Instruct: Classify Amazon reviews into positive or negative sentiment
Query: This is a prize-winning novel?!

Could someone please explain to me why so many contemporary novels read by book groups have to be filled with gloom and doom. In this novel, it got to be almost laughable. Not only do we have the standard issues of alcoholism, child abuse, and indifferent mothers which seem to be in every novel these days, The God of Small Things throws in incest, murder, anti-Christian propaganda, and characters who have no single redeeming quality in their collective little, abused souls. After reading this novel, I wanted to take a shower to remove all the depression and filth it left behind.