The Poignant Allure of The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri: Book Review
The overwhelming and intricate style of writing that Jhumpa Lahiri possesses is showcased brilliantly in her debut novel . Her pellucid prose portrays the milieu of Indian Bengali immigrants attempting to carve their own space in America while simultaneously retaining their cultural roots, and steadily holding onto their traditional idiosyncrasies and rituals. The narrative sculpts a palpable storyline as it traces the voyage of a family from one continent to another and the consequential unfamiliarity, disarray, their filial love, and the emotional toll that their journey entails.
The book is a piece of bildungsroman fiction as it deals with the formative years of its protagonist, Gogol Ganguli, who is the son of Indian Bengali immigrant parents, Ashoke and Ashima, in the United States. With an extraordinary ability to weave a bestseller out of the ordinary lives of the characters, Lahiri’s meticulous observational skills are evident. With a svelte delicacy, she recounts the newfound tussles of first-generation Americans, their quest for their identities and, the constant, gnawing feeling of not belonging anywhere, which she aptly describes as a lifelong pregnancy to highlight the sensation of discomfort.
In the mid-1960s, Ashima married Ashoke, dutifully following the custom of arranged marriage in Calcutta, India, and moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts with him where she eventually gave birth to a baby boy. Ashoke was a doctoral candidate pursuing electrical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Ashima’s grandmother had the ceremonial honour of naming their newborn son, however, the elderly lady suffered a stroke, and her letter got lost in the mail. Consequently, the family began to address the baby as Gogol. Ashoke had handpicked the moniker out of his adoration for the Russian writer, Nikolai Gogol. A few years prior to his marriage, Ashoke had encountered a train accident in India while he was reading The Overcoat by Nikolai Gogol. As the authorities came to his rescue, Ashoke waved a tattered page from the book which helped the authorities spot and assist him. Hence, Ashoke revered the Russian author and his works throughout his lifetime. The Gangulis had another child, Gogol’s sister, Sonia.
As Gogol grew into a teenager, he began to question the significance of his name. The name was neither Indian nor American. When he studied the bizarre and eccentric tendencies of the Russian author Gogol in his literature class, he became resentful of his burdensome name and incessantly felt displaced. His unease starkly sheds light upon the plight of immigrants who struggle with their identities and attempt to fit into an unfamiliar socio-cultural milieu. On his fourteenth birthday, Ashoke gifted him a book by Nikolai Gogol which Gogol neglected. His father was on the verge of telling him about the train accident but, decided against it. Gogol’s dissatisfaction with his name transitioned into a rebellion for emancipation as he officially changed his name to Nikhil before going to Yale for higher education. Later in the book, Nikhil’s father narrated the tale of the day on which he had almost died. Nikhil was astonished to learn the significance of the name that was given to him. The book also documents Nikhil’s ephemeral bonds with girlfriends Ruth and Maxine, and his short-lived marriage to Moushumi, a French-literature student and a family friend of his. After Ashoke’s untimely death, at the end of the novel, Nikhil ventured into the literary realm of Nikolai Gogol for the first time, reminiscing about his father.
Lahiri has flawlessly patched the storyline with ardent motes of cultural identity and fleshed out the skeleton of the plot with tangible details that enlivened the novel. The book sews the tale of an expatriate family without succumbing to the banal clichés associated with the genre. Its narrative of identity, rootlessness, love, loss and self-discovery, produces an embellished arc of human emotions that takes the reader on a tumultuous and bittersweet journey of both tears and laughter. The poignant page-turner stays with the reader, indelibly, long after it’s been placed back on the bookshelf.
Originally published at https://www.bookishsanta.com on January 26, 2021.
