The Namesake: A Novel Reviews

• A Novel Idea

  
  By AUA64NQ3X56OJ on 2004-08-12
  You can't love a book as much as I loved Interpreter of Maladies and not seek out anything else by the author. Lahiri's new book, published in 2003 and now available in paperback, is a novel rather than a collection of short stories, and I can't help but note that despite my preference for the novel form, Lahiri was in the right line of work before. The Namesake has moments of breathtaking beauty, and I enjoyed it--very much, in fact. Indeed, it feels like one of Lahiri's short stories about an Indian immigrant expanded to fill a novel, or even like a series of short stories about the same people, but disjointed. Rather than following a plot, Lahiri follows a life; this is a brave and admirable choice that causes the novel to meander just as a life does. My fear is that some readers will find it unexciting; Lahiri's stories each pack a punch within pages, but this is a slow burn. Still, well worth the time; you'll care deeply about "the namesake" by the time you're through.
  
  

• A fine novel about a transplanted Bengali family

  
  By A23GFTVIETX7DS on 2003-11-03
  In THE NAMESAKE, Pulitzer Prize winning author Jhumpa Lahiri's first novel, the characters are always hungry: for a place to call home, for family, for love, and, of course, for food. Ashima, in an arranged marriage to Ashoke Ganguli, misses her native India as she sets up house far from her family in Massachusetts, a land of bleak winters that her family will never know, much less understand. Making Bengali food out of American substitutes, she searches desperately for the comfort of her childhood. Time gradually pulls her away from the past, and she learns the ways of America, becomes friends with other transplanted Bengalis, and begins a family. A quiet affection develops between Ashima and Ashoke as they raise their two children, oddly-named Gogol and his sister Sonia. The novel lovingly follows the family through decades of heartache and celebrations.

  Gogol is the novel's center and its primary perspective, the namesake of the title. Although he does not know it until much later in life, Gogol is named after the Russian author not because, as he is told at first, Gogol is his father's favorite writer but because a copy of Gogol's short stories saved Ashoke's life after a train wreck. To Ashoke, the name of Gogol signifies a beginning, survival, "everything that followed" the horrific night spent in the rubble. This idea is the heart of the novel; as immigrants the Gangulis must look forward to what lies ahead instead of what is past. In America, Ashima and Ashoke are reborn, just as their children must find their own paths.

  Rich with detail and infused with affection, this novel has a lyricism that brings the Gangulis' world to life without exoticism. The description of food - Indian, French, American - is so exactly decadent that one should not read this book hungry. The only thing this wonderful novel suffers from is a neatly-wrapped nostalgia in the final chapter. Despite this minor flaw, I highly recommend this novel for a wide readership. Only those who desire strongly plotted fiction should be disappointed. (4.5 stars)
  
  

• young Bengali discovers melting pot may be a bit too hot

  
  By AX724J32HPG1J on 2004-09-12
  Some two hundred thirty years ago, an immigrant attempted to answer the vexing question his French parents had posed him: "What is an American?" His answer, famous for its clarity, ignited a debate that continues today. Hector St. Jean de Crevecoeur's thesis was that the American is a "new man," one who eagerly discarded the cultural traditions of his former home and just as passionately adopted the ethos of his newly adopted land, the United States. The American, de Crevecoeur, discards his former cultural heritage and completely "melts" into his new American charcter. It is the perils, costs and anguish of assimilation that Bengali author Jhumpa Lahiri explores in her brilliant debut novel, "The Namesake." Her exquisitely rendered protagonist, Gogol Ganguli, becomes the archtype for every immigrant who has wrestled with issues of conflicted identity, cultural confusion and humbling marginality.
  
  Through Lahiri's wise and sympathetic characterization, Gogol begins his odyssey towards Americanization even before he is born. His Bengali immigrant parents, whose marriage was arranged by their adherence to cultural tradition, cannot provide a proper name for their American-born son. Their patient but unrewarded anticipation of a "good" name for their son selected by a Calcutta matriarch, results in Gogol inadvertently acquiring a "pet" name chosen by his father. This duality, between Gogol's ethnic roots and his American birthright, perpetually torments him.
  
  Befuddlement, confusion and anger over unresolved identity occurs with dispiriting regularity across the span of Gogol's young life. Even at a traditional Bengali party celebrating his six-month-old status, the infant Gogol, "forced to confront his destiny," cannot and "with lower lip trembling," begins to cry. Ashima and Ashoke, his mother and father, wrestle as well with the burdens of adopting to a new nation. His father seems to assimilate with relative ease, but Ashima likens her immigrant status to a "sort of lifelong pregnancy...a perpetual wait, a constant burden."
  
  As a junior high school student, Gogol loathes his name, despondent that it is "never on keychains." Conscious of his differences, he is hurt by the snickers his parents' accent evokes from store clerks. By actions conscious and unintended, Gogol immerses himself in the American melting pot. It is not an accident that by the time he is an adult, he will live in New York City, a refracted image of "How the Other Half Lives," affluent but disenchanted, externally successful but internally impoverished.
  
  Jhumpa Lahiri seems to understand the enormous costs abandoning one's ethnic identity carry for immigrants who desire nothing more than to blend in. Her Bengali protagonist, acutely aware of his differences but unable to resolve his dual identities, comes to symbolize the anguished decisions all young immigrants must make as they carve out their paths towards becoming American. "The Namesake," in its treatment of individual growth, romantic possibilities and generational reconciliation, is an authentic masterwork.
  
  

• An excellent debut novel

  
  By AAIL33CYCT47J on 2003-09-26
  First I must say that I waited very impatiently for Lahiri to write a follow up to 'Interpreter of Maldies', her Pulitzer Prize winning collection of short stories. That is one of my favorite books, so I was eager to see what she would do next. That level of expectation usually only serves to hurt a book, but 'The Namesake' is up to the task. Lahiri masterfully weaves a compelling story that doesn't fall into the trap that most short story writers get into when they write a full novel (inevitably most seem drawn out and boring, as if the writer is simply trying to fill the pages). The beautiful prose draws you into the story of Gogol, the son of immigrants from India named after the Russian author. 'The Namesake' is about the gap between Gogol and his family -- he born into America and wanting to fit in with our society, his parents unable to let go of the land they knew and the customs they grew up with. Gogol spends his life distancing himself from them and their ways, somewhat desperately trying to assimilate himself to the American way of life. It is a very relatable, very real story that feels close to the reader's heart and is true to life. This is all thanks to Jhumpa Lahiri, an author with a unique understanding of complex human emotions and an incredible ability to convey them to the reader. 'The Namesake' made the wait from her last book worth the while, and leaves you impatient for her next book all over again.
  
  

• A Big Disappointment

  
  By A34KZYE51A0A19 on 2003-10-06
  Jhumpa Lahiri's "The Namesake" contains some wonderful prose, excellent description, and her characterizations are generally good. Sadly, there is little else to compliment.

  For a writer who recently won the Pulitzer Prize, it is surprising that Lahiri fails on the most basic level of any story: there is no real conflict in "The Namesake." The only attempt at conflict is the main character's occasional problems with his first name, "Gogol." (Gogol's father decides to name his son after the Russian author, Nikolai Gogol.) This is hardly enough of a conflict to carry a 300 page novel. Besides his first name, Gogol's only experiences with adversity are the death of his father, which Lahiri fails to explore with any detail, and the break up of a relationship. (Poor Gogol finds himself a new girlfriend a chapter later.)

  While Lahiri tends to know her characters well, she does very little with Gogol's only sister, Sonia. We barely know her. Gogol's father dies suddenly mid-way through the novel, but Lahiri doesn't use this life altering event to add any significance to the novel.

  The reader will find very little story here. As a writer, Jhumpa Lahiri is simply capable of much more.
  
  

• This enthralling and richly readable novel is one to savor
  By A2F6N60Z96CAJI on 2003-09-12
  Jhumpa Lahiri's first novel, THE NAMESAKE, begins with a recipe. In her small apartment kitchen in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Ashima Ganguli is mixing together Rice Krispies, peanuts, diced onion, salt, lemon juice and chili peppers in "a humble approximation" of a snack she used to buy in Calcutta.

  For Ashima, who is newly married and nine months pregnant, who misses her family and feels thoroughly alone in New England in the late 1960s, everything in America is "a humble approximation" of her life in India, which she left behind when she married Ashoke, an engineering student at MIT. For Lahiri, who won a Pulitzer Prize for her debut short story collection INTERPRETER OF MALADIES, this revelatory detail is typical: refined, effortless and graceful, it seems obvious only because it's so profound. The rest of the novel follows this tack, locating small truths and ironies in mundane, often overlooked objects like food and, as the title suggests, names.

  While mixing her snack, Ashima goes into labor and the next day her first child is born --- it's a boy. Such a joyous occasion for Ashima and Ashoke is nonetheless complicated by the choice of names. Bengalis, Lahiri explains, have not one but two names --- a pet name used by family and friends, and a good name by which he or she is known to the world. "Pet names are a persistent remnant of childhood, a reminder that life is not always so serious, so formal, so complicated," she says. "Good names tend to represent dignified and enlightened qualities" and appear on diplomas, awards and certificates.

  Following Bengali custom, the choice of names is left to Ashima's aging grandmother, who posts a letter containing one name for a girl and another for a boy. But the letter never arrives and grasping for choices Ashoke chooses Gogol, a name with much greater significance than merely that of his favorite writer.

  Lahiri introduces the Gangulis in such a way that it feels impossible not to be enticed into their world and demand to know their journeys, hardships and fates. After confidently setting these characters in motion, she traces their lives and the repercussions of Gogol's name through three decades, knowingly evoking the compromises and sacrifices they make to adjust to life in America. Throughout the novel, her prose is consistently somber and refined, subtle and subdued, but always pointed and revealing. Likewise the novel's pace arcs gracefully, a model of writerly patience.

  But what makes THE NAMESAKE so enthralling and so richly readable is the care with which Lahiri recreates the ever-changing America where the Gangulis live. She populates her scenes and descriptions with a multitude of well-observed specifics --- at times far more details than necessary for verisimilitude, but never once threatening to overwhelm the story.

  More crucially, Lahiri writes about Indian and American cultures with the same generosity of detail. She evokes the suburbia of Gogol's adolescence through his beloved Beatles albums and the Olan Mills school pictures as confidently as she describes his adulthood in New York through Ikea furniture and Dean & DeLuca gift baskets. Her descriptions of Ashima's painstaking preparations of mincemeat croquettes are as assured as her descriptions of spaghetti alla vongole at a dinner party.

  Such a range of details may not seem overly significant, but Lahiri uses these differences in cultures and cuisines to keep the reader aware of the growing rift between these two worlds, of how far Gogol has moved from his origins and of how strongly those Bengali ties hold him in ways that he only gradually begins to realize.

  Ultimately, there is something culinary about THE NAMESAKE, something complex, refined and robust in its blends of ingredients, something substantial and nourishing in its interplay of ideas and characters. This is a novel to savor, whose taste will linger in the reader's mind long after the last course is eaten, the dishes washed and put away, and the book placed aside on the shelf.

  --- Reviewed by Stephen M. Deusner from Bookreporter.com
  
  

• Disappointing, Bland, and Stereotypical
  By A12VLIL7WVEN1L on 2003-09-29
  I am stunned by all the hype and the positive reviews in the media and on Amazon about this book. Lahiri's 'wanna be' New Yorker sparse style doesn't work. In fact, it plods and burdens the narrative in such a way that the characters themselves (not just the author) become self conscious.

  The story is typical and hackneyed. Husband and wife move to Cambridge, MA from India. Wife struggles with domesticity and change. Husband aspires to new beginnings. They have a son, Gogol. Son grows up confused, grapples with strange Russian name. The American backdrop pulls son in two different directions. And so on.

  The indirect, non-emotive style fails us throughout the novel. We begin to suspect that there isn't a layer beneath the surface. There is no bubbling turbulence, the hallmark of masters of sparsity. We never really know the characters or their feelings. They flit in and out of their material world, and we are denied entry to their emotional or mental states.

  Many Indian writers have already dealt with the immigrant experience, lyrically, beautifully, and innovatively. This is not new anymore. It is over done! Writers of the diaspora are now so beyond this subject area that they have either started writing about a generation born and brought up here, comfortable with their Indianness or having forsaken it altogether (eg. Salman Rushdie, Bharati Mukerjee etc.) or they have given themselves the liberty and the permission to write freely about an Indian or South Asian perspective, set solely and completely in those spaces. Read Amitav Ghosh, Rohinton Mistry etc.

  Lahiri is the creation of an MFA program, and Houghton Mifflin's ridiculous marketing and advertising budget.

  Don't waste your time or money on this book. There is a body of work out there worthy of the basic theme of immigrant literature.
  
  

• Caught between two cultures
  By A3KEZLJ59C1JVH on 2007-09-14
  "The Namesake" is the story of Gogol Ganguli, a man born to Indian parents who moved to America shortly after they were married. Gogol's name has always been a source of deep resentment for him, as it is neither Indian or American. Eventually Gogol opts to have his name legally changed before he leaves for college. In addition to adjusting to his new name, Gogol continues with a struggle he's faced his entire life: How to relate to and maintain his Indian culture while living on American soil. Gogol rejects most things about his heritage, preferring to lead a more "Americanized" lifestyle. His choices create a barrier between him and his family, but try as he might, Gogol never feels completely at ease within the American culture, either. He establishes a successful career for himself and has has several serious relationships, but Gogol never really finds a comfortable place for himself in this world. Eventually he finds happiness with an Indian woman, of all people, who relates to him on so many levels. However, Moushumi has her own way of rebelling, and at the end of the novel we find Gogol back at the very place his life began, where he begins to rediscover himself.
  
  I fell in love with this book after reading the first few pages, and I couldn't put it down. I enjoyed it even more than author Jhumpa Lahiri's collection of short stories, "Interpreter of Maladies." Lahiri writes in a simple yet emotional style that is rich in detail. Although the novel revolves around Gogol, Lahiri occasionally shifts perspective and gives the reader a glimpse of the story from the eyes of Gogol's parents and Moushumi. All of the characters make a lot of mistakes, but I was able to easily relate to and empathize with each of them.
  
  This is a book about family, identity, heritage, and self-discovery. You don't have to be the child of immigrants in order to relate to the process of pulling apart from your family and discovering the person you're destined to become. I think this book has something to offer everyone, and it also happens to be a beautiful, poignant story. "The Namesake" is a must-read.
  
  
• Graceful and elegant simplicity...
  By A39ABKRS1MKFTW on 2004-10-18
  After thoroughly enjoying Jhumpa Lahiri's Pulitzer Prize-winner, Interpreter of Maladies, I was anxious to start her first full-length novel, Namesake. This young and talented author has proven that her Pulitzer was not a fluke.
  
  The story begins in India. Like most Bengali's, Ashoke and Ashima have an arranged marriage. They move to America when Ashoke is offered a fellowship. When he is eventually offered a professorship at MIT, they decide to try and make a life for themselves in this unfamiliar land. Ashima gives birth to a son (Gogol) and a daughter (Sonia), and these first generation Americans embrace American food, customs and culture. While not ashamed of their Bengali heritage, the children are more bored by the old ways. Lahiri takes this story through their early adult years, and shows us how hard it is to straddle both cultures.
  
  Lahiri's book is so appealing in that she writes of universal themes. First, she shows us how difficult it can be to make a life in a new homeland, and the guilt and problems resulting from first generation Americans who have a foot in both cultures. Also, that love that grows from arranged marriages is often more enduring than marriages that are based on love. And finally, how the values of our parents become more important as you get older-and sometimes when it is too late. The importance of names is also a major theme in Namesake. Sometimes, your acceptance of your name is the key to accepting yourself as a person. There are themes that appeal to almost all of us.
  
  Lahiri's writing is fully satisfying, but not in a rich or overblown way (much like the many foods she describes in Namesake). Her prose is graceful and elegant, but with a surprisingly simple style. Lahiri has a way of looking into the heart and soul of her characters without a lot of excess. Also, I found her characters haunting. All in all, I hope that this fine author is already working on her next book.
  
  
  
  
• A Fraud!
  By A24NVRRVTK0WYT on 2005-04-06
  Jhumpa Lahiri is a decent writer who desperately wants to say something about cross-cultural identity. Lahiri has little to say, nothing, at least, that's of real significance. She is a fraud, frankly, a Western-born and -raised woman who thinks she can communicate something of pure and immediate value on what it means to be Indian growing up in America. Again, she has nothing to say. And it's clear that she's just co-opting experiences that she's read about or heard her relatives talk about. If she had truly gone through something as traumatic as assimilation, she wouldn't chosen that lamest of metaphors -- a man's embarrassment over his name, something which elicits the lamest and least interesting episodes throughout the book -- to underscore the drama.
  
  A very weak book with weak, contemptibly dundering characters. I hated Gogol, Moushima--that skank he marries--and this is not the response Lahiri is going for. For lack of any deep, insightful character development, she opts for an accretion of details of the white, moneyed, well-heeled world of New Englanders. There is little or no discussion about race, color and the shame of sexual liberation. Why did this writer ever think that she had a grasp on this material?
  
  A story of identity is beyond anyone who hasn't had to grapple with ethnic slurs, racial disconnection, economic poverty, all as a child. It is well beyond Lahiri. I will say that the portrayal of Ashima and Ashoke, the Indian immigrant-parents, was spot-on (I assume it's just a description of her own parents and relatives) and that the sequence leading up to and following Ashoke's death was marvelous. Gogol, himself, is a blank--Lahiri gibve him nothing going on in his head, no sense of a goal or direction, nor a clear enough sense of self, to hook us in.
  
  While reading this book, I was often enraged. It's really just a silly Harlequin romance disguised as a respectable literature. Indians and Indian-American writers (like me)-- the book serves, if anything, as a rallying cry, i.e. something whose memory needs to be obliterated and vindicated through your own writing. It's obvious that she's going for something lyrical and poetic. But, without an undercurrent of truth--the feeling that this story HAD TO BE TOLD--the prose goes limp and precious. Bad, bad stuff. On the other hand, check out her short stories, many of which quite good. My advice to Lahiri: stop writing about the immigrant experience and stick to white Manhattan loft dwellers sipping fine wine.
  
  
• Bittersweet sadness in this modern immigrant story
  By A17FLA8HQOFVIG on 2003-12-01
  This is an immigrant story. It starts in 1968 when Gogol Ganguli is born in a Boston suburb. His mother, Ashima, misses her homeland terribly and there is an awkward distance between her and her husband as it had been an arranged marriage and they are just getting used to each other. Gogol's father, Ashoke, was in a terrible train accident in his youth and he feels his life was saved because he happened to be reading a book by the Russian author, Gogol. As the book develops we see how this name impacts the young boy's life as we watch him grow up in America.

  When Gogol is a child, he and his class visit an historic graveyard and he realizes that this is not an Indian custom and that when he dies, he will have his body cremated instead of buried. Later, we watch him and his younger sister hate the infrequent trips to Calcutta with his parents. We share his romances as he goes to college and then out into the business world. His family is delighted when he marries an Indian woman. But all does not work out the way it was planned.

  This is a simple book, tracing the life of this particular family and making their experience of adjusting to American life one of our own. Somehow, the writer is able to put us into the skin of her characters as they go through the process of Americanization. It is all so different from their roots. And there are pitfalls and stumbles along the way.

  The writer exhibits a mastery of using the perfect details to create a feeling that echoes throughout the novel. There's a bittersweet sadness as it chronicles a story that has been played out again and again -- loneliness for the old world and gradual assimilation into the new.

  Jhumpa Lahiri's short stories won a Pulitzer Prize in 2000. This is her first novel. I found it wonderful and look forward to reading more of her work in the future. Definitely recommended.
  
  

• Let me not be next to Lahiri on a long trip
  By A3BFKY618DR43K on 2006-04-28
  I figure that one star is fair, because I only enjoyed the first fifth of this book. By page 200, only the fact that I would be attending a book discussion kept me going. To be fair, most of the group liked the book.
  
  This book is written in a style that I personally call "The Airplane Seatmate from Hell." That is, the book prattles on in a boring manner about superficial and sometimes slightly deep subjects in excessive detail. People don't have snacks, or even wine and cheese, they have merlot and asiago, but they have very few reactions to the events in their lives. We know that Ashima was embarrassed when she said "finger and toe" instead of "fingers and toes", but why did she get a library job? Did she like it? How did close contact with a presumably wider segment of American society affect her? How did she affect her coworkers?
  
  There is little character development. The elder Gangulis seem to be generic Bengali emigrants; we have individual details about them, but they don't have individual personalities. I don't think that I would have thought that anyone was acting out of character because I never had a clear idea of what they were like.
  
  Since I knew that I was going to read this, I didn't read the flaps or anything else about it. The first 50-60 pages were quite interesting as I learned about Bengali customs. I assumed, from these opening pages, that the Gangulis were going back to India when Ashoke finished his degree. An exemplar of the problem with the book is that I cannot figure out why they remained in the USA. Oh, we know why Ashoke went to America, but now that he has had his adventure and he doesn't seem to love the USA as his mentor Ghosh loved Britain, why does he stay?
  
  I don't mean to take a "love or leave it" stance: there would be a lot of stateless persons if that was the rule. It is simply that the Gangulis seem to miss India terribly, and there is no explanation for their remaining in the USA. Other members of the group threw out various suggestions, but the issue isn't the top ten reasons why people move to the USA, but rather, why did this particular family stay here? People may live regretfully in exile, forced from, or prevented from returning to their country by famine, war, political turmoil, poverty, etc., but these don't apply to the Gangulis. Other group members suggested that Lahiri wanted to show how people are torn between cultures. I'm sure they are, but "torn" implies a pull from at least two sides: what is the pull of the USA for the Gangulis? Are we supposed to just assume that of course, everybody wants to live in the USA?
  
  The book uses a great many flashbacks, which stifles what little narrative drive there is. Very emotional scenes tend to be avoided in the present and discussed only in the past tense in a rather flat way.
  
  If Gogol/Nikhil's constant obsessing over his name is supposed to indicate divided loyalties, it would have been better to have used a Bengali name versus a European name; say, Nikhil/Nicholas. Otherwise, he needs to get psychological help - in a culture where people commonly have two names, why is this such a problem for him? For that matter, other Americans often have two or more names - what's the big deal? I can understand that one may be wistful at losing all the people who used a family nickname, but this seems to be the most important issue in his life. Perhaps if we understood what this means to him besides vaguely that it is a dilemma, I'd be more sympathetic. His intercultural conflicts also seem minor and manageable: it's not like his parents are on his case to accept an arranged marriage. Altogether, a tedious character. [Added later:] Nikhil/Gogol's dilemma might have had some resonance if it had been portrayed as the struggle within ourselves, between conflicting wants and needs, that everyone experiences. One can feel like a stranger in a strange land in the place that one was born.
  
  Ashima was mildly interesting, and Sonia might have been very interesting, but she was a minor character.
  
  I've read much better books about the immigrant experience, both fiction and nonfiction: Eric Liu's The Accidental Asian: Notes of a Native Speaker; Isaac Asimov's In Memory Still Green, where he dicusses the shock to his Russian parents of suddenly being illiterate; Fifth Chinese Daughter by Jade Snow Wong; the dilemmas of Pakhistani-Britain Sahlah Malik in Elizabeth Georges' Deception on His Mind; the movie Bend It Like Beckham (Widescreen Edition). I recommend this only to people with a particular interest in Bengalis. Or, read the first few chapters, learn some interesting things abut Bengalis, and forget the rest of the book. Or just read a book about Bengal: Calcutta: A Cultural and Literary History (Cities of the Imagination) by Krishna Dutta or Bengal: Sites and Sights by Pratapaditya Pal & Enamul Haque both sound promising.
  
  
• sharp sometimes poignant details don't add up
  By AFN32PGTZ31MV on 2004-01-26
  Lahiri's debut novel exhibits many of the positive attributes of her justifiably esteemed short story collection Interpreter of Maladies--an exquistely honed sense of detail, an intimate sense of character, a quietly controlled emotional tone-- but the requirements of a novel aren't always the same as a good short story, and despite Lahiri's obvious strengths as a writer, The Namesake falls a bit flat.
  The Namesake charts two generations of the Ganguli family, following Ashoke Ganguli through a nearly-fatal and life-changing train accident, his subsequent move to America and then his arranged marriage to Ashima, who never really feels comfortable in America. Their son, Gogol, is the title character and after his birth the focus of the book shifts to him, following him through his childhood, youth, and adulthood, tracing the various arcs of his career, love life, and relationship with his family and culture.
  As in her short stories, Lahiri is a master of the telling detail, whether it be a description of a character's cooking or the interior of a house or the small dynamics of a party. In her short stories these lead quickly to characterization and often realization, but in this longer work they sometimes bog the story down or feel repetitive, despite the many gems that sparkle throughout.
  While the shift in focus to Gogol allows for further exploration of family and immigration, Lahiri drops the parents a bit too wholly (especially the father) in the middle, though we come back nicely to Ashima later in the book. Other characters suffer as well in relation to Gogol, especially all of the female characters. His sister may as well not exist and the various loves of his life seem more like plot devices than fully realized chararacters, one of them skirting pretty closely in the description of her and her parents to stereotype.
  The sense of dislocation felt by first and second generation immigrants is fully and sharply conveyed, though at times the reader is told this rather than shown it. The tugging emotions of family are more nuanced and moving in their depictions (though here is where the sister's weakness as a character is a major detriment).
  The structure is straightforward chronological which is a problem in such a quiet book filled with such lengthy detail. Gogol is interesting but not particularly compelling; a less straightforward approach could have compensated for this somewhat. As it is, though, I found the book slow-moving, not in a langorous enjoyable kind of way but more in the impatient to skim some detail way. By the latter third I found myself tempted to simply put it down, though I did persevere. The end is admittedly moving, but I'm torn between saying it earned that emotion and saying that it cheats a bit with some easy sentimentality in the last page or two. It's debatable.
  In the end, while there is some beautiful craftsmanship here, some truly poignant moments and fine detail, I can't recommend it all that highly due to its sketchy side characters, its uneven pace, and general lack of compelling story, though I think what's here bodes well for her next novel, which I'll definitely pick up.
  
  
• Namesake
  By A12LFJ7JV13R8I on 2004-09-13
  When I finished reading Namesake I turned to Amazon to read the reviews. I loved this book and was absolutely undone to see so many negative reviews. So I called a friend in Cambridge, Mass., where the whole town read and discussed the book in small groups. I asked her how it was received there and she said everyone, including herself, thought it was wonderful! Why the disparity??
  
  I'm not sure. For one thing, I have not read her book of short stories, which most people thought was the better work. That may be so. Nevertheless, I think we all agree that the author writes beautifully, whatever else you may think of the book. Her writing flows effortlessly but with such clarity of detail and restraint of words that it imbues her incidents with a special warmth and depth.
  
  I guess that is what I found remarkable. That this simple story told so much in so few words about the search for one's uniqueness, for the need in that process to have family and the need to distance oneself from family, to create on's own name. Lovingly told, it spoke to the notion that as much as we try to shape our own destiny, much of what we are is the result of accidents; much of what we even choose for ourselves is not so much a decision for as a decision against and therein lies the rub.
  
  Forgive me, but I loved this book. It had a lot to say to me.
  
  
• Less than Mediocre
  By AIJ6R6PA3TUXB on 2004-11-22
  I won't bore you with a lot of fancy talk and misspelled words about topics I know little or nothing about, but I will say this: The Namesake is a major disappointment, mainly because it's really a short story painfully dragged out for 300 pages and because there are so many missed opportunities in the narrative (e.g., Gogol's trip to India, a section which receives only a few pages of weak exposition). I'd like to say, also, that the number of five-star reviews of The Namesake on this site is bewildering. It's as if Ms. Lahiri's brilliant collection of short stories (and they are just that, brilliant) has somehow awed readers into thinking she can do no wrong. I can only hope that Ms. Lahiri very quickly puts her less than mediocre first novel behind her and goes back to what she writes best, short fiction.
  
  
• A Short Story Masquerading as a Novel
  By A2ECPW4RA7NWMP on 2004-11-25
  Based on my reading of Lahiri's fine short story collection that justifiably won the Pulitzer Prize, I expected a complex, nuanced novel which would deliver closely observed and clear writing. I was ready for a real treat.
  Instead, I got a kind of automatic writing of a drawn out short story. At first, the book opens very well with descriptions of a birth and an awful train wreck that changes the course of Gogol's father's life. I thought I was in for something brilliant. But then the plot, if one can call it that, drags and drags. The writing becomes antiseptic, mistaking minute observation for literature, and losing its overall passion and reason for being. I had to fight through much of this book, skipping pointless passages, and enduring elaborate descriptions of Gogol's lovers, their clothes and hairstyles, their shoes, their parents, and their parents' homes. All for what?
  Then, when Gogol must confront his father's death, we see him acting like a zombie, retching, breaking up with his girlfriend, but never getting to anything that moves us. His mother's reaction to her husband's death seems inauthentic. And in fact, much in this novel is just that. After a while, I just didn't care about the characters.
  The real problem is that Lahiri is a short story writer who tried to stretch a short story into a novel, but didn't have the substance in the original idea to bring it off.
  I was frankly disappointed.
  
  
  
• A Novel With Potential
  By A1H5E7O5BW2J13 on 2006-06-27
  I had to read this book for my ENG101 class in college. To be fair, this wasn't a horrible book. The first two or three chapters of the book are perhaps the strongest passages in the novel. We get introduced to Ashima, who to me should have been the main focus of the book instead of her son, Gogol. Her experiences reflect what many foreigners feel when coming to America or any foreign country. Why the author had to focus on Gogol's life, which is ordinary and uneventful, instead of Ashima's life, which even long after he was born is filled with regret, sadness, hope, and desire, is beyond me.
  
  First of all, Gogol is a lackluster, tedious character. His story alone is not enough to carry a whole novel. A short story maybe, but not an almost 300 page novel. Apparently, the author wanted to show the difference between American and Bengali culture through the eyes of this character. But for some reason, the author barely makes a comparison, beyond the obvious reasons like food, family, marriage, and religion. There are some episodes where Gogol and his family go to India, but we get no insight about the culture, the people, or where Gogol's family came from. "The namesake" is the only thing that drives Gogol to think about his past and briefly over his culture. I found "the namesake" to be played out too much. He seems to dislike his name the most because it's inconvenient. Okay, so the name is Russian instead of Indian or American. What other reason does he hate his name? Can it go beyond the inconvenience and origin of the name? Why should we feel sorry for him? I could understand if the name caused conflict in his family back in India, or an even greater conflict in his social life, but all it does is make him dwell on it like some disease. When he changed his name, why did he change it to Nikhil, similar to Nikolai, the first name of the author he despised, the author who carried the origin of his namesake? What difference did it make that his new name is Nikhil instead of Gogol? Why even let this event happen at all if a chapter or two later the narrator is back to calling him Gogol?
  
  Another thing, I never really understood why the author, who had a strong grasp of the plot by letting it focus on a few Bengali characters, suddenly lets the whole plot fall into the most boring route as possible. When Gogol is in his thirties, the author tends to put way too much detail on the insignificant, daily activities and routines of the characters, with no insight at all about their emotions or reactions towards the day. As for Gogl's love affairs, why did they end so quickly with no explanation? Why did that one relationship had to be the main focus on the plot for nearly one or two chapters? Who were these women? What were they like? What were their goals or ambitions? Why did they like Gogol? At times I felt as if Gogol's girlfriends were there for no other reason than for the predictable questions to be asked (does your family want you to marry an Indian woman? what's India like?) and for the obvious situations to arise (Gogol telling his mother about being with an American girl after hiding his "secret" for awhile). If the author wanted to focus on Gogol's love affairs, they could have at least been more exciting, interesting, and adventurous. A little bit of character development wouldn't hurt.
  
  To be honest, I felt like the main flaw of this entire book was the author's style of writing. It's boring. It's not driven. It tends to ramble on tediously, making even the tragic and touching moments of the book very dry and dispassionate. I think another downfall was the author's overabundance of generic detail. We get vivid detail of places, environs, and daily routines that don't add anything to the plot. We get to know what college a character has been to, the degree they pursued, the job or career they earned, and houses they live in and the restaurants they go to, a hint to how much money they make and the upper-class lifestyle they lead. None of this speaks volumes about the heart of the character, let alone does it really say what kind of people they are. This makes the narration the bit more tedious and the plot more lackluster. At that point, it makes Gogol's namesake dilema ridiculous and childish. It's just insecurity, not a cry for help. I don't sympathize with this character because of his name, or because he won't get over it. To me i think the author's intention of making "the namesake" the main theme and focus on the character's life is what made Gogol a very superficial, one-dimensional character.
  
  I think if the author put more focus on Gogol's mother and father, whose lives, for very little we know of it, is far more in depth and interesting than that of Gogol's, this would have been a more exciting read. Maybe the author underlooked the great potential that her minor characters had. Gogol's mother married a man she barely knew, and was swept into a country that she still doesn't understand long after her two children were born, children who know the country more than they know their own. Gogol's father nearly died in a tragic train accident, naming his son after the author of the book that saved his life. How about their Bengali friends in America, who seem to keep their Indian culture and customs intact. How do they do it? How are they raising their children in America? What about Gogol's sister? What's it like for her being an Indian-American female? How does it affect her later in life? All the possibilities were there. So many characters with great stories to tell, many thoughts to be unraveled. Instead, the author just focuses on Gogol's whiney attitude about his namesake and his unexciting love affairs, while letting the other characters fade as if their stories are not important. I think that's such a shame. I was kind of surprised to know that this book is going to be a movie. As I said, if the book focused more on Gogol's family and their Bengali friends, it would have been a more exciting idea for a movie, but since the book focuses on Gogol's boring life and over the top obsession with his namesake, I'm not sure if i would be that interested in watching it on the big screen.
  
  
• Avon Romance with Curry Spices
  By A2PR6NXG0PA3KY on 2008-02-11
  The Namesake begins as a novel of immigration, a familiar genre for obvious reasons in the USA. The first two chapters, describing the dislocation and alienation of the Gangulis upon moving to Cambridge, MA, are relatively poignant and evocative, though the same experiences have been described more memorably in dozens of books. Then the American-born second generation son, Gogol, is introduced, and the rest of the book focuses on his prolonged identity crisis, especially the tension he feels between the expectations of his family and his own desire for assimilation. Again, there's not much new here; the same story has been told with greater realism and more believable individuation of characters by writers from all corners of the planet, including such masterpieces of fiction as "The Bread Givers" by Anzia Yezierska, "Peder Victorious" by Ole Rolvaag, and "Call It Sleep" by Henry Roth, as well as very fine books by more recent writers like Amy Tan, Gus Lee, Julia Alvarez, and more. As a novel of immigration, The Namesake doesn't belong on the same shelf as these. But it doesn't try to. In fact, it changes genres completely around the third chapter, becoming a story of failed love, or rather of serial romatic failures, three humdrum and futile sexual partnerships (one a marriage) all based on mere happenstance of encounter and all ending "not with a bang but a whimper." Honestly, Nikhil Gogol Ganguli is too boringly self-absorbed to be much of a partner, or to be very entertaining to read about. He learns nothing from his wussy love affairs, and in truth there's nothing to learn.
  
  There's nothing especially potent about Jhumpa Lahiri's prose, either. Descriptions are as stale as the dilemmas of life her characters face. Neither Cambridge nor Calcutta is vividly evoked; streets are named, buses are caught, but the imagination slumbers page after page. Likewise, the romantic episodes of Gogol's plodding life are narrated without sensuality. We are told what happens, but we don't feel empathy.
  
  Why, perhaps you want to ask, did I bother to finish The Namesake if I disliked so much? Well, I'm a bit of a compulsive reader, and it was the only novel I had in hand at the time. Also, I began to sense that I'd have to review it by the middle of the book, so I had to finish it in order to be fair. Now I can say, in fairness, that if I were an editor, I wouldn't even consider publishing such mediocrity.
  
  
• The Namesake
  By on 2003-09-12
  I could hardly wait to read this book, given how much I enjoyed Interpreter of Maladies. Unfortunately, it seems as if Ms. Lahiri's talents lie in the short story. As enjoyable as living in Boston and riding on the Green Line while reading about it in her book was, most of this book was flat and tone-less; a short story forced into a novel's big shoes. Being a South-asian American woman myself, most of the events and characters are those out of my own life, but Ms. Lahiri's cultural references (ABCD etc.) are old and tired. This book may appeal to those seeking insight into the South Asian immigrant experience; the rest of the book is choppy and seems patched together with very frail thread.
  My advice to all those who loved Interpreter of Maladies is to not read this book, as it will most likely be a disappointment.
  
  
• Boring Beyond Belief
  By A122P0I1DSPU53 on 2004-06-24
  I can't tell you how much I hated this book or how boring I found it to be. Some of the description was well written, but that was it. There's little character development, no character change, no story tension.

  If you like to read about Indian food, you might like this book, but if you want a well-told story or engaging characters, then look elsewhere. Talk about a book bogging down, this one has no story to bog down. It's as dry and brittle as dead leaves at the end on October but not nearly as pretty.

  I like slower paced novels but I do demand some story and THE NAMESAKE simply had none. It seemed to have been written solely for the sake of name-dropping rather than to tell a tale. I didn't like Lahiri's short stories (INTERPRETER OF MALADIES) but at least they had some substance. This book has none.

  If you want to read good Indian literature, try THE BLUE BEDSPREAD and if you want superlative Indian literature, read anything written by Rohinton Mistry, especially FAMILY MATTERS. Avoid THE NAMESAKE, but if you must read it, then check it out of the library. Don't ever pay for it. Will it stand the test of time? I think not.
  
  

• Simple, Yet Eloquent Novel
  By A1T9MILRRZ00F8 on 2005-05-06
  One of the reviewers of "The Namesake" remarked that it flows so effortlessly that the reader forgets he or she is reading a novel. I had exactly the same experience. "The Namesake" is about an immigrant family from India and their struggles to adapt in America, but more importantly, the novel speaks to relationships and rituals of family, country and love in a manner that is so simple, yet so elegant, controlled and profound. Ms. Lahiri has her detractors who say that nothing happens in this novel; I am reminded of critics of Austen who have said the same thing. However, this novel tells a very believable story that is animated by the author's ability to captivate the reader with unadorned prose that is never false or tentative. I am truly amazed that this is only her second work of fiction. Think of Hemingway or Kent Haruf.
  
  
• Very good first novel
  By A1A2YTFX2XC4O2 on 2006-03-09
  I have just finished "The Namesake" so all my impressions are fresh. As many other readers, I bought this book because I was impressed by Lahiri's short stories. This one, although obviously the author should try to do better with the novel form in future, is remarkable too. The story of Indian immigrant family, typical for second half of the 20th century and, in many ways, matching my own, which just started (scholars moving to the States thanks to their academic achievements and lured by career prospects, sinking into this "melting pot" and becoming a part of it) is emotionally charged so much that sometimes I had tears in my eyes. The parents, Ashima and Ashoke Ganguli, deal with detachment from their families and their world in India by incorporating parts of their old life and tradition into the American everyday reality, surrounding themselves with Bengali friends in the same situation, but their children, born in America, have a much greater problem with their identity. This is common to most of the immigrant children and more or less a generally known truth, but Lahiri describes the feelings of the main protagonist, the firstborn son of the Ganguli family, with extraordinary acuteness. The boy is named Gogol, after his father's favorite Russian writer, but Ashoke gives him this name not only as a tribute to the novelist. It is a memory of an important event in his life, he treats the name as a symbol, a sign. Gogol, however, hates his name and we go with him through the rebellion years, contesting the values of his family, trying the new ways, name change, falling in love with American girls (or more with their lifestyles), slowly and gradually getting to understand, accept and finally appreciate the Indian heritage and his parents (although there are many failures on the way). I was left with a profound feeling of melancholy and thoughtfulness.
  Formally, there are some uncomfortable shortcuts (especially towards the end of the novel) and the plot feels sometimes a bit awkward (I would like to make a more general remark here, namely that the new generation of authors who attended the Creative Writing courses has something in common, as if the rules they learn left on each of them the same mark, difficult to wash away and cover with the personality; it might be expected from beginners but surely must fade away if they do not want to be called beginners any more), but it is an interesting novel. I treat is as somewhat of an appetizer, a promise of the masterpieces yet to come from under Jhumpa Lahiri's pen.
  
  
• "Out of Gogol's overcoat"
  By A3D9VXSUDX8J36 on 2003-09-26
  With her 1999 collection of short stories, INTERPRETER OF MALADIES, Pulitzer-Prize winning writer, Jhumpa Lahiri, proved her talent for storytelling and keen eye for detail. She demonstrates those same abilities again in her poignant first novel, THE NAMESAKE. Lahiri's book follows the thirty-two year journey of its protagonost, Gogol Ganguli, from his birth to Bengali-American parents in 1968, to a transitional moment in his life in 2000, and ultimately to his self-acceptance. Along the way, and always at odds with Indian-American culture, Lahiri's character changes the given name he hates from Gogol to Nikhil, suffers the death of his academic father, studies architecture at Yale and Columbia, marries Moushumi, an American-Bengali woman, and then encounters divorce. The point of Lahiri's compelling novel is not so much about the significance of one's name--"There's no such thing as a perfect name," Gogol recognizes at one point in his life (p. 145)--as it is about attempting to accept, interpret, and comprehend the events in our lives that shape us into who we are (p. 187). Although short in length, Lahiri serves up much food for thought in THE NAMESAKE.

  G. Merritt
  
  

• Did the Author Stop to Think.......At All??
  By AX8LUJY1G2A8R on 2003-10-16
  I did like the Interpreter of Maladies.
  Though not one of my all-time favorites, it certainly had its moments of some splendid literature.

  So what happened in this work of Ms. Lahiri's?

  Utterly boring, completely clichéd and totally a waste of time, this book portrays an aspect of a community, that was real, perhaps, a 100 years ago.

  Biased, prejudiced and mostly incorrect, this book is surviving either on ignorance, or because it feeds greedily from the innumerable stereotypes that have surrounded the Indian Immigrant population for years.
  And, today, through this book, Ms. Lahiri has single-handedly destroyed the years of effort spent by numerous individuals in dispelling the STEREOTYPES surrounding their life-styles.

  She has, through this book, restored those clichés and stereotypes firmly back in place!
  
  

• atmospheric detail but shallow inner lives
  By A1TM48XY94LR9F on 2005-01-02
  I closed this book and exclaimed, "What a disappointment!" Ms. Lahiri's book of short stories was simply outstanding. To give her and "The Namesake" its due, this book is well-written and the characters of Gogol and his parents, Asoke and Ashima, are well-developed, and Ms. Lahiri is great at atmospheric detail. However, the book is like a story without a meaning or a point - that may be OK in short stories but in a novel it should be suicidal. Granted, you needn't write with a meaning or to have a point, but it is sad to see so little inner life and reflection in her characters, especially in Gogol who is 32 years old by the end of the book... He has been through three extended romances and affairs including one failed marriage. The way that he and Moushoumi slip so easily in and out of bed with others, i.e. how they sleep around, I find not to be representative of or a norm in second generation Indian American life. So much sex and never an an unintended pregnancy!... But I return, what is really disappointing is how shallow and superficial the inner life of Gogol is, something I don't feel is representative of people born between two cultures and two worlds...
  
  
• "Namesake" is an exercise in name-dropping
  By A1V4ZPFKWGDE95 on 2003-11-12
  "The Namesake" was a marvelous short story when it appeared recently in the New Yorker. Unfortunately, it should have stayed a short story. As a novel, it simply doesn't work. The first half of the book (which contains much of the material that appeared in the New Yorker) is an interesting and intriguing meditation on the extent to which our names shape our identity. The central character is named Gogol, after the Russian writer, and he grows up to hate his name and all that it represents. As soon as he reaches adulthood, he changes it legally to Nikhil.

  Interestingly, the moment he changes his name he seems to lose all semblance of personality, and so does the book. From that point onwards the narrative becomes a tedious and pretentious exercise in name-dropping--of Ivy League schools, trendy New York eateries and neighborhoods, and expensive foods and wines. There is Asiago cheese and spaghetti alle vongole, Merlot and Chianti, steak rolled in bundles. The narrative meanders aimlessly, interspersed by dull affairs and stock plot devices. Two characters drop dead of sudden heart attacks, and a third of an aneurism. A woman breaks off her engagement by throwing her ring into a traffic jam, and is slapped in return. And it's a minor point, but maybe the book's copy editors were so charmed by Ms. Lahiri's prose that they failed to notice that the hero "wretches" into a tiny metal basin on page 179. I certainly did. I felt like "wretching" myself--with boredom.

  In her collection "Interpreter of Maladies," Jhumpa Lahiri showed tremendous promise as a short story writer. She would do well to stick to her earlier chosen metier in the future, too.
  
  

• Didn't keep my interest
  By A9L1JTFE26GLN on 2004-08-21
  Maybe this book should have been half as long. By the end of the book, I really had no interest in what Gogol was thinking or doing. The initial descriptions of the Ganguli family's struggles to adapt to life in the United States was interesting both between generations and genders. I particularly liked the food adaptions. I felt more sympathy for Gogol's parents and their struggles than for him.
  
  For those readers interested in a book for young people about a young girl and her family from India and her cultural adaption to Iowa, I recommend Blue Jasmine by Kashmira Sheth.
  
  
• Boring.......
  By AWPNMNZ7VQISE on 2004-10-26
  'The Namesake' - a very interesting name for a book. I was intrigued....by the name, more so, because it was about Indians away from India.
  
  I thought the book started off really well. Then, it got boring....too much of negativity in the characters.....some stuff was predictable...but, on the whole I was BORED! Every night as I put the book down, I would wonder 'what point is she trying to make'. With extreme irritation, I got to the end of the book. I think if you read the last chapter, you get the message and you are done!
  
  I must admit that the last chapter is good....she gets her point across. also, a couple of pages along the way are quite nice....but, on the whole...I really did not know what was the point in writing 200 odd pages....
  
  I would say, even if you get this book for free, please do not read it. You can use your time reading many other books....or maybe even catch up on sleep....
  
  
  
• Gogol Finds His Overcoat
  By A1MGQXMP6K3XQN on 2005-07-19
  As a teacher, I often think about the importance of narrative, in our lives, in our playing of classical music, in my own explanations, in literature. There is a power in the story, in the plot, in the narrative, its own lifetime and the vicarious experience it affords us, if we read it, listen to it, play it, live through it.
  
  In The Namesake, by Jhumpa Lahiri, the hero of the story is named Gogol, after the Russian author. Once she named him this, Ms. Lahiri associated herself with a great tradition of literature, of narratives that describe life in their aching compeleteness, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Gogol. In her story, Gogol is a young Indian-American man. She assiduously refuses to give in to the temptation of creating an actual plot (some readers have complained that nothing happened); but that is deliberate, that is the point. As a bard, a Storyteller, Ms. Lahiri has undertaken a much more difficult task than merely entertaining; here she is allowing us to walk along with Gogol, through his marvelous life, unencumbered and unbeholden to a storyline.
  
  We go along with him through his life. We are often his only friend, his stand-in family member. For example, when he is eighteen we go with him to a Massachusetts courthouse to change his name. We are with his parents before he is born, when they are young adults and lost. We watch him conduct his first affair in college and its inevitable end. I love the way the book often telescopes time: we are informed of the end of the affair (and many events through the book) in one sentence. The time intervening, the arguments, the tearing of hair, the loss of sleep, is bypassed. Its absence says yes, this happened, but that's only one small thing in his life, here's more. (Although I must say that if the author were a man, I don't believe he could portray the end of a character's first love with such surgical cleanliness. Perhaps that is just me.)
  
  Then we see Gogol find a tenement apartment in New York, fall in with and in love with the glamorous Waspy woman. He falls in love with more than the woman, but with her family, her, their summer cottage, their breezy, waspy, Middle-American non-nonjudgementalism, their sophisticated conversations about the latest topics dujour and open-minded attitude toward their daughter sleeping with a man outside of marriage in their own home (a townhouse in Chelsea- she lives on the top floor, the parents on the second, they eat and talk on the first floor). Gogol dreads taking her to visit his own family, their nervous comments about driving safely, their eating with mouths "not entirely closed," their humble suburban ranch decorated as such. We realize, slowly, that he is disconnecting from himself, his values, his past. The mastery of Lahiri's storytelling is partly in the fact that she never comes out and parodies the woman's family (this will never be made into a comedy a la MEET THE PARENTS). There is never anything overtly negative about them, except that they are vaguely the sort of urban sophisticate-twits that can be annoying if taken in too large a dose. Instead, one realizes that Gogol is leaving himself in order to become part of her family, leaving his apartment, not answering calls from his family; he is taking a misstep. When they are at the summer cabin, they celebrate Gogol's birthday. The other waspy, affluent and slightly disinterested homeowners join them at the picnic table by the lake. Her family makes a comment about something in Gogol's culture, gets it almost but not quite right, asks Gogol with minimal interest to confirm it, and the listener barely acknowledges. When the dinner is over, they all shuffle back to their own affluent, disconnected existences. Gogol imagines how his birthday would be celebrated with his own family- the countless family friends and cousins and aunties and uncles, all talking and yelling and laughing, most sitting on the floor with paper plates, devouring the feast that his mother would have spent days preparing. They would eat with their hands and chew vociferously, loving the food. They would all ask questions about Gogol and speculate on his life and fortunes. They would be the same crowd that celebrated all of his life events from his very birth. We as readers have already been to these parties, have been warmed by them, made hungry by the food descriptions, been happy for Gogol's mother, who had been lonely as a professor's wife in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
  
  Now we sit at the lake by the cabin, slightly worried for Gogol, wanting to shout to him to Run, Run back to his parents who chew loudly, his father who dresses badly. Though his would be in-laws will die surrounded by the right Toys and having seen the right exhibits, they will also die without having had the same roaring crowds that populated and enriched Gogol's life. But Gogol's family dies sometimes alone and in empty apartments but with the echo of their last party in their ears. We also know this firsthand, being present at his father's death, which happens in a practically vacant apartment that he rents while at another university for a year. Gogol goes to collect his father's remains and belongings, and we accompany him into the plain apartment complex, into the kitchen where the cupboards have only a few items, into the bedroom with just a few sets of clothes, into the living room with only a tv and a chair, etc. He realizes his father had died without comfort or family, in the cold of winter, in fact without his jacket. Here Ms. Lahiri might be alluding to Gogol's The Overcoat, in which the hero ventures into a Moscow winter, loses his coat and dies on the street, alone.
  
  But the phrase "alluded to" sounds so academic, like something one might write into a blue book to get extra points- this is real life, real narrative- she is bringing the father's narrative close to that of the his literary hero, Gogol, and close to the life and narrative of the character Gogol, and to our own lives and narratives. For don't we all rush out into the wild blizzard, alone, really, despite our family's best efforts, and veering here and there, toward and away from ourselves and what is right for us? For the story here is just that, but that cannot be told in a few words, it must be lived through, and to allow the reader to live along with Gogol, a specific story cannot be told, only his life and rushing out into the snow can be told, one misstep after another.
  
  This morning the author of READING LOLITA IN TEHRAN recited an essay on the radio about empathy and the power of literature. She told about her own expulsion from Tehran University for teaching certain forbidden authors, including Mark Twain. She said she had been surprised that her only supporters were two of her graduate students who were hardcore conservatives and who had always debated with her against women's rights and other progressive ideas. When she ran into them later, she asked them why they stood by her. They referred to a scene in HUCKLEBERRY FINN, which they had read in her class, in which Huck lets Jim, the slave free. Huck, she explained in her essay, had been told in Sunday school that he would suffer the fires of damnation if he ever let a slave go free, but after he spent time with Jim, laughed with him, had advnentures with him, he could only see him as a human being, as a friend, and Huck therefore decided he could accept Hell if it meant letting his friend go. These radical fundamentalist students, in the face of pressure from authority, decided that they could also face the fires of their particular afterlife, if it meant standing by their teacher. Her point was sharp and true to its target: that media can report about AIDS patients in Africa, bombs killing innocents in Iraq, or other topical disasters, but literature can "provide the shock of recognition," as in Huck Finn, that can create empathy in the listener or reader.
  
  In the Namesake, Gogol's father rushed into his own blizzard, accepting a post at MIT, leaving behind his culture, bringing his wife to a country that she never quite adopted, hearing about each successive relative's death by phone instead of in person. But he kept his Overcoat, his family, himself, and his favorite author, Gogol, close to him. Only in the literal did he die without his coat. Gogol, the son, is still rushing as we leave him, but he does find his Overcoat, and that's all I will say about the ending. Please read this great work and you will then be able to begin to understand how to play or listen Brahms, if you don't already.
  
  
• The typical life of an immigrant Indian family
  By A2C9BWYYLPDRV0 on 2006-11-06
  After a long time, I have finished reading a book completely. And that too - over a weekend.
  
  I came from India as an immigrant to US 10 years back, have two kids aged 10 and 4; and I could associate myself to many experiences the author has illustrated with simple clarity and authenticiy.
  
  * Coming to US with one suitcase in hand and accumlating lot of stuff over years - only to realize that when you are moving up from an aapartment to an independent house
  
  * Going to beaches fully dressed - while everyone else is in swim suites
  
  * Reluctance to buy from the yard sales
  
  * Kids excited by the salamanders from the yard
  
  * Having two names - one formal and one informal name; one called by the society and another called by the loved ones
  
  * Making trips to India - trying to give an exposure to the kids - once in a year or once in two years; Packing / unpacking of 8 suitcases; Packing of the gifts to the friends and relatives in India;
  
  * Being a lonely family at the beginning; and in a couple of years, make so many friends that you do not get a weekend free to be by yourself
  
  * throwing the parties, get togethers where the grown-ups discuss the life, shopping, politics while the kids play video games
  
  * celebrating all the festivals - both hindu festivals as well as thanksgiving, easter, christmas
  
  * feeling the burden of guilt when near and dear ones pass away back in India and the helplessness of not able to be with them during thier last hours of life
  
  Some of the experiences are hilarious and some make you nostalgic and some are gut wrenching.
  
  Until Gogol (the main character who is born in USA at the beginning of the novel) and Sonia (a few years younger to him) are teenagers, I could connect with all the experiences Ashima and Ahoke have gone through on US soil as immigrants.
  
  The experiences Gogol goes through in his teens and twenties - sometimes appeared to be very unfair to the parents; But that is me (the reader) wearing the hat of a first-generation parent.
  
  While the initial chapters outlining the lives of Ahoke and Ashima are a good read (may be I could connect with their experiences very well), the later chapters of Gogol going through brief flings with a couple of girl friends and a marriage that ends in a divorce - it sounded mundane; i skimmed through some of the pages but did not feel that I missed anything.
  
  Of all these experiences, the common theme that runs through the novel is the NAME of a person and the significance/insignificance a name has on a person. The author reflects and highlights very interesting perspectives on the NAME.
  
  Overall, it is one of the best books I would recommend to my friends and colleagues who would be interested to know how an Indian immigrant family leads the life here in US and what changes 25 years of leading life in US would bring to a traditional Indian family.
  
  

• Interpreter of Maladies
• Unaccustomed Earth
• The Namesake
• The Overcoat and Other Short Stories (Dover Thrift Editions)
• Native Speaker