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The Namesake
- Narrated by: Sarita Choudhury
- Length: 10 hrs and 10 mins
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Publisher's summary
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.
Critic reviews
"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)
Featured Article: The Best Indian Authors to Listen to Right Now
"India," to quote actress and human rights activist Shabana Azmi, "is a country that lives in several centuries simultaneously." Just as those different time periods seem to coexist in one place, so do the voices of brilliant literary talents. Each of these writers and their works have contributed to help the world better understand this expansive country and its beautiful, multifaceted culture, whether it be from within India’s own borders or through the memory of its customs and traditions from distant continents.
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Nora and Theresa Flynn are 21 and 17 when they leave their small village in Ireland and journey to America. Nora is the responsible sister; she's shy and serious and engaged to a man she isn't sure that she loves. Theresa is gregarious; she is thrilled by their new life in Boston and besotted with the fashionable dresses and dance halls on Dudley Street. But when Theresa ends up pregnant, Nora is forced to come up with a plan - a decision with repercussions they are both far too young to understand.
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The narration ruined it
- By Janis Reynolds on 06-12-17
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One True Thing
- By: Anna Quindlen
- Narrated by: Christina Moore
- Length: 9 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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A young woman sits in jail, accused of the mercy killing of her dying mother. She didn't do it, but she thinks she knows who did. In the last months of her life, Ellen Gulden's mother revealed startling secrets that challenged everything Ellen believed about her family. Now, in jail, Ellen believes those secrets will tell her who had the courage to end her mother's suffering.
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Quindlen's writing skills shine in One True Thing.
- By Bonny on 08-26-13
By: Anna Quindlen
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Family Secrets
- A Novel
- By: Nancy Thayer
- Narrated by: Coleen Marlo
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Though Diane Randall’s jewelry business is a great success, her marriage is not, and she finds herself growing lonely as her children near adulthood. Meanwhile, her eighteen-year-old daughter Julia is falling dangerously in love, and Diane’s mother, Jean, is relishing her newfound freedom as a single woman in Europe. Distracted by their individual concerns, the three women are ill-prepared for the crisis that suddenly appears on Diane’s doorstep in the form of a handsome FBI agent asking about an explosive secret that’s laid buried for decades.
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Nancy! Is there a sequel? What?
- By PattieLynn on 12-02-22
By: Nancy Thayer
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Sanctuary Cove
- A Cavanaugh Island Novel, Book 1
- By: Rochelle Alers
- Narrated by: Nicole Small
- Length: 8 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
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Still reeling from her husband’s untimely death, Deborah Robinson needs a fresh start. So she decides to pack up her family and return to her grandmother’s ancestral home on Cavanaugh Island. The charming town of Sanctuary Cove holds happy memories for Deborah, and, after she spies a gorgeous stranger in the local bakery, it promises the possibility for a bright future. Dr. Asa Monroe is at a crossroads. Ever since the loss of his family, he has been traveling from one town to another. When he meets Deborah, the beautiful bookstore owner with the sunny smile, Asa believes he has finally found a reason to stay in one place.
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Not Good, Clean Fun
- By Cheryl on 12-20-12
By: Rochelle Alers
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Bitter in the Mouth
- By: Monique Truong
- Narrated by: Jennifer Ikeda
- Length: 10 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Growing up in the small town of Boiling Springs, North Carolina, in the 70’s and 80’s, Linda believes that she is profoundly different from everyone else, including the members of her own family. “What I know about you, little girl, would break you in two” are the cruel, mysterious last words that Linda’s grandmother ever says to her.
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"Tasting Words" made this hard to hear!
- By Kate Anderson on 11-06-11
By: Monique Truong
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The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears
- By: Dinaw Mengestu
- Narrated by: Dion Graham
- Length: 6 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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Ethiopian émigré Dinaw Mengestu is a skilled observer of people who offers a colorful debut work of fiction. Insightful and swiftly paced, this novel evokes past and present in the course of its compelling narrative. It's the `70s, and one D.C. neighborhood is undergoing big changes. In the mix is Ethiopian grocery owner Sepha Stephanos - a man with a complex past who fled his homeland after seeing his father brutalized by themilitary. He hopes for new prospects in D.C.'s gentrification process.
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Great book, wonderful reader
- By Lisbeth on 11-22-11
By: Dinaw Mengestu
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Bettyville
- By: George Hodgman
- Narrated by: Jeff Woodman
- Length: 10 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
When George Hodgman leaves Manhattan for his hometown of Paris, Missouri, he finds himself - an unlikely caretaker and near-lethal cook - in a head-on collision with his aging mother, Betty, a woman of wit and will. Will George lure her into assisted living? When hell freezes over. He can't bring himself to force her from the home both treasure - the place where his father's voice lingers, the scene of shared jokes, skirmishes, and, behind the dusty antiques, a rarely acknowledged conflict...
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Title Should Be Georgeville-It's All About George
- By Sara on 10-08-15
By: George Hodgman
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Don't Let Him Know
- By: Sandip Roy
- Narrated by: Tania Rodrigues
- Length: 9 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
In a boxy apartment building in an Illinois university town, Romola Mitra, a newly arrived young bride, anxiously awaits her first letter from home in India. When she accidentally opens the wrong letter, it changes her life. Decades later, her son Amit finds that letter and thinks he has discovered his mother's secret. But secrets have their own secrets sometimes.
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another great book by Roy
- By Amazon Customer on 04-27-15
By: Sandip Roy
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After the Parade
- By: Lori Ostlund
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 12 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Sensitive, big-hearted, and achingly self-conscious, 40-year-old Aaron Englund long ago escaped the confines of his Midwestern hometown, but he still feels like an outcast. After 20 years under the Pygmalion-like direction of his older partner, Walter, Aaron at last decides it is time to stop letting life happen to him and to take control of his own fate.
By: Lori Ostlund
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The Other Mother
- By: Rachel Harper
- Narrated by: January LaVoy, William DeMeritt
- Length: 14 hrs
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Jenry Castillo is a musical prodigy, raised by a single mother in Miami, who arrives at Brown University on a scholarship—but also to learn more about his late father, Jasper Patterson, a famous ballet dancer who died tragically when Jenry was two. On his search, he meets his estranged grandfather, Winston Patterson, a legendary professor of African American history and a fixture at the Ivy League school, who explodes his world with one question: Why is Jenry so focused on Jasper, when it was Winston’s daughter, Juliet, who was Jenry’s mother’s lover?
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Very good.
- By Roland Harper on 05-22-22
By: Rachel Harper
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The Poison Tree
- By: Erin Kelly
- Narrated by: Jennifer Ikeda
- Length: 11 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Successful journalist Erin Kelly has electrified readers and critics alike with her debut novel The Poison Tree. In this scintillating work, Karen and her daughter Alice have established a safe, happy life free from the madness of Karen’s past. But when Karen’s former lover Rex is released from prison, her old associations intrude upon the present - and threaten everything she holds dear.
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I couldn't stop listening the book.
- By Gladys on 07-29-15
By: Erin Kelly
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Loved it!
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In Other Words is a revelation. It is at heart a love story—of a long and sometimes difficult courtship, and a passion that verges on obsession: that of a writer for another language. For Jhumpa Lahiri, that love was for Italian, which first captivated and capsized her during a trip to Florence after college. Although Lahiri studied Italian for many years afterward, true mastery always eluded her.
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Beautiful meditation on language and art
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Gorgeous melancholy reflections
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My least favorite of all her work.
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Worthy Booker winner!
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Excellent if you forgive pronunciation
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Dogeaters follows a diverse set of characters through Manila, each exemplifying the country’s sharp distinctions between social classes. Celebrated novelist and playwright Jessica Hagedorn effortlessly shifts from the capital’s elite to the poorest of the poor. From the country’s president and first lady to an idealist reformer, from actors and radio DJs to prostitutes, seemingly unrelated lives become intertwined.
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Where's the Italian version?
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As a boy, Elias learned the hard way what happens when you don’t heed the old tales. Nine years after his lack of superstition got his father killed, he’s grown into a young man of piety, with a deep reverence for the hallowed sea and her fickle favor. As stories of the fisherman’s son who has managed to escape the most deadly of storms spreads from port to port, his devotion to the myths and creeds has given him the reputation of the luckiest bastard to sail the Narrows.
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Gertrude Stein held a unique position at the center of the modernist movement. She was a novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in America, she moved with her family to Paris where she ran a Paris salon frequented by many famous historical figures, such as Ernest Hemingway, Pablo Picasso, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henri Matisse, Ezra Pound, Sherwood Anderson, and Sinclair Lewis.
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Super long anti-novel only for the completionists
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In Tome, a small, seemingly sleepy New Mexico hamlet, Sofia and her four fated daughters reveal a world of marvels where the comic and horrific, past and present, real and fantastic coexist and collide. Over two crowded decades, Sofia tries to hold things together following the disappearance of her husband, Domingo, he of the Clark Gable mustache and the uncontrollable gambling habit. Adventurous Esperanza, Chicana campus radical turned television news reporter, travels farthest from home only to be reeled back in spirit.
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What listeners say about The Namesake
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
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- Diana - Audible
- 04-16-12
My favorite book - in print and audio
When I do recommend The Namesake to anyone who’ll listen to me gush, I always warn them that “not a lot happens” in the book. But more importantly, I tell them that it doesn’t matter - Jhumpa Lahiri is that good. She can make the everyday actions of a young man finding his way in the world as captivating as any whodunit with her simply gorgeous prose. This is a novel about real life – about love and family, culture and assimilation – and is just a beautiful story well-told by Lahiri and narrator Sarita Choudhury, who offers the perfect blend of Indian and American accents in her performance.
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42 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Anthony
- 10-07-03
Just wonderful
This is a beautifully written book which is also beautifully read. When you find something this good it is a gift. Enjoy. I look foward to this authors next novel.
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34 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Anjan
- 10-23-03
Hit Home
Wow! I'm a Bengali immigrant from India. It's amazing on how may levels this book hit home. While Jhumpa Lahiri explores the challenges of being an immigrant and the conflicts that arise from being born to immigrant parents, she provides intimate and unromanticized insight into the wonders of a bi-cultural experience. Nice!
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25 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Everett
- 03-17-04
Coming of age story
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this story about two generations of Bengali-Americans. Gogol, the main character, is born in the United States to Bengali immigrants. We follow him as he grows into a young man. As he grows up fails to understand the traditions of his Bengali parents. He even rejects the name they gave him. He is thoroughly American, but as he matures, his acceptance of his parents, their community, and his heritage grows. In many ways, the theme is similar to that in some of Amy Tan's writings about Chinese immigrants and their American born children. The difference is that the reconciliation between elder and adult child comes not through voyages or fantastic stories, but through the normal, believable experiences of parents and children living in the U.S. The narration is superb, with each character having a uniquely identifying voice and/or accent.
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21 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Catherine
- 10-25-03
Painfully boring
The Namesake is a 12 hour description of the dull non-events of an utterly unremarkable man. The protagonist has no conflicts, no decisions to make, no moral dilemmas, absolutely nothing to make you care what happens next. His only challenge in the book is to deal with his given name, which he doesn't care for. Yawn. The writing style is nice and the tidbits on Indian culture were interesting, but it was torture to get through it.
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21 people found this helpful
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Overall
- PJ Winston
- 10-11-07
Beautifully Written, Beautifully Read
I'm amazed when individuals criticize literature written about and read from a cultural perspective. I found this a beautiful portrayal of the experiences of two immigrants from Calcutta and their American born children. I was able to internalize the struggle of keeping one's own culture alive, while adapting in a totally different culture, and what happens when one lives between two worlds--desperately needing to define his cultural identity--not quite feeling totally comfortable in either. In addition, the reader drew me into the book with her voice and intonation, moving from a pronounced Indian accent to having very little accent--when appropriate. I'd highly recommend it.
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20 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Penny
- 11-07-03
A
This was a great book--deserving of a "5". I reserve my "5" ratings only for the special book that comes along rarely! Beautifully written and read.
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9 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Gail N.
- 08-10-07
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.
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7 people found this helpful
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- connie
- 08-21-08
pleasant, not too complicated read
A very captivating description of second generation North American immigrant experience, I think, but not as emotionally gripping or evocative as writers like Vikram Seth or Rohinton Mistry. For instance, when the characters visited Calcutta, I didn't feel like I was "seeing" the city as I see it when other authors evoke a piece of Southeast Asia - but perhaps that was on purpose.
One small detail of a scene encapsulated the whole novel to me - after a party, someone offers her guests not only leftovers of the traditional dishes to take away, but also the cooking pots that contained them. In the same way the younger main characters carry with them bits of their parents' culture, but more than leftovers, they keep "cooking" North American culture as they interact with it, just as their parents' culture remained strong throughout colonialism, but chose to admire and be flavoured by elements of European culture, such as love of classic authors like Gogol translated into English (giving us so many great SE Asian novelists writing in English as well as their own languages -- and on it goes)
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6 people found this helpful
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- Cynthia
- 11-20-11
Incredibly dull book
This book was so well reviewed, and my lifelong friend is the daughter of Indian immigrants, so I thought I would really enjoy the story. Unfortunately I have to agree with several other reviewers who said the book was about nothing. There appeared to be no other issue to the story than the fact that the main character was embarrassed about his name. I kept waiting for something to happen that was not completely mundane. I like a very wide variety of books and never stop reading a book just because it doesn't grab me right away, but this was just painful. I actually find it kind of humorous that so many people loved this book and I think it's just awful. I feel like someone who goes to an art gallery to see some "amazing" painting that everyone is raving about, only to discover it's just a blank white canvas on display!
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5 people found this helpful