Bibliofreakblog

The Namesake by Jumpa Lahiri

Once again, my mind has been blown by Jumpa Lahiri’s ability to capture parent-loss.  Though it’s not the focus of the story, deaths of parents, both in America and India play important parts.

However, I can’t go into too much detail without giving away more than that on this point.  

So, onward with the rest of the review!  Ashoke and Ashima move to the U.S. in the late 1960’s shortly after their (mostly) arranged marriage.  Ashoke is teaching at MIT, but Ashima, without a job of her own, is bored and lonely during the day.  Soon that changes as they meet more Bengali Indians and the birth of their first child.  

Bengalis have a tradition of giving their children two names: a “good” name, which is used in school and their professional lives, and a pet name, used by family and close friends.  I actually sort of remember this tradition from high school.  My friend Tania, whose parents came from the other side of the Indian border, in Bangladesh–which, despite a religious difference share much of the culture (including the language) of Bengal, was called Tina by her family.  When I asked her about it once, she just shrugged and say that they call her Tina (and actually, I have no idea if it is spelled this way) and that was all.  

But while my friend Tania consented to use her “good” name at school (and on Facebook, for that matter), Ashoke and Ashima’s son will not.  Because they have called him Gogol all his life, he wants to remain Gogol, rather than Nikil.

By the time Gogol’s sister is born, Ashoke and Ashima dispense with the double names all together.

The weird thing is that Gogol is not a Bengali name.  He is named after Nikolai Gogol, the Russian author, who has a significant meaning for Ashoke.  As Gogol gets older, he resists his name, and, oddly enough, has it legally changed to Nikil (usually the “good” name would have been on the birth certificate, but due to various happenstances, it was not).  

Throughout the book, this name business is a metaphor for Gogol’s struggle with his dual identity, as a Bengali and as an American.  

And most of all, it’s written in Lahiri beautiful style, which seems to come so naturally to her.

 
Buy The Namesake on Amazon 

If you like this book/author, you might like:

(my reviews in blue)

The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai
White Teeth by Zadie Smith
Brick Lane by Monica Ali 
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
Native Speaker by Chang-Rae Lee 
American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford 
How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez
Funny in Farsi: A Memoir of Growing Up Iranian in America by Firoozeh Dumas
Dreaming In Cuban by Christina Garcia
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
A Good Indian Wife by Anne Cherian 
Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy 

Other works by Jumpa Lahiri:

Unaccustomed Earth
Interpreter of Maladies