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Summary:
Any talk of The Namesake--Jhumpa Lahiri's follow-up to her Pulitzer Prize-winning debut, Interpreter of Maladies--must begin with a name: Gogol Ganguli. Born to an Indian academic and his wife, Gogol is afflicted from birth with a name that is neither Indian nor American nor even really a first name at all. He is given the name by his father who, before he came to America to study at MIT, was almost killed in a train wreck in India. Rescuers caught sight of the volume of Nikolai Gogol's short stories that he held, and hauled him from the train. Ashoke gives his American-born son the name as a kind of placeholder, and the awkward thing sticks.
Awkwardness is Gogol's birthright. He grows up a bright American boy, goes to Yale, has pretty girlfriends, becomes a successful architect, but like many second-generation immigrants, he can never quite find his place in the world. There's a lovely section where he dates a wealthy, cultured young Manhattan woman who lives with her charming parents. They fold Gogol into their easy, elegant life, but even here he can find no peace and he breaks off the relationship. His mother finally sets him up on a blind date with the daughter of a Bengali friend, and Gogol thinks he has found his match. Moushumi, like Gogol, is at odds with the Indian-American world she inhabits. She has found, however, a circuitous escape: "At Brown, her rebellion had been academic ... she'd pursued a double major in French. Immersing herself in a third language, a third culture, had been her refuge--she approached French, unlike things American or Indian, without guilt, or misgiving, or expectation of any kind." Lahiri documents these quiet rebellions and random longings with great sensitivity. There's no cleverness or showing-off in The Namesake, just beautifully confident storytelling. Gogol's story is neither comedy nor tragedy; it's simply that ordinary, hard-to-get-down-on-paper commodity: real life. --Claire Dederer
Customer Reviews:
Average Customer Rating:
Captivating...in my top 10 list
Customer Rating:
If you're a first generation Indian in the US, you'll totally relate to this book. The book brought back many memories of my childhood, I laughed and cried. The movie is exceptional as well. I highly recommend both.
Portrait of a loveless world
Customer Rating:
I wish that I could ask the author of this novel some questions, such as: why is there duty, obligation, infatuation, mutual use, and inertia portrayed as driving human relationships...but not once, is there love? Why do the characters--all of them--lack a reflective, interior life? Are we being shown that they are all facile, one-dimensional people, or is there some other point? If it's not this, then is it a projection of the author's own, stilted view of humanity?
The emptiness of the life carried out by all the characters in this novel is striking--but I don't have the impression that that is what the author intended to convey. Gogol/Nikhil, his series of liaisons (some only indicated by the word "affairs"), his wife with whom he "makes love" (is that really all there is to it--and do we know, in this cross-cultural tale, what that signifies?), his parents who never show any affection for each other--neither to other characters nor to us...all display what would be called "subdued affect," even when they are relatively expressive.
This is true of Bengalis and non-Bengalis, American-born, and Indian immigrants, so the author does not provide to us any kind of cultural lesson or clear contrast. It appears, as I indicated earlier, that her universe is populated by shallow, pathetic human beings. This does not mean that her universe does not overlap with that lived by too many people in the world we all share, and in the culture of the United States...but it's not clear what it *might* mean, beyond this.
A best-seller this may be, and certainly written with competence, but as a communicator of a story that has a point or even as a portrayal of people in their complexity and liveliness, it fails. On the basis of this book, I would not care to read another work by Ms. Lahiri.
"It was for their sake that it had come to all this."
Customer Rating:
In The Namesake, by Jhumpa Lahiri, Gogol Ganguli is born of Bengali parents in America, grows up immersed in two worlds (his parents and his own), attends college at Yale and changes his name to Nikhil, has various relationships, deals with grief within his own family, and (repeat last two issues over and over).
That's the story. As a tale, it really isn't exciting, a page-turner, nor very enlightening. Gogol doesn't like his name very much, and he resents it throughout his life: "'I hate the name Gogol,' he says. 'I've always hated it'" (p. 102). It's origin is Russian, not Indian or Bengali. Too bad it wasn't "Google".
What it is is beautiful, descriptive prose:
"He is eleven years old, in the sixth grade, on a school field trip of some historical intent. They set off in their school bus, two classes, two teachers, two chaperones along for the ride, driving straight through the town and onto the highway. It is a chilly, spectacular November day, the blue sky cloudless, the trees shedding bright yellow leaves that blanket the ground. The children scream and sing and drink cans of soda wrapped in aluminum foil" (p. 68).
"It is the day before Christmas. Asima Ganguli sits at her kitchen table, making mincemeat croquettes for a party she is throwing that evening. They are one of her specialties, something her guests have come to expect, handed to them on small plates within minutes of their arrival. Alone, she manages an assembly line of preparation. First she forces warm boiled potatoes through a ricer. Carefully she shapes a bit of potato around a spoonful of cooked ground lamb, as uniformly as the white of a hard-boiled egg encases its yolk. She dips each of the croquettes, about the size and shape of a billiard ball, into a bowl of beaten eggs, then coats them on a plate of bread crumbs, shaking off the excess in her cupped palms. Finally she stacks the croquettes on a large circular tray, a sheet of wax paper between each layer. She stops to count how many she's made so far. She estimates three for each adult, one or two for each of the children. Counting the lines on the backs of her fingers, she reviews, once more, the exact number of her guests. Another dozen to be safe, she decides" (p. 174).
This novel is about Gogol's journey, and the people he meets and interacts with along the way. His father and mother reflected constantly on their journeys as well. His father once told Gogol during a visit to Cape Cod: "'Try to remember it always,' he said once Gogol had reached him, leading him slowly back across the breakwater, to where his mother and Sonia [his sister] stood waiting. 'Remember that you and I made this journey, that we went together to a place where there was nowhere left to go'" (p. 187).
In the end, as Gogol reflects on his life, "In so many ways, his family's life feels like a string of accidents, unforeseen, unintended, one incident begetting another. It had started with his father's train wreck, paralyzing him at first, later inspiring him to move as far as possible, to make a new life on the other side of the world. There was the disappearance of the name Gogol's great-grandmother had chosen for him, lost in the mail somewhere between Calcutta and Cambridge. This had led, in turn, to the accident of his being named Gogol, defining and distressing him for so many years. He had tried to correct that randomness, that error. And yet it had not been possible to reinvent himself fully, to break from that mismatched name. His marriage had been something of a misstep as well. And the way his father had slipped away from them, that had been the worse accident of all, as if the preparatory work of death had been done long ago, the night he was nearly killed, and all that was left for him was one day, quietly, to go. And yet these events have formed Gogol. shaped him, determined who he is. They were things for which it was impossible to prepare but which one spent a lifetime looking back at, trying to accept, interpret, comprehend. Things that should never have happened, that seemed out of place and wrong, these were what prevailed, what endured, in the end" (p. 286-7).
Intriguing.
Starts very strong
Customer Rating:
The strength of "The Namesake" is highest when the focus is not actually on the namesake Gogol. I preferred the early chapters on his parents, their move to the US, and the early immigrant experience. The author's observations about America are sharp, and their background as Bengalis, as opposed to other origin (Indian and non-Indian) was fresh (to me). Even when Gogol is young, the child is a vehicle for cultural and family topics.
The novel has two relatively weak spots. The whole stretch with the rich, lefty, New Yorkers did not resonate. It was all too perfect. Part of the problem is that Gogol himself is not that interesting, or at least he isn't portrayed as particularly engaging or reflective. Why exactly do they like him so much? I suppose it was the author's point to show how easily the next generation can fall into luxury and forget its origins, and how American liberal-minded folks can accept an ethnic into the inner circle. The section offered little insight.
The ending was also rather basic. A novel that is not plot-driven, and is more of a series of observations and themes that play out, can be difficult to wrap up, as there is no climax, nor are there loose ends to tie. Thus, the winding down was ok. Fortunately, the mother had returned to be other than a fading background character.
IT captivated me i do not know why....
Customer Rating:
this book was boring and yet it captivated my attention throughout, i felt like i knew all the characters , Although it is not THE BEST BOOK EVER WRITTEN, its worth a read
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