The Namesake: A Novel
by Jhumpa Lahiri
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Book Reviews of The Namesake: A Novel
Book Review: Battered by the accidents of life and death
Summary: 5 Stars
Lahiri's tale of a Bengali family that emigrates from India to America "feels like a string of accidents, unforeseen, unintended, one incident begetting another." For Gogol Ganguli, the son of Ashoke and Ashima, "these events have formed [him], shaped him, determined who he is. . . . Things that should never have happened, that seemed out of place and wrong, these were what prevailed, what endured, in the end." Even Gogol's name is the result of an accident. Named after the Russian author, whose work his father was reading at the time of a nearly fatal railway crash, Gogol tries to, but ultimately cannot, escape either his name or his heritage.
After an arranged marriage and before his birth, Gogol's parents settle in Massachusetts, where they spend weekends entertaining and visiting other Bengali families. Gogol's father, Ashoke, slowly accommodates himself to his life as an American professor, but Ashima never stops considering Calcutta as her home. Gogol, quietly embarrassed by his parents' provincialism, does everything he can to shun his Indian heritage and to fit into a mostly white, Birkenstock-footed crowd. (He and his sister especially resent their long visits with their extended family in Calcutta.)
While Gogol is struggling to escape the accidents of his heritage, his father is ineffectively attempting to relate to his son; one of the most heart-wrenching episodes is when Ashoke presents his indifferent son with a copy of Gogol's stories. Lahiri is at her best in presenting these two themes: the duality experienced by second-generation Americans and the acid-sweet schizophrenia generated by the typical father-son relationship.
Lahiri's prose is also in top form. Her omniscient voice alternates among characters, sketching their outlines before zooming in on specific incidents or traits. Her story will cover the events of several years in a few pages, almost as if she were writing a biographical essay; then we will read in minute detail about a particular tragedy, a family reunion, or even an idiosyncratic yet everyday routine, such as how Ashima has purchased and maintained her various address books or when the young Gogol and his father walked along a beach to a lighthouse. I can understand how some readers feel that the expository sections are too emotionally detached, but the contrast surely heightens the impact of the more intimate passages.
The invisible presence throughout "The Namesake" is the ghost of Nikolai Gogol, and I can't speak to the parallels between the novel and his fiction. Like the protagonist of Lahiri's book, I too have a copy of his collected stories--a gift from a beloved friend--that has been sitting for many years on a bookshelf, untouched and unopened. It's time I crack it open.
Book Review: a novel not vividly imagined
Summary: 3 Stars
In Interpreter of Maladies, Jhumpa Lahiri rigorously imagines nine realities inhabited by vivid characters whose perfectly calibrated strangenesses and compelling actions take us where we would not have gone before. In The Namesake, her strong beginning, involving her two most compelling characters, Gogol's parents, devolves into bland, yuppy stereotyping as she moves on to the life of the namesake, with whom she clearly identifies. First, I question the appropriation of the writer Gogol in this novel. Unlike Michael Cunningham's The Hours, The Namesake pays no serious homage or attention to Gogol, but merely borrows the author's name and makes use of the most obvious biographical information--i.e. that Gogol was awkward, very unhappy. There is no literary investigation/application of Gogol's work, and, to me, the prominent surface appropriation of Gogol in the Namesake is not justified. The shallowness of the Gogol concept unfortunately also afflicts the increasingly thin plot of the novel. There is not the multi-tonal, multi-textured richness that we need in a 300 page novel in which less and less happens. Surprisingly, the character Gogol is not really developed, and, increasingly, cultural touchstones are introduced to flesh the character out, in place of the fantastic, quirky, convincing character development in Interpreter of Maladies. For example, Gogol, the son of immigrants from India who remain people of very modest means attends Yale as an undergraduate. We never see that he has the focus, intensity, brilliance, or financial means to underwrite his education, nor are we told how this expense was paid for. Similarly, after the college years, Gogol's young adulthood is depicted as a series of upper middle class cultural adventures (i.e. expensive meals, wine, presents, and vacations) that would max out the budgets of established 40 year olds. The beginning of the novel is very good and Gogol's parents remain the strong, haunting presences of this novel. But I feel that Lahiri could have pushed her plot out of its comfort zone to find ways to keep Gogol's parents, and the real Gogol, the writer, more bothersome, persistent, strange, vivid, and alive throughout this novel. The yuppy extravaganza that the namesake falls into is not nearly as attractive to read about as Ms. Lahiri seems to assume, and is not grounded in the true ideas behind her novel, which atrophy. She certainly can write a 300 page novel--there is no doubt about that. I hope her next one shows the courage, inventiveness, and rigorous imaginative powers of the Interpreter of Maladies. She needs to work in the dangerous deep of her writing, not in her writing's shallows, and to beware of the potentially cloying and, I agree, potentially automatic quality of her often brilliant lyricism.Book Review: East meets West
Summary: 4 Stars
The Namesake deals with themes on culture clash between the first generation Bengali Americans and the second generation. Crediting the writer of the "Overcoat", Nikolai Gogol,with saving his life in a train wreck, Ashoke Ganguli and his wife, Ashima, both Bengali immigrants in the USA bestow the name, "Gogol" on their infant son. While the name was intended to be a 'pet name', the task of coming up with a 'good name', according to tradition, was the duty of Ashima's grandmother. Unfortunately, her letter never arrives, and so, Gogol officially becomes this young man's pet name turned good name.
Gogol Ganguli, ignorant of the circumstances for his name detests it, because it is neither American nor Indian, and rebels against it by changing it to Nikhil. He has little tolerance for his Bengali heritage which is reflected in his choices: Majoring in architecture, as opposed to engineering, and then moving in with his American girlfriend's family where he gets caught up with their extravagant lifestyles and feels his parents mode of living and entertainment cant measure up with them. When his father dies later on, culture clash ensues between him and his girlfriend, Maxine, and they break up.
Following the breakup, Gogol falls in love with the daughter of a family friend, Moushomi. On the surface, the pair appear to be a match: They are well educated, alienated from their Bengali heritage and have a flair for worldly sophistication.
Yet, his bride comes with an emotional baggage stemming from her family background, an unresolved broken engagement and a circle of friends she keeps to validate her self-worth. An extra-marital affair on her part destroys the union.
As the story wounds up, Gogol reflects on the "string of accidents" in his family background from his father's accident in a train wreck, which prompted him to name his son after the writer of "The Overcoat", as a gratitude that the novel saved his life. He reflects on his father's death, and the dissolution of his marriage, after Moushomi confesses to cheating on him. He comes to the realization that despite his detachment from his family years earlier, he was in close proximity with them because of the train. This string of accidents continues back in his bedroom when he comes across the book, "The Overcoat", bequeathed to him by his father on his fourteenth birthday which he had so detested and simply refused to read it. This time around, he begins to read it.
The Namesake is a touching family saga that sucessfully conveys the conflict of cultural assimilation and identity. The presentation of Gogol's relationship with Maxine (white woman) and Moushoomi (a Bengali) addresses the conflict and unfulfilment in his life as an Indian American.
Book Review: Enjoyable Narrative
Summary: 5 Stars
I really enjoyed reading this book by Jhumpa Lahiri. "The Namesake," is a sensitive, detailed and nuanced portrayal of the trials and tribulations of the Ganguli family. This book belongs to the new and growing genre of books that examines the lives of displaced people: the new immigrants to the US. Along with their dreams, the new immigrants carry with them a strong sense of cultural identity and history that sometimes can be a bit of burden to the children born to the immigrants. I found that at times Lahiri's narrative had a detached quality and there was no great drama or passion, except for the character of Moshimi who appears in the second half of the novel.
The book chronicles the life of the Ganguli family. The book begins with Ashoke Ganguli who comes from Calcutta, India to the US for his graduate studies, and upon completing his PhD becomes a faculty member in a university. He gets married to Ashima, and they become the proud parents of two children: Gogol and Sona. Like many Indian immigrants the parents are unprepared for naming their new born child on the day he is born, and therefore to fulfill a legal requirement decide to name their firstborn son as Gogol after the famous Russian writer by the same name. Herein lays the nub of the story.
The story is about Gogol's struggle growing up in America, and trying to assimilate both the American and Indian strands of his life. In a way this is a coming of age book on Gogol and how he eventually comes to accept life in his own terms. This book also chronicles how Gogol's parents surely and steadily carve out a life for themselves and realize their American dream: white picket fence house, cars, etc.
While reading the book, I had an eerie feeling that this book many have been semi-autobiographical and my feelings are not unfounded. Consider this: Lahiri's parents migrated from Calcutta, India to New England when she was a child; her father worked as a librarian and her mother was a teacher; Lahiri studied in Boston (which is where part of her novel is set); her family made frequent trips to Calcutta, India; many of the descriptions about growing up in the USA must have been drawn from Lahiri's own experience; and the book is about a Bengali family; and Lahiri is married to a non-Indian. Above all, Jhumpa real name is not Jhumpa, and like Gogol, her protagonist in the book that was a name that her parents gave her when she was born.
A hallmark of a good book is to see if the reader's attention is captured from the first to the very last page. Lahiri's book more than meets this requirement - letting the reader agonize between racing to the last page and having no more to read beyond.
Book Review: Very fine look at the assimilation experience for an Indian family in the US
Summary: 4 Stars
Jhumpa Lahiri wrote the highly praised story collection Interpreter of Maladies, and now The Namesake is her first novel. It is in the main the story of the life (through early adulthood) of Gogol Ganguli, who is born in 1968 in Boston, to Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli. Ashoke is a Ph.D. student in Electrical Engineering at MIT. He and Ashima are Bengalis from Calcutta, and their marriage was arranged in traditional fashion. They have been in the US only a year or so when their child is born. His unusual first name is intended to be a nickname -- taken from Ashoke's favorite author. His grandmother is expected to suggest his real name, but her letter gets lost between India and the US, and they are forced to put Gogol on their boy's birth certificate.
The novel then takes several jumps to describe Gogol's life: his childhood, spent mostly in the US, with occasional long trips to India; his college career, at Yale and Columbia, where he becomes an architect; several love affairs -- in college with an American girl, then a strange sort of affair, including living together, with a very privileged American; then an affair with a married woman; and finally a semi-arranged relationship followed by marriage to another Indian -- a girl he had met as a child. Gogol -- who eventually does take a "real" name, Nikhil (related of course to Nikolai Gogol's first name) -- is a fully realized character, and very much an American born in the US with an identity split between his Indian heritage and his American life.
I liked it quite a bit, with as I have said a bit of reservation about the overall structure. I also felt at times that some of the middle of the book, in particular, was a bit pat -- convenient -- things seemed to happen in Gogol's life to help the author make a point at times. And as others have suggested, at times the book reads more like a series of stories than a fully integrated novel. But the ending is well done, and quite moving. Gogol himself is a wonderfully realized character, as are a couple others -- his mother, Ashima, for example, and also his eventual wife. Some of the other characters are a bit thin, not wholly convincing. The prose is excellent -- Lahiri is a very fine writer qua writer. And the general theme is well conveyed -- the conflicted desire, as I see it, of someone like Gogol to be fully American (as he surely is) but not to lose his heritage (a desire sometimes expressed more as rebellion tinged with guilt). And this is nicely contrasted with Ashima's situation -- she is really reluctant to move from India, and misses her home her whole life -- then by the end she is herself, we realize, as American as she is Indian.