Selected Product:
| The Namesake: A Novel
Paperback
Edition: Reprint
Author: Jhumpa Lahiri
Publisher: Mariner Books
Release Date: 2004-09-01
ISBN-10: 0618485228
ISBN-13: 0046442485227
List Price: $14.00
Average Customer Rating:
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Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com
Jhumpa Lahiri's debut story collection, Interpreter of Maladies, took the literary world by storm when it won the Pulitzer Prize in 2000. Fans who flocked to her stories will be captivated by her best-selling first novel, now in paperback for the first time. The Namesake is a finely wrought, deeply moving family drama that illuminates this acclaimed author's signature themes: the immigrant experience, the clash of cultures, the tangled ties between generations.
The Namesake takes the Ganguli family from their tradition-bound life in Calcutta through their fraught transformation into Americans. On the heels of an arranged wedding, Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli settle in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Ashoke does his best to adapt while his wife pines for home. When their son, Gogol, is born, the task of naming him betrays their hope of respecting old ways in a new world. And we watch as Gogol stumbles along the first-generation path, strewn with conflicting loyalties, comic detours, and wrenching love affairs.
With empathy and penetrating insight, Lahiri explores the expectations bestowed on us by our parents and the means by which we come to define who we are.
You felt like you knew these people
| Customer Rating: | | She captures little idiosyncracies that are really authentic. You get attached to the characters. The ending (I don't want to spoil it for you so I wont tell you what happens at the end) makes you think wait what just happened. |
not as good as the short story collections
| Customer Rating: | The Namesake, the first novel by Jhumpa Lahiri, is written
in a deceptively simple style. It is a very well crafter novel that
both explores the role of Indians in America, and tells the
story of a family over several decades.
Unfortunately, I have to say that I was somewhat disappointed
by the novel. Lahiri's collection of stories, "The Interpreter
of Maladies" had a much larger impact on me. A version of "The Namesake"
also appeared as a short story in The New Yorker, and I liked that
version far better. I agree that Lahiri is among the best writers in
the US currently, but short stories are her definite strength. |
A great and superbly written story
| Customer Rating: | Jhumpa Lahiri writes about a very interesting and commonly neglected new American phenomenon: the rise of the Indian-American middle class.
This book is about cultures, values, life and death, love and misery. It is about America. It is about India. It is also universal.
Lahiri writes with style and elegance. Despite the verbose, I was engaged on the story and how it unfolded. "Namesake" is a great reading. |
Disappointing
| Customer Rating: | Friends say that I should have read "Interpreter of Maladies" first, since this book isn't a reflection of the author's real talent. Unfortunately, I was so disappointed by this book that it will take quite a nudge to get me to read her earlier books.
This book is boring, prose uninspired and characters one dimensional. What did I learn about the characters? Only Gogol's parents were half-way interesting and all we get about them is present tense, descriptive reporting on their past and current lives. Even family death in this book reads like a newspaper report. The excrutiating detail of quotidian trivialites and what seemed like product placement forced me to skim paragraph after paragraph for the few existing, relevent bits of information from which to glean anything to make me care. As an immigrant's tale of living between two cultures it's been done many times better, many times before. Non-plot driven books don't have to be boring and I don't require an exciting page turner as long as there is some depth and talent in the writing. The author inserts "knowing" bits of local (mostly geographical) data about Boston, Calcutta, Yale and New York throughout the book, I'm not sure why. To prove she's been there? She utterly failed at evoking the torn "between-two-worlds" of her characters, and her descriptions of their physical surroundings can be found in any tour book or popular culture magazine advertisement. |
Tale of a 1st generation Indian immigrant - different!
| Customer Rating: | I read this book because my daughter's freshman college class was asked to read it, so I knew it must be something pretty special. It's not a book I would have been likely to pick up otherwise.
Though my grandfather was a first generation Italian, I think the book was so unique to me because I knew very little about the Indian culture.
It was a beautifully told story and portrayed well the tension that a first generation American feels, wanting to fit in and sometimes ashamed of his parents' eccentricities, yet grateful for the sacrifices they've made to provide for their children.
Worth the read! |
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