writter of the widely known and multi-awarded The God Of Small Things presents a deep , careful study on the impact " progress " has made on the life of thousands of people in her country . She describes an India with many cultural and racial entities where the goverment keeps building huge dams in the valley of Naramada with no certain strategy and essential reasons . What she seems to be asking is this : " even if these dams are useful , does it eventually worth sacrificing so many people's lifes and houses for them ? " . In the end the book wins the reader not so much because of Roy's writing style but thanks to the power of her own personallity . She's a young , beutiful and wealthy woman who never forgets though the poor part of her country's population . Instead , she keeps standing by them with her writtings and her actions .

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Dams, poverty, and nuclear insanity
This is a short but effective book. It's divided into two parts. In part one, Arundhati Roy writes about dam-building in India. This heavily-footnoted chapter gets a longer treatment in her next book, Power Politics. Here she introduces the topic, adding a lot of context to the statistics. Her outrage is palpable. This leads into the second part, and angry essay about India and Pakistan becoming part of the nuclear fraternity (both countries publicly tested nuclear weapons in May of 1998). Both countries have so many problems --- and so much tension between them over Kashmir --- that this development can only be considered a disaster for the hundreds of millions of people in the region.

Arundhati Roy is someone we should all listen to. She's an activist, novelist, and a great writer. This book is a good introduction to her work.

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Powerful
This is the first book by Roy that I read, and my favorite. In comparison to The God of Small Things, that's saying a lot. The first essay is the most powerful and clear explanation I have ever read anywhere about the failings of organisations such as the WTO; however, it is not only an attack on international financial institutions. It also discusses the abuses that occur on a national and local level in conjunction with the work of international groups. I suggest this book to anyone who is having trouble understanding the objections to globalization and the WTO.