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He resents his name more and more, as it seems to epitomize how he doesn't fit in anywhere. I won't give anything away here, but I'll say that each relationship, in its way, teaches Gogol something about himself and encourages him to look within to find and articulate his personal truths about being a young man torn between two worlds. On his fourteenth birthday, Gogol receives a gift from his father: a beautifully bound volume of Nikolai Gogol's short stories. The book is bittersweet and poignant and speaks, simultaneously, of hope and regret, of life's beauty and its injustices.It's worth noting, too, that Ashoke's favorite story, "The Overcoat", is about a humble clerk who dies of fright after being upbraided by an Important Person, only to get his revenge in the afterlife. And oh yeah - like Gogol, I have an odd name (though I like mine).The story starts when Gogol's parents, Ashoke and Ashima, emigrate from Calcutta to America and settle in Cambridge, Massachusetts, so Ashoke can study engineering at MIT. Here we have a novel that illustrates the power of fiction to deeply touch the heart. I, an East Tennessee gal, identified so strongly with Lahiri's protagonist, Gogol Ganguli, a second-generation Bengali guy, that by book's end, I was a soppy, teary mess.An interesting thing about this book for me was that I'm right around Gogol's age. And for years, Ashoke has been haunted by the memory of a terrible train accident that nearly took his life.
And as he grows up, his pet name, Gogol - and its oddness - becomes a symbol for his being part of one culture (India - his parents') and part of another (America) but not wholly in either one. It is these truths that form the raw material of his hopes for his future.The Namesake is a beautifully written novel - the characters, particularly Gogol and his father - formed themselves in my mind like memories of people I've known. And when he grows up, he legally changes his name to Nikhil.Gogol's struggles between American culture and Indian culture is personified, in his adulthood, by two women. Keep that in mind as you read this wonderful book - it's a subtle but evocative metaphor that's a central thread throughout. The second, like Gogol, is a second-generation Bengali - their parents are friends, and they'd grown up together. With him on the train, he'd carried a book of short stories by the Russian writer, Nikolai Gogol, and it was a page of Ashoke's favorite story, "The Overcoat," that he was clutching when he was rescued.Ashoke and Ashima had planned to give their son a name that Ashima's grandmother promised to recommend, but since they need a name to put on his birth certificate, Ashoke decides to call him Gogol, after his favorite writer. The first is a woman from Manhattan who attracts him because she and her wealthy, cosmopolitan family are so different from his parents. So much about his growing-up years was familiar from my childhood, from Rubik's Cube to the TV shows that were widely shown at the time.
Young Gogol, however, isn't impressed: he's more interested in the Beatles, so he shelves the book and forgets about it. It's when Ashoke sees his son for the first time that his haunting memories of the train accident begin to ease their grip on his mind.Ashima's grandmother has a stroke, and Gogol never gets his "good" name. Soon thereafter, Gogol is born.When Ashoke and Ashima arrive in America, they must get to know each other while they're getting to know their new country, for theirs was an arranged marriage. Gogol will be his pet name, and he'll get his "good" name when the grandmother's recommendation arrives.
The story itself is not all that involved - it is the characters that make you want to read on into the night. You feel you know these people, inside and out, their passions, their fears, their desires. I had put off reading The Namesake as nothing about the story or characters really grabbed me; however, once I started I could barely put it down. The characters are so very rich, so beautifully detailed.
but I would recommend it especially if you like to learn about cultures and attitudes. This was a nice book I got a little frustrated with the character but it was probably a cultural thing.
The film adaptation is not half bad, but I really recommend reading this novel if you have even the slightest inclination to do so. I am a voracious reader and this book honestly drew me in faster than almost any other book. I fell in love with all of the characters and was deeply touched by it.
I'll also agree the book is a bit yuppified. I think to add more information about him would distract from the themes and interactions the author was trying to get at. That doesn't hurt the book for me though.
It wasn't a page-turner -- there's no compelling plot to drive the reader forward, but it was beautifully written, and satisfying. and I'll agree with some of the negative reviews. I really enjoyed this book.
The main character is a bit of a cipher -- he is interesting for his name and his crisis of identity, but little else. But it all seems so normal to me, I guess, because this is a milieu I'm familiar with -- indeed, my life has been lived very much in the worlds that the book's characters, and the author, live. Sometimes you don't want a book you can't tear yourself away from, sometimes you just want something that's a pleasant read while you're waiting for the subway.
I always come to Amazon to read the reviews after I finish a book (it's kind of like an instant book club).
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