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Author: Jhumpa Lahiri
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Length: 291 pages
Published: 2004
Publisher: Mariner Books
Brief Synopsis: (Taken from Goodreads) Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies established this young writer as one the most brilliant of her generation. Her stories are one of the very few debut works -- and only a handful of collections -- to have won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Among the many other awards and honors it received were the New Yorker Debut of the Year award, the PEN/Hemingway Award, and the highest critical praise for its grace, acuity, and compassion in detailing lives transported from India to America. In The Namesake, Lahiri enriches the themes that made her collection an international bestseller: the immigrant experience, the clash of cultures, the conflicts of assimilation, and, most poignantly, the tangled ties between generations. Here again Lahiri displays her deft touch for the perfect detail -- the fleeting moment, the turn of phrase -- that opens whole worlds of emotion.
The Namesake takes the Ganguli family from their tradition-bound life in Calcutta through their fraught transformation into Americans. On the heels of their arranged wedding, Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli settle together in Cambridge, Massachusetts. An engineer by training, Ashoke adapts far less warily than his wife, who resists all things American and pines for her family. When their son is born, the task of naming him betrays the vexed results of bringing old ways to the new world. Named for a Russian writer by his Indian parents in memory of a catastrophe years before, Gogol Ganguli knows only that he suffers the burden of his heritage as well as his odd, antic name. Lahiri brings great empathy to Gogol as he stumbles along the first-generation path, strewn with conflicting loyalties, comic detours, and wrenching love affairs. With penetrating insight, she reveals not only the defining power of the names and expectations bestowed upon us by our parents, but also the means by which we slowly, sometimes painfully, come to define ourselves. The New York Times has praised Lahiri as "a writer of uncommon elegance and poise." The Namesake is a fine-tuned, intimate, and deeply felt novel of identity.
The Namesake takes the Ganguli family from their tradition-bound life in Calcutta through their fraught transformation into Americans. On the heels of their arranged wedding, Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli settle together in Cambridge, Massachusetts. An engineer by training, Ashoke adapts far less warily than his wife, who resists all things American and pines for her family. When their son is born, the task of naming him betrays the vexed results of bringing old ways to the new world. Named for a Russian writer by his Indian parents in memory of a catastrophe years before, Gogol Ganguli knows only that he suffers the burden of his heritage as well as his odd, antic name. Lahiri brings great empathy to Gogol as he stumbles along the first-generation path, strewn with conflicting loyalties, comic detours, and wrenching love affairs. With penetrating insight, she reveals not only the defining power of the names and expectations bestowed upon us by our parents, but also the means by which we slowly, sometimes painfully, come to define ourselves. The New York Times has praised Lahiri as "a writer of uncommon elegance and poise." The Namesake is a fine-tuned, intimate, and deeply felt novel of identity.
My Review:
I give this book a 3 out of 5.
First off, I liked the story. The plot was interesting enough to keep me reading. I enjoyed reading about the early struggles of Ashima and Ashoke when they first married and first immigrated to the U.S. The culture shock, the grief of being thousands of miles from everything you know and the people you love: these were all very realistic and compelling. As time goes on, they meet other Bengali couples, and band together for all major occasions. They don't spend much time interacting with the Americans around them except as needed. This remains the same throughout the whole book; as their children (Gogol and Sonali) grow, nearly every Saturday is spent at another family's home for a birthday party, or just a get-together.
Most of the book is in Gogol's point of view, as he struggles against his parents in his teens and early twenties. He never understands his father or the reason for the odd name "Gogol". Not until the night his father tells him the real reason they chose the name Gogol. And even then, he still seems to resent his parents and their culture; as they just float through life in their tight circle of Bengali friends and never branch out or seem to enjoy things.
As I said, the story was interesting enough to keep me going. It was the writing the style got me. To me, this book read more like a history of their lives, than a novel. That is the only reason I had to bump this down to 3 stars. You may pick this up and find that the author's writing style is more your cup of tea than it was mine.
You can purchase The Namesake through Amazon in either hard copy or Kindle format.
Have you read The Namesake? If so, leave a comment and let me know your thoughts!
Please note: I was not compensated in any way for this review. It is strictly my opinion.
Please note: I was not compensated in any way for this review. It is strictly my opinion.
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