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Loading... The Namesakeby Jhumpa Lahiri
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. I didn't finish it. I took it back to the library.  schultzstm | Dec 23, 2009 |  I enjoyed this less than Interpreter of Maladies, but as a novel it was well-crafted, carefully balanced, and edifying. Lahiri's mastery of her characters and narrative is clearly evolving. A good read. (  ) milkyfangs | Dec 22, 2009 | I love Jhumpa Lahiri's writing . I have re read her Interpreter Of Maladies numerous times. I even re read the short stories of her's published in newspapers. I am saying all this because , even though I love her writing style, The Namesake didn't work for me.I am not saying it was bad . It definitely wasn't but it wasn't as good as I had expected her next book to be. This whole theme of trying to find your identity amongst the people who treat you like a foreigner even though you were born and brought there is approached with great sensitivity but it never becomes anything more than that. Gogol's identity crisis , his frustrations regarding his parents Indian values even after spending half their life time in US was really believable. Lahiri's narrative was very appealing , characters very well developed but I wish story had something more to it . A certain zing was missing which I thought was found in abundance in her short story collection . Recommended to fans of contemporary fiction. I haven't seen the movie version (not a fan of book to movie adaptations ) but might give it a try some time soon. (  ) shwetasbookjournal | Dec 18, 2009 | The Namesake is the story of globalization and colonialism coming together in the Ganguli family, especially the relationship between the elder Ashoke and the younger Gogol. Through several intertwining plot lines, told through a few different perspectives, Lahiri shows how culture takes it toll and presents its boon, especially on immigrant families. The writing is skilled, and there are moments of beauty in this novel, though the ending could have been a bit better. (  ) Kunzelman | Dec 8, 2009 | When thinking about how to describe The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri, the word that keeps coming to mind is “quiet”. Lahiri slowly weaves a beautiful tapestry of the love and living and feelings of being an immigrant family. The different customs and how the culture of the land in which you live can so overtake you and change you in ways you can’t even realize. First and foremost, it is a love story: The love of a man and wife, the love of parents for their children, the love for one’s family, and the love of one’s homeland. It’s also a story of the journey we all must take of self-acceptance, and, after that, the acceptance of others. Of course, the “Indian-ness” of it is also beautiful and intriguing. One of the things I find fascinating from this book is the realization that all people everywhere share the burden of growing up, of culture, and of the hopes and expectations of their parents. For the majority of us, we caring these burdens among our own people… fellow humans who share similar experiences in this and this helps us not feel so alone. However, for those who have left their native lands, there can be a constant ache and isolation as they endure the struggles of life without the ability to lean on someone who can understand how they feel. What’s more, the first generation born in another land are even more isolated, having one foot in the old and new country, they can neither relate to their parents who have no understanding of the way things are in their adopted homeland, nor can they fully relate to their peers who either don’t have any concept of their home life or they find it a curiosity. Click for full review: http://thekoolaidmom.wordpress.com/20... (  ) thekoolaidmom | Nov 24, 2009 | 
 Jhumpa Lahiri's quietly dazzling new novel, ''The Namesake,'' is that rare thing: an intimate, closely observed family portrait that effortlessly and discreetly unfolds to disclose a capacious social vision.
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0395927218, Hardcover)Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies established this young writer as one the most brilliant of her generation. Her stories are one of the very few debut works -- and only a handful of collections -- to have won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Among the many other awards and honors it received were the New Yorker Debut of the Year award, the PEN/Hemingway Award, and the highest critical praise for its grace, acuity, and compassion in detailing lives transported from India to America.In The Namesake, Lahiri enriches the themes that made her collection an international bestseller: the immigrant experience, the clash of cultures, the conflicts of assimilation, and, most poignantly, the tangled ties between generations. Here again Lahiri displays her deft touch for the perfect detail -- the fleeting moment, the turn of phrase -- that opens whole worlds of emotion. The Namesake takes the Ganguli family from their tradition-bound life in Calcutta through their fraught transformation into Americans. On the heels of their arranged wedding, Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli settle together in Cambridge, Massachusetts. An engineer by training, Ashoke adapts far less warily than his wife, who resists all things American and pines for her family. When their son is born, the task of naming him betrays the vexed results of bringing old ways to the new world. Named for a Russian writer by his Indian parents in memory of a catastrophe years before, Gogol Ganguli knows only that he suffers the burden of his heritage as well as his odd, antic name. Lahiri brings great empathy to Gogol as he stumbles along the first-generation path, strewn with conflicting loyalties, comic detours, and wrenching love affairs. With penetrating insight, she reveals not only the defining power of the names and expectations bestowed upon us by our parents, but also the means by which we slowly, sometimes painfully, come to define ourselves. The New York Times has praised Lahiri as "a writer of uncommon elegance and poise." The Namesake is a fine-tuned, intimate, and deeply felt novel of identity. (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:03 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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