Time, recollection, myth: towards the genre definition of Arundhati Roy's The god of small things

The article suggests a genre model for novel-myth which can be dis-cerned in «The God of Small Things» by Arundhati Roy. The author arguesagainst devising the model solely on the basis of parallels between the con-tent of the novel and mythological images and motifs. Instead such my-thomodeling categories as time, recollection and reader are investigated. Itis demonstrated how the discrepancy between the time of story and dis-course (G. Genette) defines the mythical nature of characters and their rela-tions. The interplay of pro- and retrospections resulting from the second ofthese categories allows to define the novel as the ritual of recollection(M. Eliade). As a result, the reader in the novel becomes the participant ofthis ritual and is isomorphic in this role to the characters.