new york times book review namesake

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Book Review

• Adrienne Young
• Adventure , Coming-of-Age , Fantasy

Readability Age Range

• 12 to 18 years old
• Wednesday Books
• New York Times bestselling author

Year Published

Namesake follows up on the story of Fable (that began in the book of the same name ),the 17-year-old daughter of the most powerful trader in the Narrows. Fable has just found her way to freedom from her powerful father’s entanglements. She’s found a new ship, a new crew, a new love. But all that is short-lived when she’s soon kidnapped and becomes a pawn in a notorious thug’s scheme. And she must figure out how to get it all back.

Plot Summary

In the first book of this series, Fable , the story’s fiery-haired protagonist, had a lot to overcome. At 13, she had been abandoned on a horrible little island by her sea-trader father and left to fend for herself. And with hard work and determination she did just that. While fighting off thieves and cutthroats, she scrabbled her way to a berth on a ship called the Marigold.

Fable had somehow found a ship, a crew and a first love. And at the same time, she was finally able to disentangle herself from the long-reaching tentacles of her father, Saint, the most powerful and heartless trader in the Narrows.

But now, just as Fable has finally gotten a glimpse of true freedom and true love with a wonderful man named West, it’s all snatched away once more. She soon kidnapped by the thuggish Captain Zola, her father’s staunchest rival in the Narrows. She knows that she’s the cheese in some twisted mouse trap that Zola is scheming.

As the days pass and she gains information, however, Fable realizes that there’s so much more than just a rivalry with Saint in play with Zola’s conniving ploy. There are things about her beloved West that she never knew. Secrets of her deceased mother are in the mix, too. There are even ties to a powerful person named Holland, the greatest and most calculating gem trader in all of the port cities. And in some yet unknown way, everything leads back to her: a young nobody who owns, quite literally, nothing.

Fable is still in the dark, but one thing is sure: She needs to be listening carefully, thinking quickly and using whatever meager skills at her command to start making her own moves on the chessboard of happenings around her. Fable may not have a close relationship—or any relationship—with her powerful and brilliant father. But she’ll have to call upon every ounce of savvy she’s inherited from him to beat every one of these sea-going schemers at their own game.

Christian Beliefs

Other belief systems.

In this fantasy world, some sailors still believe in mythological creatures. But we see very little of that in this book. In fact, Fable’s sense of her mother’s spirit in one deep sea area—a sensation that is later determined to have been caused by something completely different—is the only real spiritual reference made.

Authority Roles

Fable’s hard-edged father is back and a bit more approachable this time. In fact, he and Fable find some common ground and even take steps to sacrifice for each other as they slowly rebuild something closer to what we might describe as a relationship. Fable’s mother, Isolde, is a key to this shift. As her secrets are revealed, Fable begins to more clearly understand the twisted world she’s a part of and why some decisions were made.

We find out that West, Fable’s love interest, is much more like Fable’s father than she ever realized. He’s kinder in some ways, but he’s also made deadly and far-less laudable choices that he fears will drive her away from him.

[ Spoiler Warning ] We eventually learn that the incredibly wealthy and powerful Holland is Fable’s grandmother whom she’d never met or known about. And she is a deviously calculating, powerful individual who’s used to snuffing out the life of anyone who gets in her way. She eventually offers to make Fable her heir, but only on her terms. And even when Fable is willing to walk away from all that wealth, Holland still manipulates the situation to her own benefit.

Profanity & Violence

A handful of profanities include the s-word as well as “b–tard,” “h—” and “a–.”

People drink the beer-like beverage Rye on occasion and in some cases get tipsy from it. A sparkling wine called Cava is consumed at a high society gathering.

The world of the Narrows is a dark and violent place. And this time around, we also visit the high-port city of Bastian—a much more cultured and polished metropolis that still masks its own deadliness.

A man is pulled out of a room and killed. We read about a small amount of blood trickling under a closed door. Fable watches as someone in a hammock above her is knifed and then carried up-deck to be thrown overboard. Fable also gets attacked by someone and nearly drowns underwater. The man rakes her leg across sharp coral while trying to strangle her. In another scene several people nearly drown when getting caught in the water during a quickly rising storm. Fable breaks the bones in another woman’s hand and then holds a knife on her.

West reveals his violent past to Fable. He tells her that as a 14-year-old, he strangled a man to death to protect his family. We’re also told that West hurt or killed people while in Saint’s service. And we hear of him attacking and setting fire to ships as he tries to rescue the kidnapped Fable. Throughout this high-seas adventure, a constant sense of peril hangs in the air around the various seaports.

Fable is manhandled and abused (though never sexually). At the very beginning of the story, she’s roughed up and knocked out by several men in a dark alley; she wakes bound with ropes to a masthead.

Sexual Content

Two of the male crewmates onboard the Marigold are a couple. They kiss once. This tale, however, is very much Fable’s romance, as well as an adventure. In the previous book, Fabel and twentysomething West became lovers. And during their earlier separation here, she thinks back on his scent and the feel of his skin. Upon reuniting, the pair embrace and kiss several times. And there is one lovemaking scene that lightly describes their nuzzling caresses. For the most part, though, the novel doesn’t look closely at any sexual interactions.

Discussion Topics

Get free discussion questions for other books at FocusOnTheFamily.com/discuss-books .

What do you think this story is saying about family? Which people in Fable’s life could actually claim that title? Fable is an older teen, but she’s still a teen. What did you think about her romance with the older West? What if the same kind of feelings popped up in your life, how would you handle them?

What lines did Fable cross that you might not? What do you think this book is saying about working through the scars and great losses in our lives? Do you think you could have done all Fable had to do?

Additional Comments

Like the first book in the series, Namesake is an immersive adventure with a likeable female lead. And it could easily be seen as a tale of female empowerment and intelligence working in a fictional world filled with the uber-powerful and the powerless. At the same time, Namesake ’s world is often dangerous and lawless. And the emotional choices made here, while fictional, aren’t always as morally well founded as some parents might want to promote or support. Fable is still a teen, but she’s making very adult decisions in every aspect of her life, including the area of her sexuality.

You can request a review of a title you can’t find at [email protected] .

Book reviews cover the content, themes and worldviews of fiction books, not necessarily their literary merit, and equip parents to decide whether a book is appropriate for their children. The inclusion of a book’s review does not constitute an endorsement by Focus on the Family.

Review by Bob Hoose

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Book Review: Namesake by Adrienne Young

Trader. Fighter. Survivor.

With the Marigold ship free of her father, Fable and its crew were set to start over. That freedom is short-lived when she becomes a pawn in a notorious thug’s scheme. In order to get to her intended destination she must help him to secure a partnership with Holland, a powerful gem trader who is more than she seems.

As Fable descends deeper into a world of betrayal and deception she learns that her mother was keeping secrets, and those secrets are now putting the people Fable cares about in danger. If Fable is going to save them then she must risk everything, including the boy she loves and the home she has finally found.

Filled with action, emotion, and lyrical writing,  New York Times  bestselling author Adrienne Young returns with  Namesake , the final book in the captivating Fable duology.

Title:  Namesake Author: Adrienne Young Genre:  YA Fantasy Format:  Digital ARC Publisher:  Wednesday Books Date Published: March 16th, 2021 Rating: 4//5 Owls

I’m a huge fan of Adrienne Young’s books, but in my opinion she struggles a bit with sequels. Technically a companion sequel, but The Girl the Sea Gave Back, although a good book, wasn’t nearly as good as Sky In The Deep. I absolutely loved Fable, but to me Namesake falls just a little short of its predecessor.

Namesake picks up right where Fable ended, and we’re immediately thrown back into Fable’s journey. Fable has just been captured by Zola, and has no idea what he wants from her, and to make things worse – her fathers first mate, his confidant, Clove, is by his side.

I loved seeing more of these characters and other characters that were only briefly mentioned/seen in Fable. In addition to more of Zola and Clove, we got Holland, Ryland, and Koy. I loved seeing these characters get more development and more screen time (what is the literary equivalent of screen time? page time?) and trying to figure out their morals and what side they’re on.

One thing I did not like with the introduction of all these characters – we got a lot less of the crew of The Marigold and Fable’s found family. They had a lot more issues in this book, and it was disappointing to see them never get resolved properly. They were separated for so much of the novel, and I just wanted more of them together. Funnily enough, on that same thought, one of my least favorite things about this story was how much it did focus on relationships. Fable’s relationships with Clove, Saint, West, Koy, and Holland were the main focus of the novel. There wasn’t nearly as much plot or moving forward, the dynamic shifted from “trying to reunite with Saint/Control the Narrows/etc” to more of a character driven story and Fable finding her place amongst the chaos surrounding her.

There was SOME plot with these new characters, and the search for Midnight, but these things did seem to fall in the background a little from the character development. I would have loved to see more action in this world. Although, the search for Midnight and the various people that wanted it was wonderfully paced and exciting to read. (I’m really trying not to spoil things in this review, its proving a bit tricky!)

Speaking of the world however, Adrienne Young did a phenomenal job with world building, and I loved every moment of seeing the place she created. As the area that we get to see expanded, Young wrote it in such a beautiful and descriptive way that I truly felt like I understood this pirate land and I want to see even more of it. I would adore seeing spin-off series set in the same place one day. (Maybe one focused on Willa?!)

Overall, I did love this book. The world was rich and exciting and I loved seeing more of Fable’s adventure. Although I thought it focused a little too much on characters, I truly enjoyed the journey. There were some wonderful moments between Fable and Saint, and I liked seeing characters cross the boundaries of good and bad and be more morally grey characters. My favorite new character was Holland – and although I really want to talk more about her its hard to do so without spoiling some major things. She’s terrible, corrupt, but she’s also completely badass and goes after what she wants – no matter the cost or who she has to betray. I’m a huge fan of likable villains, and she hit all the right marks for me on that front. Even Saint, who I absolutely hated in the first book (seriously who abandons their child like that?!!?) proved that there’s a lot more to him than we originally thought.

I highly recommend this book, even though I didn’t love every aspect of it. It’s a good follow up to Fable and I cannot wait to see what Adrienne Young does next!

*Thank You NetGalley for the Advanced Copy of Namesake. All Opinions are my own.

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Jhumpa Lahiri's first novel, THE NAMESAKE, begins with a recipe. In her small apartment kitchen in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Ashima Ganguli is mixing together Rice Krispies, peanuts, diced onion, salt, lemon juice and chili peppers in "a humble approximation" of a snack she used to buy in Calcutta.

For Ashima, who is newly married and nine months pregnant, who misses her family and feels thoroughly alone in New England in the late 1960s, everything in America is "a humble approximation" of her life in India, which she left behind when she married Ashoke, an engineering student at MIT. For Lahiri, who won a Pulitzer Prize for her debut short story collection INTERPRETER OF MALADIES, this revelatory detail is typical: refined, effortless and graceful, it seems obvious only because it's so profound. The rest of the novel follows this tack, locating small truths and ironies in mundane, often overlooked objects like food and, as the title suggests, names.

While mixing her snack, Ashima goes into labor and the next day her first child is born --- it's a boy. Such a joyous occasion for Ashima and Ashoke is nonetheless complicated by the choice of names. Bengalis, Lahiri explains, have not one but two names --- a pet name used by family and friends, and a good name by which he or she is known to the world. "Pet names are a persistent remnant of childhood, a reminder that life is not always so serious, so formal, so complicated," she says. "Good names tend to represent dignified and enlightened qualities" and appear on diplomas, awards and certificates.

Following Bengali custom, the choice of names is left to Ashima's aging grandmother, who posts a letter containing one name for a girl and another for a boy. But the letter never arrives and grasping for choices Ashoke chooses Gogol, a name with much greater significance than merely that of his favorite writer.

Lahiri introduces the Gangulis in such a way that it feels impossible not to be enticed into their world and demand to know their journeys, hardships and fates. After confidently setting these characters in motion, she traces their lives and the repercussions of Gogol's name through three decades, knowingly evoking the compromises and sacrifices they make to adjust to life in America. Throughout the novel, her prose is consistently somber and refined, subtle and subdued, but always pointed and revealing. Likewise the novel's pace arcs gracefully, a model of writerly patience.

But what makes THE NAMESAKE so enthralling and so richly readable is the care with which Lahiri recreates the ever-changing America where the Gangulis live. She populates her scenes and descriptions with a multitude of well-observed specifics --- at times far more details than necessary for verisimilitude, but never once threatening to overwhelm the story.

More crucially, Lahiri writes about Indian and American cultures with the same generosity of detail. She evokes the suburbia of Gogol's adolescence through his beloved Beatles albums and the Olan Mills school pictures as confidently as she describes his adulthood in New York through Ikea furniture and Dean & DeLuca gift baskets. Her descriptions of Ashima's painstaking preparations of mincemeat croquettes are as assured as her descriptions of spaghetti alla vongole at a dinner party.

Such a range of details may not seem overly significant, but Lahiri uses these differences in cultures and cuisines to keep the reader aware of the growing rift between these two worlds, of how far Gogol has moved from his origins and of how strongly those Bengali ties hold him in ways that he only gradually begins to realize.

Ultimately, there is something culinary about THE NAMESAKE, something complex, refined and robust in its blends of ingredients, something substantial and nourishing in its interplay of ideas and characters. This is a novel to savor, whose taste will linger in the reader's mind long after the last course is eaten, the dishes washed and put away, and the book placed aside on the shelf.

Reviewed by Stephen M. Deusner on May 25, 2012

The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

• Publication Date: December 11, 2006
• Genres: Fiction
• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books
• ISBN-10: 0618733965
• ISBN-13: 9780618733965

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The Namesake: A Novel

Description.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER. Pulitzer Prize winner Jhumpa Lahiri brilliantly illuminates the immigrant experience and the tangled ties between generations. Namesake is a fine-tuned, intimate, and deeply felt novel of identity from “a writer of uncommon elegance and poise.” (The New York Times) Meet the Ganguli family, new arrivals from Calcutta, trying their best to become Americans even as they pine for home. The name they bestow on their firstborn, Gogol, betrays all the conflicts of honoring tradition in a new world — conflicts that will haunt Gogol on his own winding path through divided loyalties, comic detours, and wrenching love affairs. "Dazzling...An intimate, closely observed family portrait."—The New York Times "Hugely appealing."—People Magazine "An exquisitely detailed family saga."—Entertainment Weekly

About the Author

JHUMPA LAHIRI is the author of four works of fiction: Interpreter of Maladies , The Namesake , Unaccustomed Earth , and The Lowland ; and a work of nonfiction, In Other Words . She has received numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize; the PEN/Hemingway Award; the PEN/Malamud Award; the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award; the Premio Gregor von Rezzori; the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature; a 2014 National Humanities Medal, awarded by President Barack Obama; and the Premio Internazionale Viareggio-Versilia, for In altre parole.

Praise for The Namesake: A Novel

This eagerly anticipated debut novel deftly expands on Lahiri's signature themes of love, solitude and cultural disorientation. Harper's Bazaar This poignant treatment of the immigrant experience is a rich, stimulating fusion of authentic emotion, ironic observation, and revealing details. Library Journal Lahiri's ... deeply knowing, avidly descriptive, and luxuriously paced first novel is equally triumphant [as Interpreter of Maladies]. Booklist, ALA Jhumpa Lahiri expands her Pulitzer Prize-winning short stories of Indian assimilation into her lovely first novel, THE NAMESAKE. Vanity Fair Lahiri weaves an intricate story of ... an Indian family in America. Their bumpy journey to self-acceptance will move you. Marie Claire [Lahiri] weaves an authentic tale of a Bengali family in Boston... [which] powerfully depicts the universal pull of family traditions. Lifetime The casual beauty of the writing keeps the pages turning. Elle ...immaculately written, seamlessly constructed novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of INTERPRETER OF MALADIES. Book Magazine ...remarkably assured first novel. Readers will find here the same elegant, deceptively simple prose that garnered so much praise for her short stories. Bookpage A debut novel that is as assured and eloquent as the work of a longtime master of the craft. The New York Times Gracefully written and filled with well-observed details. People Magazine ...far more authentic and lavishly imagines than many other young writers' best work. TimeOut New York Lahiri is insightful on the complexities of foreignness. Boston Magazine graceful and wonderfully specific prose...A Entertainment Weekly In the world of literature, Lahiri writes like a native. The San Francisco Chronicle generous, exacting portrait of the clash between cultural dictates and one man's heart. Boston Globe Astringent and clear-eyed in thought, vivid in its portraiture, attuned to American particulars and universal yearnings...memorable fiction. Newsday [Lahiri's] writing is assured and patient, inspiring immediate confidence that we are in trustworthy hands. The Los Angeles Times Achingly artful, Jhumpa Lahiri's first novel showcases her prodigious gifts. The Baltimore Sun Lahiri's inventive imagination and mellifluous prose makes her first novel simply wonderful...It's simply splendid. Providence Journal A fine novel from a superb writer The Washington Post A delicate, moving first novel. Time Magazine A debut novel that triumphs in its breadth and mastery. Star Ledger The novel not only proves the author's ease with the longer form but clearly demonstrates her artistic sensibility. News and Observer ...an accomplished novelist of the first rank, to whose further work we can look forward with confidence and excitement The San Diego Union-Tribune ...simple yet richly detailed writing that makes the heart ache as [Lahiri] meticulously unfolds the lives of her characters. USA Today A book to savor, certainly one of the best of the year. Atlanta Journal Constitution [An] exquisitely accomplished novel. San Jose Mercury News ...one of the best works of fiction published this year. The Seattle Times ...leaves its imprint through completely believable, well-drawn characters. Cleveland Plain Dealer a fascinating journey of self-discovery. The Miami Herald Emotionally charged and deeply poignant. Philadelphia Inquirer graceful and beautiful. San Antonio Express-News Lahiri's latest work doesn't disappoint. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel [The Namesake] speaks to the universal struggle to extricate ourselves from the past. Seattle Post-Intelligencer ...in this second book Lahiri's pace and accent a —

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The Namesake: A Book Review

• Monday, October 12, 2020

Pulitzer prize winning author Jhumpa Lahiri’s first novel,  The Namesake ,  narrates three decades of the lives of Ashoke and Ashima Ganguly as they leave India and settle down in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the 1960’s.

Library Journal describes the novel as, “this poignant treatment of the immigrant experience, which is a rich, stimulating fusion of authentic emotion, ironic observation, and revealing details.” Booklist review says, “Lahiri's deeply knowing, avidly descriptive, and luxuriously paced first novel is equally triumphant as Interpreter of Maladies”

The newlyweds had an arranged marriage and now they must navigate life in a new land while still getting to know each other. Ashok is busy with his work at MIT and Ashima’s heart twinges with pangs of loneliness. She has an intense yearning for the people and the places she has left behind.

In the first chapter we see Ashima pregnant with her first child, craving a spicy Indian snack sold by street vendors on roadsides in Kolkata. She cannot find puffed rice, so she tries to recreate the snack using rice krispies cereal instead. Ashima feels that being a foreigner “is a sort of lifelong pregnancy -- a perpetual wait, a constant burden, a continuous feeling out of sorts.''

 Ashoke is a voracious reader, he reads while walking in crowded traffic too and his mother is convinced that he “would be hit by a bus or a tram, his nose deep in War and Peace. That he would be reading a book the moment he died” Her prophecy almost comes true as Ashoke is in a terrible train accident saved only because he was holding a copy of Nikolai Gogol’s book of short stories, pages of which fluttered and caught the attention of rescuers.

Ashoke names his son 'Gogol' as he realizes that “being rescued from that shattered train had been the first miracle of his life” and his baby “reposing in his arms” is the second.

Shakespeare’s quote, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet” does not really hold true. A name is an integral part of our identity. For young Gogol, struggling between the crossroads of Indian and American cultures, the added complication of having a Russian name truly confounds him and adds to his awkwardness. When some classmates mispronounce his name as 'Giggle' or 'Gargle', it adds to his misery as well.

Ashima adapts to her new home and the friendship of fellow transplanted Bengalis in the foreign land helps her adjust to a new life. Gogol has a sister named Shonali aka Sonia who is his friend and partner in crime. The family assimilates while pursuing the American dream and celebrates Thanksgiving and Christmas while living in a decent suburb. 

Ashoke is an introvert and as much as he loves his family, he is not expressive and does not reveal to Gogol the significant story behind his name until much later.  As soon as Gogol turns eighteen, he changes his name to Nikhil and immediately feels liberated like a newer and freer person who has shed the weight of his old life.

Gogol studies architecture at Yale and then works as an architect in New York. He has three relationships, the first with Ruth, the second with Maxine and then he marries Moushumi. Gogol and Moushumi have always distanced themselves from their Indian roots, rejecting any plans to marry within their race. When they unexpectedly hit it off on their first meeting, they feel happy that they are   ''fulfilling a collective, deep-seated desire'' on the part of their families.  The love story of Gogol with each of the girls is beautifully described complete with how they meet, what draws them together, moments of love and passion and finally, heartbreak and disconnection.  

I can completely identify with and relate to Ashima as my story is the same as hers. My husband and I had an arranged marriage too and we immigrated to America soon after. When she talks about her mother’s “salesmanship” in successfully ‘singing her praises’ to the groom’s family when their marriage was being arranged, when she remembers how the whole family came to the airport in India to wave them goodbye, I had familiar flashbacks from exactly similar experiences in my life.

My hometown Jamshedpur is mentioned twice in the novel and just seeing its name in print gave me a thrill. It is the city where Ashoke was headed to when he had his train accident. I have lived in Boston and I have lived in Kolkata for three years each and I love both of those cities.

Ashima goes on to work part time at a public library and her nick name is Monu. My name is Mona and I work in a public library too!

I could really connect to this book and my immersion in the character of Ashima was so complete that when an unexpected tragedy hits her, it upset me deeply. I had to close the book and put it down as I started crying uncontrollably. A little later, I resumed reading the book with a heavy heart.

There are thousands of Ashimas in America and on behalf of all of them I would like to thank Jhumpa Lahiri for creating this character, who in essence, is all of us.

This novel is not just a relatable read for immigrants, it is also an elegantly told family saga with universal themes; of love, of the profound relationship between a father and a son, of teenage angst, of feeling pulled by different worlds yet not completely belonging to either, of the unpredictability of life and relationships and of endings which are real and not always happily ever after.

Click on the book cover below to access this book in the Richland Library catalog.

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If you are interested in fiction from India do browse these booklists:

31 Outstanding Fiction Books by Indian Authors

Read a Book by a South Asian Author - India

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The snack craved by Ashima in the novel is called Jhal Muri. Jhal means spicy and muri is puffed rice. It is a concoction of dry roasted puffed rice, fried peanuts, diced boiled potatoes, diced - onions, green chillies, cilantro and tomatoes. A little mustard oil is added for a pungent kick along with pinches of salt, black salt, cumin powder and chilli powder. Some lemon juice is added at the end.

Puffed rice and mustard oil is available in Indian grocery stores. In India, this snack is sold by vendors on roadsides and trains. It is served in newspaper cones and that authentic taste is hard to replicate at home. For a more detailed recipe click on the link below.

Jhalmuri step by step video recipe

Research and Readers Advisory Professional

Loves learning about other cultures and broadening her reading horizons through a vast selection of multicultural fiction.

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The Namesake

• 4.4 • 61 Ratings

Publisher Description

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER. Pulitzer Prize winner Jhumpa Lahiri brilliantly illuminates the immigrant experience and the tangled ties between generations. Namesake is a fine-tuned, intimate, and deeply felt novel of identity from “a writer of uncommon elegance and poise.” (The New York Times) Meet the Ganguli family, new arrivals from Calcutta, trying their best to become Americans even as they pine for home. The name they bestow on their firstborn, Gogol, betrays all the conflicts of honoring tradition in a new world — conflicts that will haunt Gogol on his own winding path through divided loyalties, comic detours, and wrenching love affairs. "Dazzling...An intimate, closely observed family portrait."—The New York Times "Hugely appealing."—People Magazine "An exquisitely detailed family saga."—Entertainment Weekly

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY JUL 7, 2003

One of the most anticipated books of the year, Lahiri's first novel (after 1999's Pulitzer Prize winning Interpreter of Maladies) amounts to less than the sum of its parts. Hopscotching across 25 years, it begins when newlyweds Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli emigrate to Cambridge, Mass., in 1968, where Ashima immediately gives birth to a son, Gogol a pet name that becomes permanent when his formal name, traditionally bestowed by the maternal grandmother, is posted in a letter from India, but lost in transit. Ashoke becomes a professor of engineering, but Ashima has a harder time assimilating, unwilling to give up her ties to India. A leap ahead to the '80s finds the teenage Gogol ashamed of his Indian heritage and his unusual name, which he sheds as he moves on to college at Yale and graduate school at Columbia, legally changing it to Nikhil. In one of the most telling chapters, Gogol moves into the home of a family of wealthy Manhattan WASPs and is initiated into a lifestyle idealized in Ralph Lauren ads. Here, Lahiri demonstrates her considerable powers of perception and her ability to convey the discomfort of feeling "other" in a world many would aspire to inhabit. After the death of Gogol's father interrupts this interlude, Lahiri again jumps ahead a year, quickly moving Gogol into marriage, divorce and a role as a dutiful if a bit guilt-stricken son. This small summary demonstrates what is most flawed about the novel: jarring pacing that leaves too many emotional voids between chapters. Lahiri offers a number of beautiful and moving tableaus, but these fail to coalesce into something more than a modest family saga. By any other writer, this would be hailed as a promising debut, but it fails to clear the exceedingly high bar set by her previous work.

Customer Reviews

Here thanks to english 100.

I read this book for a college course that I’m taking and I didn’t expect to enjoy it as much as I did. It’s a great story about change and growing up. It’s a coming of age story that centralizes its focus on family. It started off as a chore to read, but quickly became something more! Worth a look!

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The Namesake

National Endowment for the Arts creative writing fellow Jhumpa Lahiri is known publicly by her nickname because her kindergarten teacher deemed it easier to pronounce than her proper name, Nilanjana Sudeshna. Born to Bengali émigré parents and newly arrived in the United States from London, she had to grapple early with questions of identity, and the impact of this is palpable in The Namesake . In this 2003 bestseller by the Pulitzer-prize-winning author, two generations of a Bengali-American family in Massachusetts struggle between new and old, assimilation and cultural preservation, striving toward the future and longing for the past. This is “a story of guilt and liberation; it speaks to the universal struggle to extricate ourselves from … family and obligation and the curse of history” ( Boston Globe). The novel “beautifully conveys the émigré’s disorientation, nostalgia, and yearning for tastes, smells, and customs left behind” ( Los Angeles Times Book Review ). Lahiri can be seen in a cameo as “Aunt Jhumpa” in the 2006 film adaptation.

“My grandfather always says that’s what books are for…to travel without moving an inch.” —from The Namesake

More Details about the Book

National Endowment for the Arts creative writing fellow Jhumpa Lahiri is known publicly by her nickname because her kindergarten teacher deemed it easier to pronounce than her proper name, Nilanjana Sudeshna. Born to Bengali émigré parents and newly arrived in the United States from London, she had to grapple early with questions of identity, and the impact of this is palpable in The Namesake . In this 2003 bestseller by the Pulitzer-prize-winning author, two generations of a Bengali-American family in Massachusetts struggle between new and old, assimilation and cultural preservation, striving toward the future and longing for the past. This is “a story of guilt and liberation; it speaks to the universal struggle to extricate ourselves from … family and obligation and the curse of history” ( Boston Globe ). The novel “beautifully conveys the émigré’s disorientation, nostalgia, and yearning for tastes, smells, and customs left behind” ( Los Angeles Times Book Review ). Lahiri can be seen in a cameo as “Aunt Jhumpa” in the 2006 film adaptation.

This title is no longer available for programming after the 2018-19 grant year.

Introduction to the Book

A father and mother, a son and daughter: two generations of a typical Bengali–American family, poised uneasily atop the complex and confounding fault lines common to the immigrant experience. Jhumpa Lahiri's novel The Namesake deftly demonstrates how the familiar struggles between new and old, assimilation and cultural preservation, striving toward the future and longing for the past, play out in one particular set of foreign-born parents and their American-born children.

In the novel's opening pages, Ashima Ganguli, who left India to join her husband Ashoke in America, is about to deliver their first child, a son. Following Bengali custom, the child is to have two names—a pet name, for use only by family and close friends, and a "good" name, to be used everywhere else. Almost by mistake, the boy comes to be known as Gogol, named for his father's favorite Russian author. In a harrowing flashback, the reason for Ashoke's attachment to the Russian writer is revealed.

Gogol's father embraces their new life, while his mother longs for her homeland. As Gogol enters school, they attempt to convert his unusual name to a more typical one, but the boy stolidly rejects the transition, refusing to become, as he thinks of it, "someone he doesn't know." Soon he regrets his choice, as the name he's held onto seems increasingly out of place.

The novel's finely wrought descriptions of Bengali food, language, family customs, and Hindu rituals draw us deep inside the culture that Gogol's parents treasure while highlighting his alienation from it. Gogol finishes school, becomes an architect, falls in love more than once, and eventually marries, without ever fully embracing his heritage. His decades-long unease with his name is a perfect distillation of the multiple dislocations—cultural, historic, and familial—experienced by first-generation Americans. At the novel's climax, when loss compounds loss and Gogol's family structure is forever changed, he begins to understand, at least in part, his parents' longing for the past, and the sacrifices they made to help him be what he is—truly American.

Major Characters in the Book

Ashoke Ganguli A Bengali man who comes alone to the U.S. to study electrical engineering. Weds Ashima Bhaduri via an arranged marriage in Calcutta. Father of Gogol and Sonia, a dedicated but undemonstrative family man with a lifelong attachment to Russian literature.

Ashima Ganguli Journeys alone to the U.S. shortly after marrying Ashoke. Caring mother to Gogol and Sonia; stays in close touch with her family in India and maintains a growing network of Bengali friends and neighbors, as her family moves from city to city for Ashoke's career. At the end of the novel she bifurcates her life to spend time in the U.S. with her children and in India with her family of origin.

Gogol Ganguli The "namesake" of the title, named after his father's favorite Russian writer, Nikolai Gogol (1809–1852). A first–generation Indian American whose uneasiness with his name exemplifies his difficulties in fitting in, either to his parents' expatriate world or to the world inhabited so comfortably by his American peers.

Sonia Ganguli Gogol's younger sister, who is less troubled than he by their shared cultural heritage, or by the strictures and oddities of their household. Her steadiness—a peaceful life with her mother after her father's death, and a happy marriage—throws Gogol's chronic discomforts into sharper relief.

Maxine Ratliff The only child of wealthy, urbane New Yorkers, and Gogol's first post–college girlfriend. Maxine represents so many things that Gogol believes he values: art and music, sophistication, and ease in the world.

Moushumi Mazoomdar Appears first as the book-reading child of a neighboring Bengali family, noteworthy only because of her aloof air and deliberate English accent. The adult Moushumi resurfaces as Gogol's love interest and eventual wife. She too stages a rebellion against her heritage, living alone in Paris for a time.

"He is afraid to be Nikhil, someone he doesn't know." —Jhumpa Lahiri, from The Namesake

About Jhumpa Lahiri

Jhumpa Lahiri (b. 1967)

Jhumpa Lahiri was born in London to Bengali émigré parents in 1967. When she was three, her family moved to South Kingstown, Rhode Island, where her father was a librarian and her mother a teacher.

Like her character Gogol, Lahiri experienced some confusion over her name when starting school. Her parents tried to enroll her using her "good" names—Nilanjana and Sudeshna—but the teacher insisted that those were too long, and opted instead for her pet name, Jhumpa. Lahiri notes that, "Even now, people in India ask why I'm publishing under my pet name instead of a real name."

Lahiri began to write at age seven, sometimes creating short fiction pieces with her friends during recess. She later wrote for the school newspaper. She received her undergraduate degree from Barnard College, then moved to Boston to attend Boston University, from which she received three master's degrees—in English, comparative literature, and creative writing—and a PhD in Renaissance studies.

While in Boston, she worked in a bookstore and interned at a magazine; she has noted that, had she stayed in New York, she might have been too intimidated to write: "In New York I was always so scared of saying that I wrote fiction. It just seemed like, 'Who am I to dare to do that thing here? The epicenter of publishing and writers?' I found all that very intimidating and avoided writing as a response."

Lahiri received a fellowship from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown from 1997 to 1998. In 1998, The New Yorker magazine published "A Temporary Matter," one of the stories that would appear in her first collection, Interpreter of Maladies. In 2000, the collection won the PEN/Hemingway Award for the year's best fiction debut, and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. She is the first Indian-American woman to receive this award.

In 2003, she published The Namesake, a novel, and followed that in 2008 with a second collection of short stories, Unaccustomed Earth. Next she wrote The Lowland (2013) and a memoir—written in Italian— In Other Words (2016). Lahiri and her husband Alberto Vourvoulias-Bush have two children.

Updated July 2017

An Interview with Jhumpa Lahiri

On February 14, 2013, Josephine Reed of the National Endowment for the Arts interviewed Jhumpa Lahiri. Excerpts from their conversation follow.

Josephine Reed: How would you describe the plot of The Namesake?

Jhumpa Lahiri: It's about the process of becoming American, understanding the ways in which that's possible. The heart of the book is about a family's relationship to America and to the change that inevitably happens when a person leaves one's place of origin and arrives in a new world, which is very much an American story.

JR: We see an uncertainty about identity filtering down to the next generation in The Namesake, in Gogol.

JL: Gogol is very typical in wanting to be American. I think most young people just want to conform on some level, and then they stop wanting to conform and maybe become more interesting; but there's a stage of simply wanting to be accepted and not questioned. [Gogol's parents] may be lost, and they may be homesick, but they never doubt for a moment where home is—whereas for Gogol that sense of home is not fixed because India is not his home, and America is not yet his home.

JR: Issues of identity play out in his relationship with his parents—he sees them as foreign, and that's troubling to him. Can you talk about some of that tension?

JL: I can speak maybe just from my own experience. I think my impulse as a child was to protect my parents from what I perceived as sort of ignorance. But the other emotion was a frustration with them, because I wasn't there to protect them; I was their child, and I wanted them to protect me. It creates a strange dynamic when you speak the language better than your parents, when you go into stores and you're a child and they ask you what kind of washing machine your parents are interested in because they don't trust your parents to articulate themselves. These kinds of things can be very troubling, they're frustrating, they made me angry, they made me sad, they made me overprotective of my parents, concerned for them and also frustrated that they weren't more seemingly capable.

JR: Names, as the title of your book suggests, are important. Can you explain pet names in the Bengali tradition as opposed to the "good" name?

JL: I think the pet name is very much connected to one's formative years and childhood and affection. And one's mother and father would never, ever, ever, ever use anything but a pet name for one's child. You tend to go to school with your good name and what ends up happening is that you've got two names to represent the sort of home version, the more intimate version, versus the out-in-the-world, being-educated, working-at-a-job version—the formal version, as it were, versus the informal.

JR: When Gogol goes to school, his father tells him the "good" name that he's chosen for him, which is Nikhil.

JL: I think in an American context, it would be doubly disconcerting to suddenly enter school and be told by your parents, "Oh, by the way, not only are you going to spend all day away from us in the company of a teacher you've never met and don't know, but she's going to call you this other name." I imagine that would be very distressing to any child.

JR: Can you touch on the sense of displacement the Ganguli family experiences?

JL: Gogol's parents appear most at home when they go back to Calcutta, where there is a certain sort of blissful abandonment of a...level of anxiety and uncertainty that they carry with them as foreigners. I think it's impossible, virtually impossible, to live as a foreigner in any country. No matter how at ease, affluent, educated, articulate you are. When it's not your place, it's not your place.

"I'm the least experimental writer. The idea of trying things just for the sake of pushing the envelope, that's never really interested me." —Jhumpa Lahiri, from an interview in New York Magazine (2008)

Writers Corner (2006 Prose Fellowship)

Discussion Questions

• In the opening scene, Ashima is making a snack for herself, and near the end she prepares samosas for a party. Food plays a large role throughout the novel. How does the author use food to evoke specific emotions?
• This novel, less than 300 pages long, spans more than 30 years. What techniques does the author use to compress time and move the story forward?
• Much of the story is told in the present tense. Why would the author make this unusual choice?
• Maxine and her parents live in an elegant townhouse, while Gogol's family has an ordinary suburban house. How does the author use these two settings to help the reader understand these different families?
• Gogol's discomfort with his name is one of the novel's main themes. Also, Ashima never addresses her husband by his given name, because such a name is "intimate and therefore unspoken." What other names in the novel are important, and why?
• Gogol's sister Sonia is present in only a few scenes in the novel, and the story is never told from her point of view. Why do you think that Lahiri left her a less-developed character than Gogol? What purpose does she serve in the story?
• There are two train accidents in the novel, one involving Gogol and one his father. How are the two accidents linked, and how do they serve to drive the characters closer together, or farther apart?
• How does Gogol evolve as a character, from his first days of school to his life as an adult, with a profession and a wife? How does he stay the same?
• The author has stated in multiple interviews that she strives to write in a plain, unadorned way. What impact does her chosen style have on the reader?
• The Namesake is written in third person, but various characters serve as the "point of view" character, telling the story from their perspective. How many different "point of view" characters are there, and how does the author shift the narrative between them?

Stories From the Community

The namesake celebrates indian culture and initiates dialogue in charlottesville, virginia.

“[We offered] a panel discussion on arranged marriage, a live arts night at the University of Virginia featuring performances by award-winning student singing and dancing groups, henna programs, a photograph exhibit titled That ABCD Life that featured the experiences of “American Born Confused Desi” and the premier of the film The Ashimas of Charlottesville, which followed women who migrated from India directly to our community. This was followed by a panel discussion with the women from the film moderated by the filmmaker. The Indian community also invited the wider community to a potluck Holi spring celebration in honor of the Big Read. A joint concert we presented with SPICAMACAY and the Hindu Students Council drew 320 adults and 160 students to a performance by teens, university students and adult community members at the University.

“ The Namesake ’s themes of the universal immigrant experience, family relations and the struggle for identity while transitioning from childhood to adulthood resonated with our readers. Book discussion members shared their families’ immigration stories as well as insights on intergenerational relations. The Indian community was thrilled to share their traditions with wider community, such as when they opened participation in their annual Holi celebration to Big Read participants. One young man frequently posted flyers for his mother’s Bengali cooking class at the library. We asked him if he thought his mother might like to do a program for our Big Read. He came back the next week to tell us that his mother loved The Namesake , that it was her story in America and that she insisted that we work together.”

– from a report by the Jefferson Madison Regional Library, an NEA Big Read grant recipient in FY 2014-15.

The Namesake Gets People Talking about the Meaning of Names in Reading, Massachusetts

“Each attendee had a place setting with their name, its origin and meaning. A big ‘nametag’ was provided to each staff member to write down and share the meaning of their name, why that name was chosen and who, if anyone, was their namesake. This proved to be a really wonderful way to connect to The Namesake ; fostering conversations around culture, family, and identity in the novel as well as our own lives. Due to the success of this activity we continued to use it in all the discussion groups we facilitated to great effect.”

– from a report by the Reading Public Library, an NEA Big Read grant recipient in FY 2013-2014.

Community Members Learn How to Wrap Saris in Spearfish, South Dakota

The Matthews Opera House and Arts Center (MOH) created a successful series of events that included art projects, a film festival, library story times, art exhibits, school residencies, and musical performances. MOH staff, in conjunction with its partners all over town and a student studying abroad in India, worked to make sure that the program gave participants an “eye opening” experience by exposing them to issues and ways of life different from their own.

– from a report by the Matthews Opera House and Arts Center, an NEA Big Read grant recipient in FY 2013-2014.

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Gogol? How did I get a name like Gogol?

In "The Namesake," the parents take their children back to visit India: Kal Penn, Irrfan Khan, Sahira Nair, Tabu.

Doubling back to review movies I missed while ill.

“The Namesake” is Mira Nair ’s ninth feature, and I suspect the one closest to her heart. It tells the story of a young couple who have an arranged marriage in Calcutta and move to New York, where they discover each other and their new country, and have two children. Then the story shifts to center on their son, while keeping them in the picture. Nair, born in India, educated at Harvard, married to a Ugandan, must have felt a resonance on every page of her source, the beloved novel by Jhumpa Lahiri .

The first meeting of the young woman Ashima (Tabu) and her proposed husband Ashoke ( Irrfan Khan ) is filmed with subtle charm. Her prospective mother-in-law warns her that life will be hard in New York, far from home friends, family, all she knows. “Won’t he be there?” she asks shyly, and the solemn Ashoke smiles, and their future is sealed. Her new husband is an aspiring architect, earning enough at first to afford only a low-rent flat in a marginal neighborhood, but America has its consolations: “In this country, the gas is on 24 hours a day!” he tells her.

Nair tenderly handles their first days of warily walking and talking around each other, and tentatively making love. It goes easier than it might have, because this is a marriage that was arranged between the right two people, and their respect and regard (and eventually deep love) only grow.

Along comes a son, Gogol ( Kal Penn ), and a daughter, Sonia ( Sahira Nair , the director’s niece). Much is made of how Gogol got his name, which is not Indian or American but inspired by his father’s favorite author; as an adolescent the boy comes to hate it, and changes his name to Nikolai (or “Nicky”), Gogol’s own first name. But there is a reason for “Gogol,” and it has much importance for his father, who often mentions Gogol’s short story, “The Overcoat.” In that story, interestingly, the hero has a laughable name, which Gogol explains “happened quite as a case of necessity… it was utterly impossible to give him any other name.” How the American boy got his name becomes the stuff of family legend.

The movie concerns itself largely with being Indian and American at the same time. With making close ties with other Indian immigrants, sprinkling curry powder on the Rice Krispies, moving to a split-level suburban house, sending the children to college. Gogol, or Nicki, acquires a white girlfriend named Maxine (Jacinda Barrett), who apparently truly loves him but says the wrong things during a period of family mourning, so that Gogol shuts her out. Then he marries a Bengali girl named Moushumi ( Zuleikha Robinson ), who has grown much more sophisticated since he first met her years ago during negotiations between their parents. His sister daughter marries a nice white boy named Ben. “Times are changing,” Ashima philosophizes.

The culture gap is demonstrated when Gogol brings Maxine home to meet his parents, and warns her: “No kissing. No touching.” He has never even seen his own parents touch. But Maxine impulsively kisses his parents on their cheeks, and the earth does not move. They would prefer him to marry “a nice Bengali girl who makes somosas every Thursday,” as Moushumi describes herself, but the film reveals that the children of the second generation do not always follow the scripts of their parents.

The movie covers some 25 or 30 years, so it is episodic by nature. What holds it together are the subtle loving performances by Tabu and Khan, both Bollywoood stars. They never overplay, never spell out what can be said in a glance or a shrug, communicate great passion very quietly. As Gogol, Kal Penn is not a million miles removed from the character he played in “Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle,” although he is a lot smarter. He is an angel until about 13, and then his parents, heaven help them, find they have given birth to an American teenager.

“The Namesake” tells a story that is the story of all immigrant groups in America: Parents of great daring arriving with dreams, children growing up in a way that makes them almost strangers, the old culture merging with the new. It has been said that all modern Russian literature came out of Gogol’s “Overcoat.” In the same way, all of us came out of the overcoat of this same immigrant experience.

Read “The Overcoat” at: www.geocities.com/short_stories_page/gogolovercoat.html

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

• Glenne Headly as Lydia
• Zuleikha Robinson as Moushumi
• Irrfan Khan as Ashoke
• Tabu as Ashima
• Sahira Nair as Sonia
• Kal Penn as Gogol
• Jacinda Barrett as Maxine

Photographed by

• Frederick Elmes

Based on the novel by

• Jhumpa Lahiri

Directed by

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On Politics

The best books about politics (according to you).

Here’s what we’re turning to for clarity and perspective on our current political moment.

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By Jess Bidgood

The last few months have felt like a political thriller, an epic co-written by Shakespeare and Clancy with a wash of the cacophonous political jostling captured so deftly by Richard Ben Cramer.

And since it is now the last day (observed) of our stranger-than-fiction summer, I want to linger for just a moment on the books you turn to to make sense of it all.

Earlier this week, I asked you to tell me about your favorite books about politics. I urged you to think broadly about fiction and nonfiction — no need for lab-grown political memoir here — and nearly 1,000 of you obliged before we closed our submissions. I read every single one. You came up with new reasons to read classics and drew out the politics in romance and fantasy books.

And, yes, some of you even submitted your own work for consideration.

The selection that follows is not supposed to be exhaustive. It does not include my recent favorite (Muriel Spark’s “The Abbess of Crewe,” which is basically Watergate but with nuns), because no one suggested it. But it is a list of books you’re turning to for clarity and perspective on how we got to our current political moment, and what it means.

Without further ado, I bring you the On Politics unofficial literary canon, as recommended by you. Let me know if you read one, and if you want to join the Robert Penn Warren book club that I will totally start after the election.

“All the King’s Men,” Robert Penn Warren (1946): OK. You guys love this book, which is a fictional tale of a populist governor in the Deep South inspired by Huey Long. You love it more than “All the President’s Men.” You might even love it more than “What It Takes” and the works of Hunter S. Thompson. I’ll leave it to one reader, John Armstrong of Raleigh, N.C., to explain why:

It captures the entire dynamic of politics in America. The messianic leader who comes to see himself as the embodiment of the people and then its higher self. Those who seek his favor, always jockeying for position, always ready to turn against him when they see a new vehicle for their ambition. The masses who follow anything that moves, and, among them, those few idealists. All that, and beautifully written.

“The Last Hurrah,” Edwin O’Connor (1956): This book about the political machine, as told through a fictional mayor of a city that seems a little like Boston, is “a reminder that everything old is new again,” wrote Tim Shea. And it taught Sean Sweeney, a SoHo political activist, how upstarts can beat incumbents. “We had to teach ourselves to do the campaigning that the book details,” he wrote me.

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