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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9780618485222
ISBN number: 0618485228
Label: Mariner Books
Manufacturer: Mariner Books
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 304
Printing Date: September 01, 2004
Publishing house: Mariner Books
Sale Popularity Level: 2147
Studio: Mariner Books
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
Jhumpa Lahiri's debut story collection, Interpreter of Maladies, took the literary world by storm when it won the Pulitzer Prize in 2000. Fans who flocked to her stories will be captivated by her best-selling very first novel, now in paperback for the very first time. The Namesake is a finely wrought, deeply moving family drama that illuminates this acclaimed author's signature themes: the immigrant experience, the clash of cultures, the tangled ties between generations.
The Namesake takes the Ganguli family from their tradition-bound life in Calcutta through their fraught transformation into Americans. On the heels of an arranged wedding, Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli settle in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Ashoke does his best to adapt while his wife pines for home. When their son, Gogol, is born, the task of naming him betrays their hope of respecting old ways in a new world. And we watch as Gogol stumbles along the first-generation path, strewn with conflicting loyalties, comic detours, and wrenching love affairs.
With empathy and penetrating insight, Lahiri explores the expectations bestowed on us by our parents and the means by which we come to define who we are.
Amazon.com Review:
Any talk of The Namesake--Jhumpa Lahiri's follow-up to her Pulitzer Prize-winning debut, Interpreter of Maladies--must begin with a name: Gogol Ganguli. Born to an Indian academic and his wife, Gogol is afflicted from birth with a name that is neither Indian nor American nor even really a very first name at all. He is given the name by his father who, before he came to America to study at MIT, was almost killed in a train wreck in India. Rescuers caught sight of the volume of Nikolai Gogol's short stories that he held, and hauled him from the train. Ashoke gives his American-born son the name as a kind of placeholder, and the awkward thing sticks.
Awkwardness is Gogol's birthright. He grows up a bright American boy, goes to Yale, has pretty girlfriends, becomes a successful architect, but like many second-generation immigrants, he can never quite find his place in the world. There's a lovely section where he dates a wealthy, cultured young Manhattan woman who lives with her charming parents. They fold Gogol into their easy, elegant life, but even here he can find no peace and he breaks off the relationship. His mother finally sets him up on a blind date with the daughter of a Bengali friend, and Gogol thinks he has found his match. Moushumi, like Gogol, is at odds with the Indian-American world she inhabits. She has found, however, a circuitous escape: 'At Brown, her rebellion had been academic ... she'd pursued a double major in French. Immersing herself in a third language, a third culture, had been her refuge--she approached French, unlike things American or Indian, without guilt, or misgiving, or expectation of any kind.' Lahiri documents these quiet rebellions and random longings with great sensitivity. There's no cleverness or showing-off in The Namesake, just beautifully confident storytelling. Gogol's story is neither comedy nor tragedy; it's simply that ordinary, hard-to-get-down-on-paper commodity: real life. --Claire Dederer
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers -
The Namesake, the very first novel by Jhumpa Lahiri, is written
in a deceptively simple style. It is a very well crafter novel that
both explores the role of Indians in America, and tells the
story of a family over several decades.
Unfortunately, I have to say that I was somewhat disappointed
by the novel. Lahiri's collection of stories, "The Interpreter
of Maladies" had a much larger impact on me. A version of "The Namesake"
also appeared as a short story in The New Yorker, and I liked that
version far better. I agree that Lahiri is among the best writers in
the US currently, but short stories are her definite strength.
Rated by buyers 
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Jhumpa Lahiri writes about a very interesting and commonly neglected new American phenomenon: the rise of the Indian-American middle class.
This book is about cultures, values, life and death, love and misery. It is about America. It is about India. It is also universal.
Lahiri writes with style and elegance. Despite the verbose, I was engaged on the story and how it unfolded. "Namesake" is a great reading.
Rated by buyers 
-
Friends say that I should have read "Interpreter of Maladies" first, since this book isn't a reflection of the author's real talent. Unfortunately, I was so disappointed by this book that it will take quite a nudge to get me to read her earlier books.
This book is boring, prose uninspired and characters one dimensional. What did I learn about the characters? Only Gogol's parents were half-way interesting and all we get about them is present tense, descriptive reporting on their past and current lives. Even family death in this book reads like a newspaper report. The excrutiating detail of quotidian trivialites and what seemed like product placement forced me to skim paragraph after paragraph for the few existing, relevent bits of information from which to glean anything to make me care. As an immigrant's tale of living between two cultures it's been done many times better, many times before. Non-plot driven books don't have to be boring and I don't require an exciting page turner as long as there is some depth and talent in the writing. The author inserts "knowing" bits of local (mostly geographical) data about Boston, Calcutta, Yale and New York throughout the book, I'm not sure why. To prove she's been there? She utterly failed at evoking the torn "between-two-worlds" of her characters, and her descriptions of their physical surroundings can be found in any tour book or popular culture magazine advertisement.
Rated by buyers -
I read this book because my daughter's freshman college class was asked to read it, so I knew it must be something pretty special. It's not a book I would have been likely to pick up otherwise.
Though my grandfather was a very first generation Italian, I think the book was so unique to me because I knew very little about the Indian culture.
It was a beautifully told story and portrayed well the tension that a very first generation American feels, wanting to fit in and sometimes ashamed of his parents' eccentricities, yet grateful for the sacrifices they've made to provide for their children.
Worth the read!
Rated by buyers -
Being a great fan of Lahiri's short fiction, for example, A Temporary Matter, I found none of that complexity in this novel. There is no plot in terms of conflict or dilemma -- the biggest mover of the book is time passing. While the parents' experience at assimilation was interesting, their nostalgia for India very sympathetic, the children were flat characters. Gogol's most compelling conflict is if he'll dump his family for his girlfriend's idealized WASP family (painted in the label-conscious colors of a Ralph Lauren ad). It was fascinating to learn along with Gogol that one simply doesn't use parmesan cheese on seafood pasta, but if one is looking for serious literary complexity and heart, find nourishment elsewhere.
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