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Namesake
Jhumpa Lahiri. Houghton Mifflin: 2004 (paperback). ISBN: 0618485228. 304 pages.
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"Short stories don't sell." That's what they say, at least in terms of the general reading public. And unfortunately, in the eyes of the publishing industry, it's the general public (and what they'll shell out twelve to twenty-five bucks for) that counts. No to harsh on the publishers, because after all it's not their fault that we live in a completely consumer-driven society. A couple of years ago, however, a little book of short stories put a significant dent in that marketing theory, when Jhumpa Lahiri's collection Interpreter of Maladies won both the Pulitzer Prize and the rabid adoration of millions of readers worldwide. Now Lahiri follows up with her first novel, and you'll be glad to know she shows nothing but ever-increasing promise and talent. In The Namesake, Lahiri continues to explore and enrich the themes that made her collection an international favorite: "the immigrant experience, the clash of cultures, the conflicts of assimilation, and most poignantly, the tangled ties between generations." That's according to the book-jacket copy, but we couldn't have said it better ourselves.
Following their approved and arranged marriage in Calcutta, Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli settle together in Cambridge, Massachusetts. When their first child, a son, is born in an American hospital, the choice of a name for the boy betrays the mixed blessings of trying to honor the old ways in an utterly strange new world. Ashima's grandmother has named the children of her family for generations, but when her letter is lost in the mail, Ashoke Ganguli decides to name his son for his favorite Russian writer. Gogol Ganguli knows nothing of the tragedy nor the redemption that has shaped his father's life. All he knows is that his name is neither American nor Indian, which doesn't help his continuing struggle to navigate the conflicting cultures by which he's trying to define his identity. In search of his real name, his true identity, Gogol struggles along a first-generation American path cluttered with divisive loyalties, darkly comic pitfalls, and soul-shaking love affairs-unfortunately for Gogol, as a literary character, he can't take comfort in that we the readers will be rooting for him every inch of the way. Oh, and by the way, if you're wondering if Jhumpa Lahiri is still as "it's just not fair" beautiful as she looked in her Interpreter of Maladies author photo, we must warn you that she seems to have gotten even more breathtaking in the past couple of years.
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