A review by alinasknar
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

5.0

The Namesake was one of the stories I knew I would fall in love with before I even opened the book, and to my intuition's appeasement, I did. From the real, three-dimentional characters to the intricate storylines, the novel warmly welcomes a reader into the Ganguli family and their immigrant world. The retelling is set in a sequential, organised manner, allowing the reader to see the full ups and downs of human relationships, the family's both happiest and tragic moments, as well as the real-life development and ageing of the main character, Ganguli's firstborn destined to quite an unorthodox name Gogol. For Gogol, the name becomes throughout the years a blessing, a nuisance and finally a shadowy piece of the long-abandoned past; for his father, the name represents the overcoming of a tragedy, of perseverence. The most interesting part of the novel for me was the contrast between the first-generation immigrant parents and the second-generation, torn-between-two-cultures children.
For readers not deeply familliar with Indian culture, yet its admirers Jhumpa Lahiri does not overwhelm you with too much with culture-specific references or jargon, yet makes the process of getting to know the family and their traditions engaging and personal. This is my first Jhumpa Lahiri novel, and the charm of her delicate writing firmly inspires me to read her other works.