The Namesake

By: Jhumpa Lahiri

Narrated by: Sarita Choudhury

Length: 10 hrs and 10 mins

Publisher's summary

The Namesake follows the Ganguli family through its journey from Calcutta to Cambridge to the Boston suburbs. 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. Ashoke is forward-thinking, ready to enter into American culture if not fully at least with an open mind. His young bride is far less malleable. Isolated, desperately missing her large family back in India, she will never be at peace with this new world.

Soon after they arrive in Cambridge, their first child is born, a boy. 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. 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. 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. Ashoke had stayed awake to read his Gogol, and he believes the book saved his life. His child will be known, then, as Gogol.

Lahiri brings her enormous powers of description to her first novel, infusing scene after scene with profound emotional depth. 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.

©2003 Jhumpa Lahiri (P)2003 Random House, Inc. Random House Audio, a Division of Random House, Inc.

Critic reviews

"This production is a treat for the sheer combination of Lahiri's striking, often enchanting descriptions and Choudhury's graceful rendering of them." ( Publishers Weekly)
"This poignant treatment of the immigrant experience is a rich, stimulating fusion of authentic emotion, ironic observation, and revealing details." ( Library Journal)
"This is a fine novel from a superb writer." ( The Washington Post)
"An effortless and self-assured bildungsroman that more than delivers on the promise of... Interpreter of Maladies." ( Book Magazine)

Pretty good.

Gives good prespective as to what it must be like to be an foreigner in this country. A bit long winded....I accidently skipped a whole section on the book, and didn't miss a beat.

Amazing Book!!!!

Great book really gave you insight on the Indian culture and the transition to American life. I loved everything about the book kept me wanting to read more. amazing job

Underwhelming

I come from an Indian background where I desired to hear a story of something a little relatable, a little not. this definitely missed the mark as there were no crescendos, or ebbs and flows at all throughout the book. just mundane, day to day storytelling.

Enjoyable :)

The plot is a little slow at first, but once you get accustomed to the pace it becomes more enjoyable. More than anything I loved the storytelling, the way it's written and the way the author gives a lot of description to the details allowing the reader to imagine every emotion.

Great Read

I think this is a great read. This book has something of a very even keel throughout. Never too dramatic. And being a first generation Indian, I can feel the conflicts that the protagonist's parents go through. And Sarita Choudhury's narration is pretty good.

really loved coming back to a book I read 10 years

I really like that it was really easy to listen too. I really enjoyed this book!

Beautiful story

As a first generation American of Indian parents who immigrated to Boston in the 1970s, this book felt like coming home. So many parallels to my own childhood and growing up were found in this richly written novel. Ms. Lahiri never fails to captivate with her characters. Never fails to bring such wonderful memories of my own life and family to mind. I am so grateful for her work.

A Good Read for A Young Adult

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. 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. At times it seemed that I was listening to a story being read in the children's room at the public library. The reader often seems to drop syllables from certain words, but that is really just a minor defect. My main criticism of the story is the forced way in which the protagonist's name is used. It seems a device, a distraction, and has really very little to do with the tale being told, as if Ms. Lahiri was writing for a topic assigned in a creative writing class. Perhaps, with a bit of editing, she could have removed the intrusion of Nikolai Gogol into her story completely.
The author relates the biographies and immigrant experiences of four main characters, centering for the most part on Gogol Ganguli, born at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, the son of Ashima and Ashoke Ganguli recent Bengali immigrants from Calcutta, and one other second generation Indian, Moushumi Mazoomdar. Her descriptions are vivid, almost mathematically precise. She succeeds in conveying the emotional lives of her characters. Since I very much enjoy novels by Indian authors of late, I felt I did gain some insight and perspective on their lives and culture. Nevertheless, the essentially quotidian nature of the story is not enough to make this great literature. It barely rises to the level of good soap opera.

Beautiful story

This is a beautiful book, loved the movie too. The story gets you involved in how immigrants feel in a new country, how their lives are torn between two countries. The author describes feelings and situations in an very beautiful way.

Better on paper than in audio

The cultural perspective of this book is by far its most interesting attribute. The author's portrayal of the "generation gap" combines with her equally astute portrayal of the "cultural gap" (the parents grew up in Calcutta and the children grew up in America), resulting in some very thought-provoking conflict. The prose itself is also at times quite stellar. Unfortunately, the reader is just okay, apparently chosen because of her ability to interchange American and Indian accents. There are also frequent and very distracting overdubs, probably to fix reading mistakes, which sound so mismatched that they can't possibly go unnoticed. Still, I listened to this book all the way through, and it was worth it.