Perhaps, with a bit of editing, she could have removed the intrusion of Nikolai Gogol into her story completely. Lahiri was writing for a topic assigned in a creative writing class. It seems a device, a distraction, and has really very little to do with the tale being told, as if Ms. My main criticism of the story is the forced way in which the protagonist's name is used.

The reader often seems to drop syllables from certain words, but that is really just a minor defect. At times it seemed that I was listening to a story being read in the children's room at the public library.

For me, the story's locale brought back many personal memories, and so for that reason, I enjoyed the book more than I would have otherwise. If it weren't for the fact that I lived and worked in Cambridge during the time in which this novel is set, I would have only given the book two stars. Condensed and controlled, The Namesake covers three decades and crosses continents, all the while zooming in at very precise moments on telling detail, sensory richness, and fine nuances of character. Lahiri brings her enormous powers of description to her first novel, infusing scene after scene with profound emotional depth.

Ashoke had stayed awake to read his Gogol, and he believes the book saved his life. Ashoke chooses a name that has particular significance for him: on a train trip back in India several years earlier, he had been reading a short story collection by one of his most beloved Russian writers, Nikolai Gogol, when the train derailed in the middle of the night, killing almost all the sleeping passengers onboard. But the letter from India with the child's official name never arrives, and so the baby's parents decide on a pet name to use for the time being. According to Indian custom, the child will be given two names: an official name, to be bestowed by the great-grandmother, and a pet name to be used only by family. Soon after they arrive in Cambridge, their first child is born, a boy. Isolated, desperately missing her large family back in India, she will never be at peace with this new world. Ashoke is forward-thinking, ready to enter into American culture if not fully at least with an open mind. Ashima and Ashoke Ganguli arrive in America at the end of the 1960s, shortly after their arranged marriage in Calcutta, in order for Ashoke to finish his engineering degree at MIT. The Namesake follows the Ganguli family through its journey from Calcutta to Cambridge to the Boston suburbs.

Jhumpa lahiri's novel the namesake