The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri (2004-07-04)

very good

"Namesake" by Jhumpa LahiriJhumpa Lahiri was born in 1967 in London, UK to Bengali parents and brought up in Rhode Island, currently living in New York with her family. She has had a successful career as a writer and an artist and had taught creative writing at Boston University and the Rhode Island School of Design.She has received many awards and prizes for her previous works and her debut collection of short stories "Interpreter of Maladies" has been translated into 29 languages. The "Namesake" is her first novel.I bought "Namesake" after watching a film of the same title by Mira Nair. The topic sparked the interest in me but the film felt incomplete and I wanted to know the "full story".The book starts with the arranged marriage of two Bengali Hindus - Ashoke and Ashima. Ashoke comes to Calcutta, meets Ashima's family, marries her and takes her to Boston, US, where he is currently residing. It's 1967 and Ashima is a traditional Bengali girl wearing saris and never cutting her long hair. Snowy chilly Boston looks sad to Ashima and her new apartment - small and silent. Ashoke is an engineer and he is out at university most of the time. The only good thing Ashima can tell about in her letters for her parents in Calcutta is that they have water, gas and electricity access 24 hours per day.Later, their first child - the son is born. And by some reason Ashoke suggests to name him Gogol - after the famous Russian writer. Ashima agrees and so Gogol, being Indian-American, has to live with this Russian name which he hates.In the beginning I wondered whose story does the author wants to tell - Ashoke's, Ashima's or Gogol's? Later I experienced that the characters were related so much with each other that the book told the story of the one life they shared as well as of their secret individual and inner lives.Jhumpa Lahiri is narrating the story of Bengali Indian immigrants in US, the way they adapt and the way they go against, the way they can't help but live the way they are.Their children - already born Americans are fluently speaking in American accent and prefer pizzas rather than Bengali food. Of course, the "risk" of arranged marriage for the young Americans of Bengali origin sounds like something they can hardly believe will ever touch their lives.The book is set mainly in America with the short visits to Paris and India. It is the colorful world of details, moods, recognizable characters, art history, architecture, literature and is rolling around the "academic society" - writers, journalists, actors, singers, architects, painters....The novel is filled with particular brand names and the names of distinguishing food - French cheese and wine, Italian pasta, peasant bread and croissants, cooking recipes, restaurants' names, book titles, memories and never ending frequently ironical, mostly typical and often funny descriptions.Jhumpa Lahiri's "Namesake" is touching, interesting, enjoyable, entertaining and it's about the situation that many people are in - the immigrants and the conflict between cultures, the self-identity and weird names which root to nowhere or maybe to the least expected stories.Recommended.

The Namesake is Jhumpa Lahiri's first novel although it is her second book. Her first was the Interpreter of Maladies, a well received short story collection that won several awards. The Namesake follows the Ganguli family, the Bengali immigrants Ashima and Ashoke and their American-born children, over a period of 30 years. The main focus of the book is on their son, Gogol, born in 1968. Instead of being named by an elderly relative in India, a series of events unfold leading to him being named after his father's favourite author, the Russian Nikolai Gogol. This is the namesake of the title.We follow Gogol throughout the first three decades of his life through his ups and downs, his childhood, his education, his relationships, his career and, most of all, his various identity crises. From an early age he belives that he doesn't really fit in, he feels that he alone in the entire world has Gogol as a first name. Also he embraces the American way of life, unlike his parents who try to keep to their traditional Indian way and this too causes him strife. Before going to college he invents a new identity for himself and changes his name to Nikhil, which is both suitably Indian but can be shortened to the more American Nick. Over time both he and his parents adjust their ways of thinking. His parents grow to enjoy American customs such as Christmas and the benefits of American life, while Nikhil embraces his Indian heritage.The structure of the book seems to hark back to Interpreter of Maladies, it is written in almost a short story style, with different chapters being told from several different character perspectives. Fortunately this is tied together with consistent themes and a mainly constant cast of characters. However, frustratingly, a lot of potential action is lost in between different chapters; relationships end in a blink of an eye and characters disappear never to be mentioned again. Despite this the book draws you along with the depth of its characterisation of both the major and peripheral characters. Jhumpa Lahiri has a passion for her subject and this shows in her writing. She makes you care and feel for Gogol and his family. The book is at once, warm and profound, comforting and deep. Her insight into both cultures, American and Indian coupled with well written prose makes this book both an education as well as a pleasure to read.

I enjoyed The Namesake very much. Jhumpa Lahiri writes with such detail in a rather short novel just under 300 pages. The significance of names, the process of making a life in the United States after living in India, and trying to preserve the native Indian culture are just some of the important and interesting themes in this book. The main character in the novel is a young man named Gogol. The book covers Gogol's life from birth to age 32. Gogol gets into romantic relationships and out of them very quickly. I think this pattern of people falling in and out of love is something not only myself but others can relate to. Gogol is named after the Russian writer Nikolai Gogol whom his father admires very much. The reason his son is named Gogol is because when his father survives a bad train accident, he is holding a page of the author by the same name which helps him get rescued. This is a very emotional moment told in the first pages of this book It really hooked and sparked my interest in the powerful way Jhumpa Lahiri writes. I enjoyed reading the transformation Gogol's mother Ashima makes. She is a young, scared, jobless, dependent woman at the beginning of the novel. She becomes a strong, self reliant, employed woman at the end of the book. I loved the names of the characters the author uses in this novel. Each Indian name in this novel has a interesting meaning to it. I loved reading about the different names in this book. Ashoke, Gogol's father's name means he who transcends grief. Gogol mother is named Ashima which means limitless without borders. Gogol takes a formal name when he starts school. He is named Nikhil which means he who is entire, emcompassing all. The author describes an India where people boil rice and shampoo their hair on the sidewalk. Commuters in India. threaten to committ suicide by jumping from buses and trams too. The Namesake is a very entertaining book by a talented writer.

I usually read 2-3 pages of a book before falling asleep, but this book - Jhumpa Lahiri's "The Namesake" kept me staying up till 2am in the morning, and the only reason I stopped reading then was because I had to be at work the next morning!I really liked her observations of things - and often made me wonder how close this was to the author's own real-life experience growing up in New England. Having lived in New York myself, and travelled around the New England states, I could relate to the events in this book.I was so impressed with this book that I gifted it to several people in the Holidays of 2003. Have a good time reading it yourself!

異文化を知るゆえに悩む主人公の心理をよくつかんだ作品。外の世界はアメリカ、家庭の中はインドと、主人公の心理的描写を、少年時代から大人までを追いながら描いてある。ときに緻密過ぎるくらいの描写は、モノトーンにも思えがちだが、彼女の洞察力には脱帽。私も思春期から２０代を海外で過ごしたが、異なる文化のハザマに立った経験のある人なら、共鳴する部分が多いことに驚くだろう。作家の優雅で静かな文体は、第一作のときのまま。読み進むにつれ、主人公の人生、そして心理状態がどう変化するのか、引き込まれていく一作。ゆっくりと読み味わえる。

"The Namesake" is smooth and elegant and a quick read, but somewhat unsatisfying. Ashima, and particularly Ashoke,the parents of the title character, Gogol(later called Nikhil)are depicted stereotypically as a couple born in India that choose to come to America in the 1970's. They are not sufficiently fleshed out as individuals.Gogol is given his unique name because his father was reading Gogol's "Overcoat" instead of sleeping, during a horrible night train crash in India, and this fact saved his life. As a form of tribute to Gogol, the author, Ashoke, waiting with his wife for a prospective name to arrive from her grandmother for their newborn son, put Gogol's name on the birth certificateThe main character being a few years older than his sister, Sonia, experiences most of the frustrations and difficulties his parents have of trying to adjust to life in America and equivocates in all of his personal relationships between the life he is rebelling against and the life his parents would like him to live. He is, in effect, stymied by his Indian heritage and cannot live comfortably in either world.At the end, he tries to reconcile his dilemma as he begins to read Gogol's "Overcoat" which he found among his mother's boxes as she prepares to sell her house. We are left with the author's hope for a better life for Gogol/Nikhil.The writing is full of beautiful descriptive passages and the author persistently turns a gorgeous phrase, but the story feels pat and predictable.

I am sure you now know much about this story, so I'll stick to giving you my opinion of the book. It is an extremely well written story and touches many of the experiences and emotions involved with immigration and relocation across cultures. I highly recommend this book to immigrants and their friends and families as well as anybody who is curious about the immigration experience, but please take it for what it is--a nice little story about a family, not a masterpiece but beautifully written never the less.