The Namesake (Jhumpa Lahiri)

Now I don't wonder why Lahiri won the Pulitzer prize, and I haven't even yet read The Interpreter of Maladies, her debut collection of fiction that took that prize . The Namesake transported me so completely into a world I've never been and yet longed to be for much, much longer than the final page. Her description, the sensation of touching, of feeling, of tasting were powerful, as were the turns of phrase that persisted beyond each page turned, lay deep in the recesses of my mind, digesting, resonating those truths of what she'd written. For me, it wasn't merely a coming of age novel, a story of a boy from an Indian American family in the US, it was the story of growing up in a family who have all the right intentions, but who don't realize how suffocating a life pre-determined with high expectations can be, how difficult trying to make a life apart remains. Yet, the first generation of an immigrant is a powerful story, and Gogol is the central figure, even though we meet and live in the lives of his parents in the beginning of the book--Ashima and Ashoke. Once he's born, it's Gogol who embodies the first-born immigrant whose life is pulled between the world his parents recreate of India in a suburb of Boston and the America he's known all of his life. All of this and a curious namesake, given to him by his father because of a tragedy he'd lived long ago and never told to his son he'd named. To Gogol, his name is meaningless, ridiculous until at the age of 18 he learns the true history of his name. A name perhaps more powerful because he changes this name to a "good name," a name his parents had intended all along for him to use outside the home. His other name--Gogol--would be more intimate, more familiar, for family only. And it's that namesake that leaves a powerful final message as the book ends, too.