A review by gpettey19
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
5.0
"My grandfather always says that's what books are for...To travel without moving an inch."
Lahiri moved me across oceans, generations, and cultures, yet again in this novel. Shifting between several perspectives of an Indian American family navigating life's unexpected and often challenging circumstances, The Namesake brought me along an emotional journey. The primary narrator ends with a sense of gratitude for what we cannot predict or control in life, and how those events shape us.
This book made me think of how long life is, or can be, of how many twists and turns there are. It made me think of where I once thought I might be at this age and how entirely different the reality is. It's made me consider the value of being open to where our paths lead us rather than rigidly, uselessly preparing ourselves for what may not be our fate.
I'm also drawn to the theme of family, connections across time and space. How variable family and tradition are in the U.S. as compared to other cultures. How much a shared meal, breaking bread together, means.
For being a foreigner, Ashima is beginning to realize, is a sort of lifelong pregnancy -- a perpetual wait, a constant burden, a continuous feeling out of sorts. It is an ongoing responsibility, a parenthesis in what had once been ordinary life, only to discover that that previous life has vanished, replaced by something more complicated and demanding. Like pregnancy, being a foreigner, Ashima believes, is something that elicits the same curiosity from strangers, the same combination of pity and respect.
In so many ways, his family's life feels like a strong of accidents, unforeseen, unintended, on incident begetting another...And yet these events have formed Gogol, shaped him, determined who he is. They were things for which is was impossible to prepare but which one spent a lifetime looking back at, trying to accept, interpret, comprehend. Things that should have never happened, that seemed out of place and wrong, these were what prevailed, what endured, in the end.
Lahiri moved me across oceans, generations, and cultures, yet again in this novel. Shifting between several perspectives of an Indian American family navigating life's unexpected and often challenging circumstances, The Namesake brought me along an emotional journey. The primary narrator ends with a sense of gratitude for what we cannot predict or control in life, and how those events shape us.
This book made me think of how long life is, or can be, of how many twists and turns there are. It made me think of where I once thought I might be at this age and how entirely different the reality is. It's made me consider the value of being open to where our paths lead us rather than rigidly, uselessly preparing ourselves for what may not be our fate.
I'm also drawn to the theme of family, connections across time and space. How variable family and tradition are in the U.S. as compared to other cultures. How much a shared meal, breaking bread together, means.
For being a foreigner, Ashima is beginning to realize, is a sort of lifelong pregnancy -- a perpetual wait, a constant burden, a continuous feeling out of sorts. It is an ongoing responsibility, a parenthesis in what had once been ordinary life, only to discover that that previous life has vanished, replaced by something more complicated and demanding. Like pregnancy, being a foreigner, Ashima believes, is something that elicits the same curiosity from strangers, the same combination of pity and respect.
In so many ways, his family's life feels like a strong of accidents, unforeseen, unintended, on incident begetting another...And yet these events have formed Gogol, shaped him, determined who he is. They were things for which is was impossible to prepare but which one spent a lifetime looking back at, trying to accept, interpret, comprehend. Things that should have never happened, that seemed out of place and wrong, these were what prevailed, what endured, in the end.