Back on Saturday I finished reading “The Namesake” by Jhumpa Lahiri. This was her debut novel, and second publication after the Pulitzer Prize winning short story collection “Interpreter of Maladies”, which I read and REVIEWED back in April.
When I had read the description at the time that Amazon.Com had about the book, I was intrigued. It was before I had read “Interpreter of Maladies”. For some reason I saw a lot of humor coming from this, but in fact was not the case. Not that it’s a melancholy story either. Like in Claire Dederer’s review, which is listed as one description of the book, Lahiri pulls the reader through Gogol’s life with a real sensitivity and there is a lot of life to it. Here is part of her review to give a synopsis without giving much away:
Any talk of “The Namesake” … 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 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.
The last line is more of what the book is about. And not only Gogol’s struggle, but his whole family, especially his mother. She never quite feels that America is her home, yet over the years realizes that she is holding onto it tightly.
In many respects I saw through (meaning missed) some of what is being told through this story. It just turned out to be a good story to me. Not great, but I didn’t want to stop reading. Continually Gogol’s life, and his family’s life, is changing. There are many potholes in the road. And quite possibly the allure of this is seeing through so many years of their lives. Gogol is not born when the story begins. It begins with his parents meeting to his birth, then follows chronologically through the first 31 years of his life.
Another thing that probably made this story as good as it was, even though it had no big mysteries, no turning point thriller moments, was the realism. Sometimes you react to things in ways that you don’t want to. Sometimes you are not sure what you should do. Sometimes you just want to crawl in a hole and be left alone for a few years. Sometimes you get involved with someone and it consumes all of yourself. Sometimes you don’t realize how fast time is slipping away. All of these are things that Gogol encounters. It gives you a chance to look at things from anther perspective.
Again, not the most exciting of reads, but a good read nonetheless.
[Additional Note:] There has been a movie based on the book filmed. Not sure when it will be released. Kal Penn of “Harry and Kumar Go To White Castle” fame will be playing Gogol. I think it will translate well on the big screen.
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