The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

Rating: 5.0

What it's about:
In The Namesake, Lahiri enriches the themes that made her collection an international bestseller: the immigrant experience, the clash of cultures, the conflicts of assimilation, and, most poignantly, the tangled ties between generations. Here again Lahiri displays her deft touch for the perfect detail -- the fleeting moment, the turn of phrase -- that opens whole worlds of emotion. The Namesake takes the Ganguli family from their tradition-bound life in Calcutta through their fraught transformation into Americans. On the heels of their arranged marriage, Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli settle together in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

An engineer by training, Ashoke adapts far less warily than his wife, who resists all things American and pines for her family. When their son is born, the task of naming him betrays the vexed results of bringing old ways to the new world. Named for a Russian writer by his Indian parents in memory of a catastrophe years before, Gogol Ganguli knows only that he suffers the burden of his heritage as well as his odd, antic name. Lahiri brings great empathy to Gogol as he stumbles along a first-generation path strewn with conflicting loyalties, comic detours, and wrenching love affairs. With penetrating insight, she reveals not only the defining power of the names and expectations bestowed upon us by our parents, but also the means by which we slowly, sometimes painfully, come to define ourselves. The New York Times has praised Lahiri as "a writer of uncommon elegance and poise." The Namesake is a fine-tuned, intimate, and deeply felt novel of identity. -taken from Barnes&Noble.com

My thoughts:

The Namesake is a beautiful book about what it means to find your own place in the world. Gogul is born in America from parents who immigrated from India. This book is about the struggles of Gogul's parents in trying to be part of America while hanging on to their cultural roots. It's about Gogul's struggles growing up a little different than other kids. The Namesake starts in 1968 and follows the lives of Gogul and his family up until the year 2000. The book is sometimes sad and sometime humorous as we watch Gogul grow up and we see the different relationships that come and go in his life. It's interesting to read about the cultural differences between India and America and the Ganguli family's attempts to adjust. At first we see Gogul try to shake off his Bengali heritage but by the end of the book I think he learns to accept who he is. The Namesake is an impressive story full of emotion by a great author not to be missed!