The Namesake

Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake tells the story of the Ganguli's, a Bengali couple who emigrate from India and have two children. Their son, Gogol, is named for the novelist, and the book is named for him. Lahiri, herself born in London and raised in America to Bengali parents, insightfully treats the experience of moving to a new country, as well as the experience of being the child of immigrants. She is persuasive in her portrayal of family relations that are not those of the democratic age. She makes the Bengali traditions comprehensible and brings to life the complicated position of their children, born in America, to both their American and Bengali identities. Lahiri's writing is straightforward and without flourish; it is absorbing and socially observant.

While Lahiri lets Gogol's mother and father tell their stories at the beginning and the end, the novel focuses on Gogol. We see him as a child, we see him going through college for architecture, we see his relationships with women. His relationships originate in rebellion against Bengali culture and expectations. This rebellion is articulated in Gogol's own struggle with his name, which his father gave to him. Gogol resents the strangeness of his name and so changes it to Nikhil. It isn't till much later that he understands why his father has chosen this name and begins to read Gogol himself. At the end of the novel, Lahiri switches from calling him Nikhil, as he wishes, and begins to call him Gogol again as he finds his role in his family.

This book is incredibly important--what is more American and more democratic than mobility? Gogol's situation both gives the reader another perspective and resonates with the reader's own experience in struggling among different identities.


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