springdellgirl

Book Review #15

I just finished The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri. This was a past book club selection that I didn't read and so I have been playing catch up. Carolyn picked this book and I was quite interested in reading it. My Aunt Margaret is a voracious reader and has been telling me that I need to read Interpreter of Maladies and The Namesake for a long time. She is a big Lahiri fan...unfortunately I am not.

From Publishers Weekly:

One of the most anticipated books of the year, Lahiri's first novel (after 1999's Pulitzer Prize-winning Interpreter of Maladies) ... 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.

I am not a fan of this book. I wish I was but I'm not. This book didn't appeal to me in any way. Not on my nightstand and not while reading it. I found the characters likable enough...Ashima, Ashoke and their new life in America. I even found Gogol likable. It is the story or perhaps lack of story that I dislike. I kept asking myself "OK...when are things going to start happening and start to get good" unfortunately for me it never did. Following Gogol through his years of college and failed relationships was just plain and simply....a bore. Poor Gogol...he hates his name, is embarrassed by his parents, can't find true love, can't find himself...boring boring boring. I would've liked to explore the story of Ashima and Ashoke and their arranged marriage more and how they managed to grow to love one another and build a life together.

There were certain aspects of the book that kept my attention...I enjoyed reading Lahiri's take on what it is like to work in the Architectural field (Tyler did this for 12 years) they even had a diabetic draftsman...how true to life...right Ty? But the image of Gogol drafting at his drawing table with pencil in hand had me laughing. Architects and draftsman pretty much do everything on the computer now...very little hand drafting is done anymore.

I liked Maxine but merely because her parents were foodies and she had a lake house. I loved this quote from the book where Gogol explains how Maxine feels about the lake:

"She speaks reverently of her summers here. This is her favorite place in the world she tells him, and he understands that it is this landscape, the water of this particular lake in which she first learned to swim, is an essential part of her...It makes it easy to imagine her past, and her future, to picture her growing old...he sees her returning here...teaching her children to swim in the lake, leading them with two hands into the water, showing them how to dive cleanly off the edge of the dock".

The part where Gogol's father dies unexpectedly of a massive heart attack caused my own heart to ache thinking back to when the same thing happened to Tyler's father (also a professor) and, like Gogol, Tyler was the one to get the call...go to the hospital...identify his father...and clean out his apartment. Truly heart wrenching.

Even though this book had moments of poignancy it just wasn't enough to carry the lackluster story along. I closed the book at the end feeling depressed and disappointed.

My rating: Disappointing