new york times book review namesake

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Book Review

• Adrienne Young
• Adventure , Coming-of-Age , Fantasy

Readability Age Range

• 12 to 18 years old
• Wednesday Books
• New York Times bestselling author

Year Published

Namesake follows up on the story of Fable (that began in the book of the same name ),the 17-year-old daughter of the most powerful trader in the Narrows. Fable has just found her way to freedom from her powerful father’s entanglements. She’s found a new ship, a new crew, a new love. But all that is short-lived when she’s soon kidnapped and becomes a pawn in a notorious thug’s scheme. And she must figure out how to get it all back.

Plot Summary

In the first book of this series, Fable , the story’s fiery-haired protagonist, had a lot to overcome. At 13, she had been abandoned on a horrible little island by her sea-trader father and left to fend for herself. And with hard work and determination she did just that. While fighting off thieves and cutthroats, she scrabbled her way to a berth on a ship called the Marigold.

Fable had somehow found a ship, a crew and a first love. And at the same time, she was finally able to disentangle herself from the long-reaching tentacles of her father, Saint, the most powerful and heartless trader in the Narrows.

But now, just as Fable has finally gotten a glimpse of true freedom and true love with a wonderful man named West, it’s all snatched away once more. She soon kidnapped by the thuggish Captain Zola, her father’s staunchest rival in the Narrows. She knows that she’s the cheese in some twisted mouse trap that Zola is scheming.

As the days pass and she gains information, however, Fable realizes that there’s so much more than just a rivalry with Saint in play with Zola’s conniving ploy. There are things about her beloved West that she never knew. Secrets of her deceased mother are in the mix, too. There are even ties to a powerful person named Holland, the greatest and most calculating gem trader in all of the port cities. And in some yet unknown way, everything leads back to her: a young nobody who owns, quite literally, nothing.

Fable is still in the dark, but one thing is sure: She needs to be listening carefully, thinking quickly and using whatever meager skills at her command to start making her own moves on the chessboard of happenings around her. Fable may not have a close relationship—or any relationship—with her powerful and brilliant father. But she’ll have to call upon every ounce of savvy she’s inherited from him to beat every one of these sea-going schemers at their own game.

Christian Beliefs

Other belief systems.

In this fantasy world, some sailors still believe in mythological creatures. But we see very little of that in this book. In fact, Fable’s sense of her mother’s spirit in one deep sea area—a sensation that is later determined to have been caused by something completely different—is the only real spiritual reference made.

Authority Roles

Fable’s hard-edged father is back and a bit more approachable this time. In fact, he and Fable find some common ground and even take steps to sacrifice for each other as they slowly rebuild something closer to what we might describe as a relationship. Fable’s mother, Isolde, is a key to this shift. As her secrets are revealed, Fable begins to more clearly understand the twisted world she’s a part of and why some decisions were made.

We find out that West, Fable’s love interest, is much more like Fable’s father than she ever realized. He’s kinder in some ways, but he’s also made deadly and far-less laudable choices that he fears will drive her away from him.

[ Spoiler Warning ] We eventually learn that the incredibly wealthy and powerful Holland is Fable’s grandmother whom she’d never met or known about. And she is a deviously calculating, powerful individual who’s used to snuffing out the life of anyone who gets in her way. She eventually offers to make Fable her heir, but only on her terms. And even when Fable is willing to walk away from all that wealth, Holland still manipulates the situation to her own benefit.

Profanity & Violence

A handful of profanities include the s-word as well as “b–tard,” “h—” and “a–.”

People drink the beer-like beverage Rye on occasion and in some cases get tipsy from it. A sparkling wine called Cava is consumed at a high society gathering.

The world of the Narrows is a dark and violent place. And this time around, we also visit the high-port city of Bastian—a much more cultured and polished metropolis that still masks its own deadliness.

A man is pulled out of a room and killed. We read about a small amount of blood trickling under a closed door. Fable watches as someone in a hammock above her is knifed and then carried up-deck to be thrown overboard. Fable also gets attacked by someone and nearly drowns underwater. The man rakes her leg across sharp coral while trying to strangle her. In another scene several people nearly drown when getting caught in the water during a quickly rising storm. Fable breaks the bones in another woman’s hand and then holds a knife on her.

West reveals his violent past to Fable. He tells her that as a 14-year-old, he strangled a man to death to protect his family. We’re also told that West hurt or killed people while in Saint’s service. And we hear of him attacking and setting fire to ships as he tries to rescue the kidnapped Fable. Throughout this high-seas adventure, a constant sense of peril hangs in the air around the various seaports.

Fable is manhandled and abused (though never sexually). At the very beginning of the story, she’s roughed up and knocked out by several men in a dark alley; she wakes bound with ropes to a masthead.

Sexual Content

Two of the male crewmates onboard the Marigold are a couple. They kiss once. This tale, however, is very much Fable’s romance, as well as an adventure. In the previous book, Fabel and twentysomething West became lovers. And during their earlier separation here, she thinks back on his scent and the feel of his skin. Upon reuniting, the pair embrace and kiss several times. And there is one lovemaking scene that lightly describes their nuzzling caresses. For the most part, though, the novel doesn’t look closely at any sexual interactions.

Discussion Topics

Get free discussion questions for other books at FocusOnTheFamily.com/discuss-books .

What do you think this story is saying about family? Which people in Fable’s life could actually claim that title? Fable is an older teen, but she’s still a teen. What did you think about her romance with the older West? What if the same kind of feelings popped up in your life, how would you handle them?

What lines did Fable cross that you might not? What do you think this book is saying about working through the scars and great losses in our lives? Do you think you could have done all Fable had to do?

Additional Comments

Like the first book in the series, Namesake is an immersive adventure with a likeable female lead. And it could easily be seen as a tale of female empowerment and intelligence working in a fictional world filled with the uber-powerful and the powerless. At the same time, Namesake ’s world is often dangerous and lawless. And the emotional choices made here, while fictional, aren’t always as morally well founded as some parents might want to promote or support. Fable is still a teen, but she’s making very adult decisions in every aspect of her life, including the area of her sexuality.

You can request a review of a title you can’t find at [email protected] .

Book reviews cover the content, themes and worldviews of fiction books, not necessarily their literary merit, and equip parents to decide whether a book is appropriate for their children. The inclusion of a book’s review does not constitute an endorsement by Focus on the Family.

Review by Bob Hoose

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The Namesake: A Novel Paperback – June 4, 2019

Purchase options and add-ons.

• Print length 336 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Mariner Books Classics
• Publication date June 4, 2019
• Reading age 14 years and up
• Dimensions 5.5 x 0.81 x 8.25 inches
• ISBN-10 0358062683
• ISBN-13 978-0358062684
• Lexile measure 1140L
• See all details

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This eagerly anticipated debut novel deftly expands on Lahiri's signature themes of love, solitude and cultural disorientation. Harper's Bazaar This poignant treatment of the immigrant experience is a rich, stimulating fusion of authentic emotion, ironic observation, and revealing details. Library Journal Lahiri's ... deeply knowing, avidly descriptive, and luxuriously paced first novel is equally triumphant [as Interpreter of Maladies]. Booklist, ALA Jhumpa Lahiri expands her Pulitzer Prize-winning short stories of Indian assimilation into her lovely first novel, THE NAMESAKE. Vanity Fair Lahiri weaves an intricate story of ... an Indian family in America. Their bumpy journey to self-acceptance will move you. Marie Claire [Lahiri] weaves an authentic tale of a Bengali family in Boston... [which] powerfully depicts the universal pull of family traditions. Lifetime The casual beauty of the writing keeps the pages turning. Elle ...immaculately written, seamlessly constructed novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of INTERPRETER OF MALADIES. Book Magazine ...remarkably assured first novel. Readers will find here the same elegant, deceptively simple prose that garnered so much praise for her short stories. Bookpage A debut novel that is as assured and eloquent as the work of a longtime master of the craft. The New York Times Gracefully written and filled with well-observed details. People Magazine ...far more authentic and lavishly imagines than many other young writers' best work. TimeOut New York Lahiri is insightful on the complexities of foreignness. Boston Magazine graceful and wonderfully specific prose...A Entertainment Weekly In the world of literature, Lahiri writes like a native. The San Francisco Chronicle generous, exacting portrait of the clash between cultural dictates and one man's heart. Boston Globe Astringent and clear-eyed in thought, vivid in its portraiture, attuned to American particulars and universal yearnings...memorable fiction. Newsday [Lahiri's] writing is assured and patient, inspiring immediate confidence that we are in trustworthy hands. The Los Angeles Times Achingly artful, Jhumpa Lahiri's first novel showcases her prodigious gifts. The Baltimore Sun Lahiri's inventive imagination and mellifluous prose makes her first novel simply wonderful...It's simply splendid. Providence Journal A fine novel from a superb writer The Washington Post A delicate, moving first novel. Time Magazine A debut novel that triumphs in its breadth and mastery. Star Ledger The novel not only proves the author's ease with the longer form but clearly demonstrates her artistic sensibility. News and Observer ...an accomplished novelist of the first rank, to whose further work we can look forward with confidence and excitement The San Diego Union-Tribune ...simple yet richly detailed writing that makes the heart ache as [Lahiri] meticulously unfolds the lives of her characters. USA Today A book to savor, certainly one of the best of the year. Atlanta Journal Constitution [An] exquisitely accomplished novel. San Jose Mercury News ...one of the best works of fiction published this year. The Seattle Times ...leaves its imprint through completely believable, well-drawn characters. Cleveland Plain Dealer a fascinating journey of self-discovery. The Miami Herald Emotionally charged and deeply poignant. Philadelphia Inquirer graceful and beautiful. San Antonio Express-News Lahiri's latest work doesn't disappoint. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel [The Namesake] speaks to the universal struggle to extricate ourselves from the past. Seattle Post-Intelligencer ...in this second book Lahiri's pace and accent a —

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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Mariner Books Classics; Reprint edition (June 4, 2019)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 336 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0358062683
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0358062684
• Reading age ‏ : ‎ 14 years and up
• Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 1140L
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.81 x 8.25 inches
• #76 in Cultural Heritage Fiction
• #283 in Family Saga Fiction
• #1,098 in Literary Fiction (Books)

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About the authors

Jhumpa lahiri.

Jhumpa Lahiri was born in London and raised in Rhode Island. Her debut, internationally-bestselling collection, Interpreter of Maladies, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction, the PEN/Hemingway Award, The New Yorker Debut of the Year award, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Addison Metcalf Award, and a nomination for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. It was translated into twenty-nine languages. Her first novel, The Namesake, was a New York Times Notable Book, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist, and selected as one of the best books of the year by USA Today and Entertainment Weekly, among other publications. Her second collection, Unaccustomed Earth, was a #1 New York Times bestseller; named a best book of the year by The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times, among others; and the recipient of the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. Lahiri was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002 and inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2012.

Mira Nair (born 15 October 1957) is an Indian filmmaker based in New York. Her production company, Mirabai Films, specializes in films for international audiences on Indian society, whether in the economic, social or cultural spheres. Among her best known films are Mississippi Masala, The Namesake, the Golden Lion-winning Monsoon Wedding and Salaam Bombay!, which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

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Caffeinated Book Owl

I live within the pages of my books

Book Review: Namesake by Adrienne Young

Trader. Fighter. Survivor.

With the Marigold ship free of her father, Fable and its crew were set to start over. That freedom is short-lived when she becomes a pawn in a notorious thug’s scheme. In order to get to her intended destination she must help him to secure a partnership with Holland, a powerful gem trader who is more than she seems.

As Fable descends deeper into a world of betrayal and deception she learns that her mother was keeping secrets, and those secrets are now putting the people Fable cares about in danger. If Fable is going to save them then she must risk everything, including the boy she loves and the home she has finally found.

Filled with action, emotion, and lyrical writing,  New York Times  bestselling author Adrienne Young returns with  Namesake , the final book in the captivating Fable duology.

Title:  Namesake Author: Adrienne Young Genre:  YA Fantasy Format:  Digital ARC Publisher:  Wednesday Books Date Published: March 16th, 2021 Rating: 4//5 Owls

I’m a huge fan of Adrienne Young’s books, but in my opinion she struggles a bit with sequels. Technically a companion sequel, but The Girl the Sea Gave Back, although a good book, wasn’t nearly as good as Sky In The Deep. I absolutely loved Fable, but to me Namesake falls just a little short of its predecessor.

Namesake picks up right where Fable ended, and we’re immediately thrown back into Fable’s journey. Fable has just been captured by Zola, and has no idea what he wants from her, and to make things worse – her fathers first mate, his confidant, Clove, is by his side.

I loved seeing more of these characters and other characters that were only briefly mentioned/seen in Fable. In addition to more of Zola and Clove, we got Holland, Ryland, and Koy. I loved seeing these characters get more development and more screen time (what is the literary equivalent of screen time? page time?) and trying to figure out their morals and what side they’re on.

One thing I did not like with the introduction of all these characters – we got a lot less of the crew of The Marigold and Fable’s found family. They had a lot more issues in this book, and it was disappointing to see them never get resolved properly. They were separated for so much of the novel, and I just wanted more of them together. Funnily enough, on that same thought, one of my least favorite things about this story was how much it did focus on relationships. Fable’s relationships with Clove, Saint, West, Koy, and Holland were the main focus of the novel. There wasn’t nearly as much plot or moving forward, the dynamic shifted from “trying to reunite with Saint/Control the Narrows/etc” to more of a character driven story and Fable finding her place amongst the chaos surrounding her.

There was SOME plot with these new characters, and the search for Midnight, but these things did seem to fall in the background a little from the character development. I would have loved to see more action in this world. Although, the search for Midnight and the various people that wanted it was wonderfully paced and exciting to read. (I’m really trying not to spoil things in this review, its proving a bit tricky!)

Speaking of the world however, Adrienne Young did a phenomenal job with world building, and I loved every moment of seeing the place she created. As the area that we get to see expanded, Young wrote it in such a beautiful and descriptive way that I truly felt like I understood this pirate land and I want to see even more of it. I would adore seeing spin-off series set in the same place one day. (Maybe one focused on Willa?!)

Overall, I did love this book. The world was rich and exciting and I loved seeing more of Fable’s adventure. Although I thought it focused a little too much on characters, I truly enjoyed the journey. There were some wonderful moments between Fable and Saint, and I liked seeing characters cross the boundaries of good and bad and be more morally grey characters. My favorite new character was Holland – and although I really want to talk more about her its hard to do so without spoiling some major things. She’s terrible, corrupt, but she’s also completely badass and goes after what she wants – no matter the cost or who she has to betray. I’m a huge fan of likable villains, and she hit all the right marks for me on that front. Even Saint, who I absolutely hated in the first book (seriously who abandons their child like that?!!?) proved that there’s a lot more to him than we originally thought.

I highly recommend this book, even though I didn’t love every aspect of it. It’s a good follow up to Fable and I cannot wait to see what Adrienne Young does next!

*Thank You NetGalley for the Advanced Copy of Namesake. All Opinions are my own.

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THE NAMESAKE

by Jhumpa Lahiri ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 16, 2003

A disappointingly bland follow-up to a stellar story collection.

A first novel from Pulitzer-winner Lahiri (stories: Interpreter of Maladies , 1999) focuses on the divide between Indian immigrants and their Americanized children.

The action takes place in and around Boston and New York between 1968 and 2000. As it begins, Ashoke Ganguli and his pregnant young wife Ashima are living in Cambridge while he does research at MIT. Their marriage was arranged in Calcutta: no problem. What is a problem is naming their son. Years before in India, a book by Gogol had saved Ashoke’s life in a train wreck, so he wants to name the boy Gogol. The matter becomes contentious and is hashed out at tedious length. Gogol grows to hate his name, and at 18 the Beatles-loving Yale freshman changes it officially to Nikhil. His father is now a professor outside Boston; his parents socialize exclusively with other middle-class Bengalis. The outward-looking Gogol, however, mixes easily with non-Indian Americans like his first girlfriend Ruth, another Yalie. Though Lahiri writes with painstaking care, her dry synoptic style fails to capture the quirkiness of relationships. Many scenes cry out for dialogue that would enable her characters to cut loose from a buttoned-down world in which much is documented but little revealed. After an unspecified quarrel, Ruth exits. Gogol goes to work as an architect in New York and meets Maxine, a book editor who seems his perfect match. Then his father dies unexpectedly—the kind of death that fills in for lack of plot—and he breaks up with Maxine, who like Ruth departs after a reported altercation (nothing verbatim). Girlfriend number three is an ultrasophisticated Indian academic with as little interest in Bengali culture as Gogol; these kindred spirits marry, but the restless Moushumi proves unfaithful. The ending finds the namesake alone, about to read the Russian Gogol for the first time.

Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2003

ISBN: 0-395-92721-8

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2003

LITERARY FICTION

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BOOK REVIEW

by Jhumpa Lahiri ; translated by Jhumpa Lahiri with Todd Portnowitz

by Jhumpa Lahiri

by Domenico Starnone ; translated by Jhumpa Lahiri

HOUSE OF LEAVES

by Mark Z. Danielewski ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 6, 2000

The story's very ambiguity steadily feeds its mysteriousness and power, and Danielewski's mastery of postmodernist and...

An amazingly intricate and ambitious first novel - ten years in the making - that puts an engrossing new spin on the traditional haunted-house tale.

Texts within texts, preceded by intriguing introductory material and followed by 150 pages of appendices and related "documents" and photographs, tell the story of a mysterious old house in a Virginia suburb inhabited by esteemed photographer-filmmaker Will Navidson, his companion Karen Green (an ex-fashion model), and their young children Daisy and Chad.  The record of their experiences therein is preserved in Will's film The Davidson Record - which is the subject of an unpublished manuscript left behind by a (possibly insane) old man, Frank Zampano - which falls into the possession of Johnny Truant, a drifter who has survived an abusive childhood and the perverse possessiveness of his mad mother (who is institutionalized).  As Johnny reads Zampano's manuscript, he adds his own (autobiographical) annotations to the scholarly ones that already adorn and clutter the text (a trick perhaps influenced by David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest ) - and begins experiencing panic attacks and episodes of disorientation that echo with ominous precision the content of Davidson's film (their house's interior proves, "impossibly," to be larger than its exterior; previously unnoticed doors and corridors extend inward inexplicably, and swallow up or traumatize all who dare to "explore" their recesses).  Danielewski skillfully manipulates the reader's expectations and fears, employing ingeniously skewed typography, and throwing out hints that the house's apparent malevolence may be related to the history of the Jamestown colony, or to Davidson's Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of a dying Vietnamese child stalked by a waiting vulture.  Or, as "some critics [have suggested,] the house's mutations reflect the psychology of anyone who enters it."

Pub Date: March 6, 2000

ISBN: 0-375-70376-4

Page Count: 704

Publisher: Pantheon

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2000

More by Mark Z. Danielewski

by Mark Z. Danielewski

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NORMAL PEOPLE

by Sally Rooney ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 16, 2019

Absolutely enthralling. Read it.

A young Irish couple gets together, splits up, gets together, splits up—sorry, can't tell you how it ends!

Irish writer Rooney has made a trans-Atlantic splash since publishing her first novel, Conversations With Friends , in 2017. Her second has already won the Costa Novel Award, among other honors, since it was published in Ireland and Britain last year. In outline it's a simple story, but Rooney tells it with bravura intelligence, wit, and delicacy. Connell Waldron and Marianne Sheridan are classmates in the small Irish town of Carricklea, where his mother works for her family as a cleaner. It's 2011, after the financial crisis, which hovers around the edges of the book like a ghost. Connell is popular in school, good at soccer, and nice; Marianne is strange and friendless. They're the smartest kids in their class, and they forge an intimacy when Connell picks his mother up from Marianne's house. Soon they're having sex, but Connell doesn't want anyone to know and Marianne doesn't mind; either she really doesn't care, or it's all she thinks she deserves. Or both. Though one time when she's forced into a social situation with some of their classmates, she briefly fantasizes about what would happen if she revealed their connection: "How much terrifying and bewildering status would accrue to her in this one moment, how destabilising it would be, how destructive." When they both move to Dublin for Trinity College, their positions are swapped: Marianne now seems electric and in-demand while Connell feels adrift in this unfamiliar environment. Rooney's genius lies in her ability to track her characters' subtle shifts in power, both within themselves and in relation to each other, and the ways they do and don't know each other; they both feel most like themselves when they're together, but they still have disastrous failures of communication. "Sorry about last night," Marianne says to Connell in February 2012. Then Rooney elaborates: "She tries to pronounce this in a way that communicates several things: apology, painful embarrassment, some additional pained embarrassment that serves to ironise and dilute the painful kind, a sense that she knows she will be forgiven or is already, a desire not to 'make a big deal.' " Then: "Forget about it, he says." Rooney precisely articulates everything that's going on below the surface; there's humor and insight here as well as the pleasure of getting to know two prickly, complicated people as they try to figure out who they are and who they want to become.

Pub Date: April 16, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-984-82217-8

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Hogarth

Review Posted Online: Feb. 17, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019

More by Sally Rooney

by Sally Rooney

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The Namesake

• 4.4 • 55 Ratings

Publisher Description

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER. Pulitzer Prize winner Jhumpa Lahiri brilliantly illuminates the immigrant experience and the tangled ties between generations. Namesake is a fine-tuned, intimate, and deeply felt novel of identity from “a writer of uncommon elegance and poise.” (The New York Times) Meet the Ganguli family, new arrivals from Calcutta, trying their best to become Americans even as they pine for home. The name they bestow on their firstborn, Gogol, betrays all the conflicts of honoring tradition in a new world — conflicts that will haunt Gogol on his own winding path through divided loyalties, comic detours, and wrenching love affairs. "Dazzling...An intimate, closely observed family portrait."—The New York Times "Hugely appealing."—People Magazine "An exquisitely detailed family saga."—Entertainment Weekly

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY JUL 7, 2003

One of the most anticipated books of the year, Lahiri's first novel (after 1999's Pulitzer Prize winning Interpreter of Maladies) amounts to less than the sum of its parts. Hopscotching across 25 years, it begins when newlyweds Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli emigrate to Cambridge, Mass., in 1968, where Ashima immediately gives birth to a son, Gogol a pet name that becomes permanent when his formal name, traditionally bestowed by the maternal grandmother, is posted in a letter from India, but lost in transit. Ashoke becomes a professor of engineering, but Ashima has a harder time assimilating, unwilling to give up her ties to India. A leap ahead to the '80s finds the teenage Gogol ashamed of his Indian heritage and his unusual name, which he sheds as he moves on to college at Yale and graduate school at Columbia, legally changing it to Nikhil. In one of the most telling chapters, Gogol moves into the home of a family of wealthy Manhattan WASPs and is initiated into a lifestyle idealized in Ralph Lauren ads. Here, Lahiri demonstrates her considerable powers of perception and her ability to convey the discomfort of feeling "other" in a world many would aspire to inhabit. After the death of Gogol's father interrupts this interlude, Lahiri again jumps ahead a year, quickly moving Gogol into marriage, divorce and a role as a dutiful if a bit guilt-stricken son. This small summary demonstrates what is most flawed about the novel: jarring pacing that leaves too many emotional voids between chapters. Lahiri offers a number of beautiful and moving tableaus, but these fail to coalesce into something more than a modest family saga. By any other writer, this would be hailed as a promising debut, but it fails to clear the exceedingly high bar set by her previous work.

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I read this book for a college course that I’m taking and I didn’t expect to enjoy it as much as I did. It’s a great story about change and growing up. It’s a coming of age story that centralizes its focus on family. It started off as a chore to read, but quickly became something more! Worth a look!

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Reviews of The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

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The Namesake

by Jhumpa Lahiri

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• Literary Fiction
• New England, USA
• Generational Sagas
• Coming of Age
• Immigrants & Expats
• Asian Authors

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Book Summary

Lahiri enriches the themes that made her collection, The Interpreter of Maladies, an international bestseller: the immigrant experience, the clash of cultures, the conflicts of assimilation and, most poignantly, the tangled ties between generations.

Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies established this young writer as one the most brilliant of her generation. Her stories are one of the very few debut works -- and only a handful of collections -- to have won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Among the many other awards and honors it received were the New Yorker Debut of the Year award, the PEN/Hemingway Award, and the highest critical praise for its grace, acuity, and compassion in detailing lives transported from India to America. In The Namesake , Lahiri enriches the themes that made her collection an international bestseller: the immigrant experience, the clash of cultures, the conflicts of assimilation, and, most poignantly, the tangled ties between generations. Here again Lahiri displays her deft touch for the perfect detail -- the fleeting moment, the turn of phrase -- that opens whole worlds of emotion. The Namesake takes the Ganguli family from their tradition-bound life in Calcutta through their fraught transformation into Americans. On the heels of their arranged wedding, Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli settle together in Cambridge, Massachusetts. An engineer by training, Ashoke adapts far less warily than his wife, who resists all things American and pines for her family. When their son is born, the task of naming him betrays the vexed results of bringing old ways to the new world. Named for a Russian writer by his Indian parents in memory of a catastrophe years before, Gogol Ganguli knows only that he suffers the burden of his heritage as well as his odd, antic name. Lahiri brings great empathy to Gogol as he stumbles along the first-generation path, strewn with conflicting loyalties, comic detours, and wrenching love affairs. With penetrating insight, she reveals not only the defining power of the names and expectations bestowed upon us by our parents, but also the means by which we slowly, sometimes painfully, come to define ourselves. The New York Times has praised Lahiri as "a writer of uncommon elegance and poise." The Namesake is a fine-tuned, intimate, and deeply felt novel of identity.

1968 On a sticky August evening two weeks before her due date, Ashima Ganguli stands in the kitchen of a Central Square apartment, combining Rice Krispies and Planters peanuts and chopped red onion in a bowl. She adds salt, lemon juice, thin slices of green chili pepper, wishing there were mustard oil to pour into the mix. Ashima has been consuming this concoction throughout her pregnancy, a humble approximation of the snack sold for pennies on Calcutta sidewalks and on railway platforms throughout India, spilling from newspaper cones. Even now that there is barely space inside her, it is the one thing she craves. Tasting from a cupped palm, she frowns; as usual, there’s something missing. She stares blankly at the pegboard behind the countertop where her cooking utensils hang, all slightly coated with grease. She wipes sweat from her face with the free end of her sari. Her swollen feet ache against speckled gray linoleum. Her pelvis aches from the baby’s weight....

Please be aware that this discussion guide will contain spoilers!

• The Namesake opens with Ashima Ganguli trying to make a spicy Indian snack from American ingredients — Rice Krispies and Planters peanuts — but "as usual, there's something missing." How does Ashima try and make over her home in Cambridge to remind her of what she's left behind in Calcutta? Throughout The Namesake , how does Jhumpa Lahiri use food and clothing to explore cultural transitions — especially through rituals, like the annaprasan, the rice ceremony? Some readers have said that Lahiri's writing makes them crave the meals she evokes so beautifully. What memories or desires does Lahiri bring up for you? Does her writing ever make you "hunger"?
• The title The Namesake reflects the struggles Gogol Ganguli goes ...
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The Namesake: A Book Review

• Monday, October 12, 2020

Pulitzer prize winning author Jhumpa Lahiri’s first novel,  The Namesake ,  narrates three decades of the lives of Ashoke and Ashima Ganguly as they leave India and settle down in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the 1960’s.

Library Journal describes the novel as, “this poignant treatment of the immigrant experience, which is a rich, stimulating fusion of authentic emotion, ironic observation, and revealing details.” Booklist review says, “Lahiri's deeply knowing, avidly descriptive, and luxuriously paced first novel is equally triumphant as Interpreter of Maladies”

The newlyweds had an arranged marriage and now they must navigate life in a new land while still getting to know each other. Ashok is busy with his work at MIT and Ashima’s heart twinges with pangs of loneliness. She has an intense yearning for the people and the places she has left behind.

In the first chapter we see Ashima pregnant with her first child, craving a spicy Indian snack sold by street vendors on roadsides in Kolkata. She cannot find puffed rice, so she tries to recreate the snack using rice krispies cereal instead. Ashima feels that being a foreigner “is a sort of lifelong pregnancy -- a perpetual wait, a constant burden, a continuous feeling out of sorts.''

 Ashoke is a voracious reader, he reads while walking in crowded traffic too and his mother is convinced that he “would be hit by a bus or a tram, his nose deep in War and Peace. That he would be reading a book the moment he died” Her prophecy almost comes true as Ashoke is in a terrible train accident saved only because he was holding a copy of Nikolai Gogol’s book of short stories, pages of which fluttered and caught the attention of rescuers.

Ashoke names his son 'Gogol' as he realizes that “being rescued from that shattered train had been the first miracle of his life” and his baby “reposing in his arms” is the second.

Shakespeare’s quote, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet” does not really hold true. A name is an integral part of our identity. For young Gogol, struggling between the crossroads of Indian and American cultures, the added complication of having a Russian name truly confounds him and adds to his awkwardness. When some classmates mispronounce his name as 'Giggle' or 'Gargle', it adds to his misery as well.

Ashima adapts to her new home and the friendship of fellow transplanted Bengalis in the foreign land helps her adjust to a new life. Gogol has a sister named Shonali aka Sonia who is his friend and partner in crime. The family assimilates while pursuing the American dream and celebrates Thanksgiving and Christmas while living in a decent suburb. 

Ashoke is an introvert and as much as he loves his family, he is not expressive and does not reveal to Gogol the significant story behind his name until much later.  As soon as Gogol turns eighteen, he changes his name to Nikhil and immediately feels liberated like a newer and freer person who has shed the weight of his old life.

Gogol studies architecture at Yale and then works as an architect in New York. He has three relationships, the first with Ruth, the second with Maxine and then he marries Moushumi. Gogol and Moushumi have always distanced themselves from their Indian roots, rejecting any plans to marry within their race. When they unexpectedly hit it off on their first meeting, they feel happy that they are   ''fulfilling a collective, deep-seated desire'' on the part of their families.  The love story of Gogol with each of the girls is beautifully described complete with how they meet, what draws them together, moments of love and passion and finally, heartbreak and disconnection.  

I can completely identify with and relate to Ashima as my story is the same as hers. My husband and I had an arranged marriage too and we immigrated to America soon after. When she talks about her mother’s “salesmanship” in successfully ‘singing her praises’ to the groom’s family when their marriage was being arranged, when she remembers how the whole family came to the airport in India to wave them goodbye, I had familiar flashbacks from exactly similar experiences in my life.

My hometown Jamshedpur is mentioned twice in the novel and just seeing its name in print gave me a thrill. It is the city where Ashoke was headed to when he had his train accident. I have lived in Boston and I have lived in Kolkata for three years each and I love both of those cities.

Ashima goes on to work part time at a public library and her nick name is Monu. My name is Mona and I work in a public library too!

I could really connect to this book and my immersion in the character of Ashima was so complete that when an unexpected tragedy hits her, it upset me deeply. I had to close the book and put it down as I started crying uncontrollably. A little later, I resumed reading the book with a heavy heart.

There are thousands of Ashimas in America and on behalf of all of them I would like to thank Jhumpa Lahiri for creating this character, who in essence, is all of us.

This novel is not just a relatable read for immigrants, it is also an elegantly told family saga with universal themes; of love, of the profound relationship between a father and a son, of teenage angst, of feeling pulled by different worlds yet not completely belonging to either, of the unpredictability of life and relationships and of endings which are real and not always happily ever after.

Click on the book cover below to access this book in the Richland Library catalog.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

If you are interested in fiction from India do browse these booklists:

31 Outstanding Fiction Books by Indian Authors

Read a Book by a South Asian Author - India

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The snack craved by Ashima in the novel is called Jhal Muri. Jhal means spicy and muri is puffed rice. It is a concoction of dry roasted puffed rice, fried peanuts, diced boiled potatoes, diced - onions, green chillies, cilantro and tomatoes. A little mustard oil is added for a pungent kick along with pinches of salt, black salt, cumin powder and chilli powder. Some lemon juice is added at the end.

Puffed rice and mustard oil is available in Indian grocery stores. In India, this snack is sold by vendors on roadsides and trains. It is served in newspaper cones and that authentic taste is hard to replicate at home. For a more detailed recipe click on the link below.

Jhalmuri step by step video recipe

Research and Readers Advisory Professional

Loves learning about other cultures and broadening her reading horizons through a vast selection of multicultural fiction.

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Macy’s tops expectations for the first quarter as luxury and beauty sales shine

FILE - A pedestrian walks near a Macy’s store in San Francisco on March 17, 2024. Macy’s reports earning on Tuesday, May 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)

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NEW YORK (AP) — Macy’s sales and profits fell during the first quarter as higher costs and other financial challenges had customers pulling back on spending.

Yet the quarterly results Tuesday beat Wall Street expectations. And Macy’s, which also operates upscale Bloomingdale’s and beauty chain Bluemercury, said it is seeing a positive impact from its turnaround efforts that include closing underperforming stores and upgrading others. Macy’s also raised its annual outlook.

Americans are still spending but they’re getting more selective and are also more likely to wait until something goes on sale. Retailers are also seeing higher delinquency rates in their credit card businesses.

CEO Tony Spring, who took over in February, said that all income groups are being more thoughtful with their spending. Bloomingdale’s, for example, registered weaker sales in luxury handbags and shoes as consumers shift to less expensive collections.

Higher income customers are focusing on their interests and passions, Spring said, while customers in the lower tier are starting to make choices increasingly with rent and family obligations in mind.

“I expect the consumer to remain under pressure,” Spring said during a call with industry analysts Tuesday. “We’ve got a big year in front of us. Maybe there will be rate cuts. But it’s an uncertain environment, and I think our job is not to assume anything different on the things we don’t control.”

Macy’s is accelerating the expansion of its new, small-format stores, while closing locations where sales have lagged.

The company is opening 30 small-format locations through the fall of 2025, nearly tripling the current count to roughly 42. Macy’s believes the smaller stores are more convenient for customers. It’s closing 150 unproductive stores over the next three years, a third of them by end of 2024.

At the same time Macy’s is upgrading its remaining 350 traditional stores, adding more salespeople to fitting areas and shoe departments, and adding more visual displays. It is also pivoting more to luxury sales, which have held up better overall. Macy’s said it will open 15 higher end Bloomingdale’s stores and 30 luxury Bluemercury cosmetics locations to cater to customers seeking higher end services and goods.

Macy’s reported earnings of $62 million, or 22 cents per share for the quarter ended May 4. That compares with $155 million, or 56 cents per share in the year-ago period.

Adjusted per share earnings were 27 cents, or 11 cents better than Wall Street was looking for, according to a survey by FactSet.

Revenue dipped 2.7% to $4.85 billion, but that also topped analyst projections of $4.82 billion,

Comparable store sales— those from online channels and from established stores — fell 1.2%, excluding licensed businesses like cosmetics and its third-party marketplace.

Macy’s comparable sales fell 1.6%. Bluemercury comparable sales jumped 4.3% and Bloomingdale’s comparable sales rose 0.8%.

Macy’s said that its first 50 traditional locations that have been revamped achieved comparable sales gains of 3.3% in the quarter, excluding licensed and third-party businesses. Spring calls them the “leading indicator” of its business in the future.

Quarterly credit card revenues declined by $45 million to $117 million, Macy’s said, in part due to higher delinquency rates.

Macy’s is under pressure by investors to accelerate growth. In April, it named two independent directors to its board backed by Arkhouse Management, ending for now a push by the activist investor to replace most of the board and eventually, acquire the iconic department store chain.

Macy’s shares fell less than a percent in early trading.

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‘Tits Up’ Aims to Show Breasts a Respect Long Overdue

The sociologist Sarah Thornton visits strip clubs, milk banks and cosmetic surgeons with the goal of shoring up appreciation for women’s breasts.

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By Lucinda Rosenfeld

Lucinda Rosenfeld, a novelist and essayist, is the author of five books, including “Class.”

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TITS UP: What Sex Workers, Milk Bankers, Plastic Surgeons, Bra Designers, and Witches Tell Us About Breasts, by Sarah Thornton

It’s a testament to the sociologist Sarah Thornton’s central thesis — women’s breasts are unjustly sexualized, trivialized and condescended to — that I expected her new book, “Tits Up,” to be a light read. In fact, her impassioned polemic makes a convincing case that the derogatory way Western culture views tits (Thornton contrasts her chosen slang with the relatively “silly” and “foolish” boobs ) helps perpetuate the patriarchy.

Breasts have been seen as “visible obstacles to equality, associated with nature and nurture rather than reason and power,” Thornton announces upfront. Over five, sometimes fascinating, sometimes frustrating chapters, each examining mammaries in a different context, “Tits Up” asks readers to reimagine the bosom, no matter its size and shape, as a site of empowerment and even divinity.

The author of a similarly discursive survey of the early 2000s art world , Thornton arrived at her new topic not entirely by choice. In 2018, after one too many stressful biopsies, she underwent a double mastectomy. But neither a fraught origin story nor Thornton’s argument that women are unfairly restrained by their mammalian status prevents “Tits Up” from being funny, too. Keen to make peace with her larger than expected implants — Thornton had requested more modest “lesbian yoga boobs” — she names her new pair Ernie and Bert.

The three of them soon hit the research road.

First stop: the Condor, a historic strip club in San Francisco, where Thornton interviews a racially and size-diverse group of strippers, who paint a relatively sunny portrait of a notoriously sleazy industry. Additional interviews with feminist sex activists and performance artists such as Annie Sprinkle — if you’re in need of a good laugh, Google “ Bosom Ballet ” — lead Thornton to conclude that, even when breasts are targets of overt objectification (after all, most patrons of topless bars are male), they might be thought of less as “sex toys” than as “salaried assistants.”

Feminists have been fighting about what’s now known as “sex work” for as long as feminism has been around. Thornton comes down squarely on the side of the workers. But she goes further than that. “I think the most fundamental issue inhibiting women’s autonomy — our right to choose what we do with our bodies — is the state’s policing of sex work,” she writes. “If some women can’t sell their bodies, then none of us actually own our bodies.” Reading these lines, I admit my first thought was, Huh? Should women’s ability to prostitute themselves really be the measure of our liberation?

But the chapter that follows, a cri de coeur on behalf of breastfeeding and the legacy of communal “allomothers” — women who nurse children who are not their own — seems to make a counterargument in favor of configuring breasts outside both capitalism and sexuality. After interviewing the women who run, provide and reap the benefits of a San Jose-based nonprofit milk “reservoir” (Thornton prefers the term to “bank”), she writes, “In a capitalist society where women’s breasts are commodified like no other body part, here their jugs are the key players in an economy that is not about money.”

It’s to Thornton’s credit that, her polemical tone notwithstanding, she is open-minded enough to entertain paradoxes. (And entertain she does.) While she despairs at the discouraging lingo that surrounds nursing — “milk letdown” comes in for particular condemnation — she admits to having felt conflicted while breastfeeding her own, now grown, children, insofar as the practice evoked for her the enervating specter of the selfless mother.

Semantics are at the heart of “Tits Up,” as Thornton rightly notes that the words we use inform the ideologies we subscribe to. But, again, the contradictions mount. Even as Thornton employs trans-activist-approved jargon such as “AMAB,” for assigned male at birth, and insists that both men and women have breasts, she draws the line at the term “chest feeding,” pointing out that “the expression obfuscates the highly gendered history of this maternal labor.”

Is it highly gendered or highly sexed? Either women’s lives are too much hampered by the fetishization and fear of their anatomy, or — paging Judith Butler — sexual difference is socially constructed and therefore, at least in theory, susceptible to change. I don’t quite see how these arguments can coexist.

Another research trip lands Thornton in the studio of a mass-market bra designer, where she decides that, although the brassiere is an impressive feat of engineering designed to make women feel safe, it’s past time we stopped hiding our nipples. In the operating room of a high-end plastic surgeon who performs augmentations, lifts and reductions, she concludes that breast alterations are not simply capitulations to normative beauty standards. Instead, such procedures might be understood in terms of female agency — as gestures that exist outside the logic of resistance or submission. Finally, she attends a neo-pagan retreat for women in the California redwoods, where she reflects on how alternative spiritual practices provide more space for aging female bodies — the kind of woman once referred to as a “crone” — and fantasizes half in jest about a world where saggy breasts are regarded as “sagacious.”

Drawing on her art history background, Thornton also leads us on an enlightening tour of female deities and their bosoms, including the Greek goddess of the hunt, Artemis (frequently depicted with multiple breasts); a Buddhist goddess of compassion, Guanyin (always portrayed as pancake flat); and the Virgin Mary, who, in portraits of her nursing baby Jesus, often appears to have only one boob. (Go figure.)

What does it all add up to? “Women have no federal right to breastfeed or to obtain an abortion, but we have the right to fake tits,” Thornton writes, noting that since 1998 health insurance companies have been required to pay for breast implants following medically necessary mastectomies. But what would a “federal right to breastfeed” look like, anyway? This declaration is among countless thought-provoking ones in this deceptively trenchant if inconsistently argued treatise. In any event, I eagerly await the sequel: “Asses Down”?

TITS UP : What Sex Workers, Milk Bankers, Plastic Surgeons, Bra Designers, and Witches Tell Us About Breasts | By Sarah Thornton | Norton | 307 pp. | $28.99

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