One of the quirks I've noticed since I've been living in Nevada is how proud people are of how long their family has been in Nevada. If someone is a third, fourth, or fifth generation Nevadan, that will be one of the first things out of their mouths when they meet you. Growing up in Michigan, I never heard someone proudly call themselves a third-generation Michigander. It never would have occurred to anyone to say. Part of it, I think, is the immigrant culture of the other side of the country. Plenty of people aren't even third-generation Americans.

When I went to school at the University of Michigan, it it felt like all the Indian kids knew each other. They had built-in friends as soon as they walked on campus. Good friends, not the "that girl who graduated a few years ahead of me and we were in the National Honors Society together" friends. Their parents knew each other, they would explain. But I didn't really get it...with some exceptions, I wasn't necessarily close to my parents' friends' kids. And then I read The Namesake, and it clicked.

Jhumpa Lahiri's The Namesake is the story of Indian immigrants and their children in America. It begins when Ashima and Ashoke Ganguli are about to have their first child, recounting a bit of their individual histories in India and how they came to have their marriage arranged. When the boy is born, the pet name his parents give him while waiting for an Indian grandparent to send a letter with his "real name" ends up being recorded on his birth certificate out of confusion. Their child is named Gogol, after a Russian writer who is meaningful to Ashoke. Although his parents eventually settle on Nikhil to be his real name, Gogol sticks until he gets to college. Gogol hates his name, the way it sounds, the way it stamps him as unmistakably "other" in his American life. He changes it legally to Nikhil once he becomes an adult, but it is not quite so easy to deal with the uneasy internal tension between the Indian culture of his parents and the American culture he was raised and lives in, between who he was/is, and who he wants to be.

Although the novel takes turns, illuminating the story briefly through the eyes of Ashima and Ashoke, it mostly follows Gogol/Nikhil as he navigates childhood, college, and his adult relationships (curiously, it never follows his sister Sonia, who remains on the periphery, although it does very briefly follow the woman who becomes Gogol's wife after their marriage). Lahiri's prose is magnificent...it's rich without being flowery, and her words beautifully illustrate the dilemmas the characters face in a way that shows you without telling you. The characters themselves are well-rounded, multi-faceted, and face their entirely normal lives and problems in a way that feels like actual people you might know rather than characters on a page. Lahiri doesn't need to put them through incredible obstacles to show you who they are and why you should care. She just writes them with such humanity that it wouldn't even occur to you not to care. It's a wonderful book and I loved it.

Tell me, blog friends...do people tell you how many generations they've lived there in your state, or is that just a Nevada thing? ( )

Very much enjoyed this book, too. I enjoy her prose. ( )

The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri depicts through the eyes of two generations their struggles to situate themselves in a strange land. Inspired by incidents that occur during a train ride, Ashoke is impelled to emigrate from India in the mid-20th century. He meets and marries Ashima and whisks her away from Calcutta to Boston and his new job. While he is able to continue his intellectual life and career, Ashima strives alone to adjust to the cold weather, the unfamiliar food, the foreign language and the new culture, homesick and with a new baby. Her son Gogol grows up with his own sense of estrangement as he navigates between his parents’ worldview and the one he forges. It’s a compelling read with some unexpected twists. ( )

I could cut this short and leave it to the dry conclusion that this was quite nice and entertaining, nothing more. But of course you expect more from me, and rightly so. Ok, this is primarily a coming of age and family novel, the story of the young Gogol who is finding his way through life, especially struggling with his origins. He is an ABCD, an American Born Confused Deshi, the son of Bengali migrants in the US. Lahiri regularly zooms in on the difficult integration process of his parents (especially his mother), on the prejudices that Gogol himself faces and on his struggle with the specific Indian environment in both the US and in Calcutta. This search for his identity has crystallized around his strange name, 'Gogol', after the famous Russian 19th century author.
These are all ingredients for an interesting story (and apparently also a reasonably successful film). But I must honestly admit that it didn't bother me much. Gogol's personality in particular is not an immediately endearing protagonist, his struggles seem rather artificial, and the whole fuss about his name is rather dragged out. Lahiri also pays quite a bit of attention to the materiality of things, especially food, drinks, clothes, furniture etc. She has clearly aimed at the better-off audience that appreciates such things. Not bad, certainly, but not more than that (at least for me). ( )

The writing is of a very high quality in a technical sense, as an omniscient narrator tells the story of a child born to Bengali immigrants in the USA. Initially the tale of of his parents, the tale switches around over the course of the story from one character to another, some for only a few pages, but the core remains the boy. At first the story of misplacement and loneliness felt by a new immigrant from a vastly different culture is effective, and melded with a parallel story of striving for a life in academia. I found this section very good, and as mentioned, very well written. However, as the story progressed the central character, a self-absorbed, self-pitying, rather lame and boring individual takes over and gets more dull. The boy has various romances, but they are driven by women selecting him, apparently because he is good looking, but as he is so dull it is simply a bit hard to believe. A remnant of his being raised as an immigrant and feeling like an outsider is that he is quite the chameleon and melts into his partner's lives without seemingly contributing much. As this goes on for quite a while I lost my patience for him and the story, but did, for reasons not clear to myself, still stay engaged. The boy’s father is an interesting but underdeveloped character, as is the sister. Racism is completely absent which is somewhat surprising. So, as a story of being an immigrant (in a racism free world) or the child of a new immigrant it has interesting elements, but the central character’s mundaneness dulls the overall experience. ( )