The Namesake: A Novel
by Jhumpa Lahiri
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Book Reviews of The Namesake: A Novel
Book Review: A Search for an Identity
Summary: 4 Stars
Myriad experiences make a lifetime of pains and pleasures for the Boston born, Russian named second generation Indian Gogol Ganguly. Named by his father after the Russian writer Nicolai Gogol, and brought up in a manner typical of Indian immigrant families, Gogol lives his life in a manner typical of second generation Indians in the US. Being an immigrant into USA myself, I am painfully aware of the contrasting pressures that diverse expectations of family and friends put on any second generation Indian. Gogol Ganguly faces the same pressure too, is more akin to an American than an Indian; and his life story, told in intriguing detail by Jhumpa Lahiri, is engaging, exciting and enthralling.
The trials and tribulations of Gogol define the person that he is, but stop short of making him the person that he secretly aspires to be. The portrayal of his ambivalent character is very realistic. Christened Gogol, refusing to be named Nikhil on his first day at school, he finally renames himself Nikhil when he attains adulthood, but that never stops the author from continuing to call him Gogol. To Lahiri he remains Gogol until the last page of the book. And yet there is an urge to be called Nikhil, and to be more American than he is, and to have a life independent of his intruding parents.
Gogol does get his independent life, but it keeps turning into a translucent function of a city, a relationship, an affair, a job, a woman, even a vacation. Over three decades of exploring identities - an Indian identity that he would much rather not have, and an American one that deludes him, is the sum and substance of Namesake's protagonist's adventures in living a dual life. Rarely does the struggle of a second generation Indian to identify what he actually stands for comes to life as truthfully as in the astonishing candidness of this book.
Book Review: Nice descriptions do not a story make
Summary: 2 Stars
Ms. Lahiri is great at describing a room, food, and one's inner chatter. Very nice narrative. You can picture her sitting in a room and typing a detailed description of the couch, the drapes, the walls -- but this is not very good writing if that's all there is and pretty much that is as good as it gets. She does a nice job of capturing immigrant and first-generation American angst and how Americans can be culturally insensitive, but it seems tired and whiny rather than engaging.
There's nothing much going on in this novel. Even when the reader approaches the upcoming climax of the story and she teases the reader into thinking finally there will be some conflict, some emotion, some drama, some dialogue... the author just drops it, moves on to a sort of epilogue and backstories and narrates the would-be climax which diminishes it further. It's as if she's afraid to have her characters really face each other. The important scenes seem hidden.
Which is not surprising, given the protagonist, Gogol Ganguli. He is a passive, bored and boring person who never grows, never learns anything about life, always sees the cloud in every silver lining. He is ashamed of his Indian background, takes no joy in things American or anything else in his upscale yuppie life. He never leads life, he lets life lead him. So others are always calling the shots. This might work if he finally took charge of his life in the end, but even that doesn't change. Why should we care much about this man?
The author milks the title, regarding how Gogol got his name, for all its worth and much too much more, which further drags the story. Like the climax, this sub-plot gives the reader anticipation of bigger things, but there's no there there. It just peters out into descriptive depression like most of the setups in the book.
Book Review: a great novel about cross-cultural identity......
Summary: 5 Stars
THE NAMESAKE, by Jhumpa Lahiri, is a really engaging and intelligent look at the experiences of a young Bengali-American man, Nikhil "Gogol" Ganguli. It starts with a look at his parents' beginnings in the United States, living in a middle class town in Massachusatts, and adapting to the culture of the United States, while maintaining connections to their Bengali roots, in India. Prior to their union, Ashoke has a life-altering experience that changes his view of life and his possiblities in the world. He encounters another passenger who encourages him to see the world before he settles down with wife and children. It isn't until an unfortunate sequence of events, that he realizes that he can't take his life and time for granted. Their young son, Nikhil (or Googol, his petname) carries the legacy of his father's experience on the train, along with his faher's great love of the author Nicolai Googol's novels, in his name.
I don't want to give away too many plot twists. I will say that this book was beautiful, descriptive, moving and intense. Lahiri has a real flair for storytelling and this is a book that really tells a very compelling and engaging account of one young man's experiences as an "ethnic Other," with a name that makes him stick out in society, as well as an identity that is scrutinized an often misunderstood by those outside of his immediate culture.
In conclusion, I think that filmmaker Mira Nair did a marvelous job adapting this for the screen, and I was not disappointed. Yes, I read the book AFTER I watched the film. I reccomend both the film and the movie (in no particular order). I can see why this book was chosen as this month's "Seattle Reads" novel for May. I look forward to seeing Jhumpa speak at Seattle's Town Hall in just a couple of weeks Review: Not the Interpreter, but Very Easy to Read
Summary: 4 Stars With anything but the thickest of prose on many of the pages which are complete with the littlest of details, we traverse 30+ years of the life of the namesake -- a boy then a man) of Indian descent named Gogol who is born and raised in the educational affluence of New England. We learn that Gogol -- as different from us as most anyone -- lives through much of what we would think is experienced (or could be experienced) by anyone we know.
Sometimes, I marvel at just how sharp a woman Lahiri is. She beautifully depicts a young man's thoughts, etc. Sometimes, I loved how she displayed his lack of emotions or inappropriate emotions -- and how they intruded upon his social life.
Baby Gogol and Adult Gogol are sad -- they culminate to be the tragic character which would often have been the subject of his namesake -- Nikolav Gogol. Maybe sadder. He is like the Portnoy of the Indian clan. In a life of extraordinary achievement, he achieves little in family or other personal relationships over the span of 30+ years. He feels inconsequential in contrast to the famous writing career of Nikolav whose life spanned the same period of time as his own -- about 30 years.
This is not the masterpiece of "Interpreter of Maladies." It is not -- in short -- another masterpiece. But, it is fun reading. Easy reading. The author deserved the Pulitzer for her "Interterpreter" and this book is not a work to which she should not also be proud.
The end of the book is timed to equal the end of the life of the original to the name Gogol. In his 30's, we can only hope that the Namesake's life kickstarts out of the doldrums he experienced in his past and that he emerges to be a more complete human being. If I had to wager on this point, I would bet on the Namesake winning.
Book Review: An unusually captivating "telling"
Summary: 4 Stars
I wasn't familiar with Lahiri's previous work, so had no expectations as many of the other reviewers.
I always found the story enjoyable, her writing solid and if not poetic, well structured and straightforward. She expertly leads us into the thoughts and minds of people we probably don't and might never know, allowing us an unbiased look at a different culture. It would be easy for a writer to have a bias, or to have cardboard characters that have the typical biases you would expect, but Lahiri's characters are fresh and believable.
Because there was so much territory to cover - 1968 to 2000 - some very important events were covered in a couple of sentences, a paragraph, or not at all. Lost virginity, for example. If you were lazy for one second as a reader, you wouldn't have known about it. As time passes in one's life, losing one's virginity is nothing more than a fond memory that rarely bubbles to the surface, but when it happens, it is a life defining moment. There are other examples of what I'll call "skimming", but I'll allow this to suffice.
There's also a considerable amount of telling within the skimming. Most of the narrative is told from a somewhat distant third person. When Lahiri comes down from the ceiling and interacts with the characters, showing or dramatizing their story, that's the strongest part of the book. I gained more of an insight into the main character when she did that than at any other point when she simply told me what people were thinking, what people were doing, etc.
From a writer any less skilled than Lahiri this would have been a disaster. But it wasn't. Even when she retreated back to the ceiling, and started to skim over large seemingly important events, the story was still engaging. That takes some talent.