Namesake
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri has been a pleasant read for me. Simple prose, smooth narration and down to earth common everyday characters made it a very relatable book.
The story is very simple. Starts with the birth of the hero of our book Gogol and carries on back and forth into the past of his parents and their present. Ashima and Ashok Ganguly are expats in the country of USA and even after living there for many years they cannot call it home. Their children on the other hand struggle with their own identity crisis. They can never relate to Calcutta whenever they visited with their parents nor can they completely feel at home amongst their American friends. However, as the years pass and they grow up, they find their calling in the western world and can finally settle down. The protagonist Gogol a.k.a Nikhil after a name change, has a different struggle of his own with his name which had been given after his father’s favourite Russian author Nikolai Gogol. Growing up he never could understand why he had been named after a self-destructive, suicidal writer and later on when he comes to know the reason and significance, it becomes too late to change back again.
I personally have liked the book because its a story that can happen in anybody’s life. A simple narration of the everyday life of a very common family who can be some friends that we know. The protagonist is not some larger than life hero who faces extraordinary challenges but someone whom we can come face to face in the local metro train. The prose style is not overly complex and moves at a smooth pace with simple words, a writing style that I am a fan of.
The most important reason why I loved the book, I feel, is the way I could relate with the characters, being away from my homeland too. The alienation that the family feels in a distant land made me ask the same questions to myself. Maybe we will also one day find our answers like the characters do. A good read and will certainly recommend.