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The Namesake - Jhumpa Lahiri
The Namesake
by: (author)
3.50 40
The Namesake follows the Ganguli family through its journey from Calcutta to Cambridge to the Boston suburbs. Ashima and Ashoke Ganguli arrive in America at the end of the 1960s, shortly after their arranged marriage in Calcutta, in order for Ashoke to finish his engineering degree at MIT. ... show more
The Namesake follows the Ganguli family through its journey from Calcutta to Cambridge to the Boston suburbs. Ashima and Ashoke Ganguli arrive in America at the end of the 1960s, shortly after their arranged marriage in Calcutta, in order for Ashoke to finish his engineering degree at MIT. Ashoke is forward-thinking, ready to enter into American culture if not fully at least with an open mind. His young bride is far less malleable. Isolated, desperately missing her large family back in India, she will never be at peace with this new world.Soon after they arrive in Cambridge, their first child is born, a boy. According to Indian custom, the child will be given two names: an official name, to be bestowed by the great-grandmother, and a pet name to be used only by family. But the letter from India with the child's official name never arrives, and so the baby's parents decide on a pet name to use for the time being. Ashoke chooses a name that has particular significance for him: on a train trip back in India several years earlier, he had been reading a short story collection by one of his most beloved Russian writers, Nikolai Gogol, when the train derailed in the middle of the night, killing almost all the sleeping passengers onboard. Ashoke had stayed awake to read his Gogol, and he believes the book saved his life. His child will be known, then, as Gogol.Lahiri brings her enormous powers of description to her first novel, infusing scene after scene with profound emotional depth. Condensed and controlled, The Namesake covers three decades and crosses continents, all the while zooming in at very precise moments on telling detail, sensory richness, and fine nuances of character.
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Format: paperback
ISBN: 9780006551805 (0006551807)
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Pages no: 291
Edition language: English
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Community Reviews
Feminism in Cold Storage
Feminism in Cold Storage rated it
0.0 The Namesake
This is a great story. It provides a compelling answer to the 400 year old question, "What's in a Name?" I had initially struggled with whether to make this a 3 or 4 star read but I realized that for as much as my own experience made the story not new for me, sitting down to write the review and see...
Bücher, Bücher, 100000 Bücher
Bücher, Bücher, 100000 Bücher rated it
2.0 The Namesake
1.5 stars. I didn't want to give it the same rating as the CC books but I was still bored as hell.
Nicole Reads
Nicole Reads rated it
3.0 [REVIEW] The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
Lovely prose by Ms. Lahiri. She had me connect with the characters, even the ones I really wanted to hate.I had a problem with The Namesake, I just don't know exactly what it was. Perhaps it was the nonexistent plot or the fact that the story was more bitter than sweet. It could be that I felt the n...
sarah
sarah rated it
2.0 Jhumpa Lahiri: The Namesake
Lahiri is a talented writer, and her prose is smooth and readable without being oversimple. But this story was just uninteresting to me. Specifically, I didn't feel connected enough to Gogol, the main character, to really care what happened to him, and after a while the book became a chore and I see...
Lisa (Harmony)
Lisa (Harmony) rated it
2.0 The Namesake: A Novel
OK, just when did the present tense take over literary fiction? Because I want to know--it seems omnipresent these days. It's a cheap way, I guess, of imbuing a narrative with lyricism, but truly, it's wearing out its welcome with me--and is all the more noticeable and annoying when a book doesn't h...
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