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Binding: HardcoverDewey Decimal Number: 791.4372 EAN: 9781557047410 ISBN: 1557047413 Label: Newmarket Manufacturer: Newmarket Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 144 Publication Date: December 18, 2006 Publisher: Newmarket Studio: Newmarket Editorial Review: Amazon.com Review: Any talk of The Namesake--Jhumpa Lahiri's follow-up to her Pulitzer Prize-winning debut, Interpreter of Maladies--must begin with a name: Gogol Ganguli. Born to an Indian academic and his wife, Gogol is afflicted from birth with a name that is neither Indian nor American nor even really a first name at all. He is given the name by his father who, before he came to America to study at MIT, was almost killed in a train wreck in India. Rescuers caught sight of the volume of Nikolai Gogol's short stories that he held, and hauled him from the train. Ashoke gives his American-born son the name as a kind of placeholder, and the awkward thing sticks. Awkwardness is Gogol's birthright. He grows up a bright American boy, goes to Yale, has pretty girlfriends, becomes a successful architect, but like many second-generation immigrants, he can never quite find his place in the world. There's a lovely section where he dates a wealthy, cultured young Manhattan woman who lives with her charming parents. They fold Gogol into their easy, elegant life, but even here he can find no peace and he breaks off the relationship. His mother finally sets him up on a blind date with the daughter of a Bengali friend, and Gogol thinks he has found his match. Moushumi, like Gogol, is at odds with the Indian-American world she inhabits. She has found, however, a circuitous escape: "At Brown, her rebellion had been academic ... she'd pursued a double major in French. Immersing herself in a third language, a third culture, had been her refuge--she approached French, unlike things American or Indian, without guilt, or misgiving, or expectation of any kind." Lahiri documents these quiet rebellions and random longings with great sensitivity. There's no cleverness or showing-off in The Namesake, just beautifully confident storytelling. Gogol's story is neither comedy nor tragedy; it's simply that ordinary, hard-to-get-down-on-paper commodity: real life. --Claire Dederer Product Description: Original essays and glorious photography, stunningly designed in this unique moviebook from the director of Monsoon Wedding and Vanity Fair—a Fox Searchlight release. In her essay "Writing and Film," the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Jhumpa Lahiri writes about the experience of seeing her novel "transposed" from paper to film. "Its essence remains, but it inhabits a different realm and must, like a transposed piece of music, conform to a different set of rules….To have someone as devoted and as gifted as Mira reinvent my novel…has been a humbling and thrilling passage." Mira Nair's essay, "Photographs as Inspiration," begins with the provocative comment: "If it weren't for photography, I wouldn't be a filmmaker." She explains how photographs help her crystallize the visual style of her films and which particular photos influenced her vision for The Namesake. These two essays, written exclusively for this Newmarket Pictorial Moviebook, introduce an amazing panoply of images of people and places shot mainly in New York and Calcutta during the making of the movie, accented by excerpts from Lahiri's bestselling novel. Six Indian and American photographers' works are represented. Brilliantly illuminating the immigrant experience and the tangled ties between generations, The Namesake tells the story of the Ganguli family, whose move from Calcutta to New York evokes a lifelong balancing act to adapt to a new world while remembering the old. The couple's firstborn, Gogol, and sister Sonia grow up amid these divided loyalties, struggling to find their own identity without losing their heritage. Kal Penn (Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle, Superman Returns) stars as Gogol. Average Rating:
 Rating:  - You felt like you knew these peopleShe captures little idiosyncracies that are really authentic. You get attached to the characters. The ending (I don't want to spoil it for you so I wont tell you what happens at the end) makes you think wait what just happened. Rating: - not as good as the short story collectionsThe Namesake, the first novel by Jhumpa Lahiri, is written in a deceptively simple style. It is a very well crafter novel that both explores the role of Indians in America, and tells the story of a family over several decades. Unfortunately, I have to say that I was somewhat disappointed by the novel. Lahiri's collection of stories, "The Interpreter of Maladies" had a much larger impact on me. A version of "The Namesake" also appeared as a short story ... Read More Rating: - A great and superbly written story Jhumpa Lahiri writes about a very interesting and commonly neglected new American phenomenon: the rise of the Indian-American middle class. This book is about cultures, values, life and death, love and misery. It is about America. It is about India. It is also universal. Lahiri writes with style and elegance. Despite the verbose, I was engaged on the story and how it unfolded. "Namesake" is a great reading. Rating:  - DisappointingFriends say that I should have read "Interpreter of Maladies" first, since this book isn't a reflection of the author's real talent. Unfortunately, I was so disappointed by this book that it will take quite a nudge to get me to read her earlier books. This book is boring, prose uninspired and characters one dimensional. What did I learn about the characters? Only Gogol's parents were half-way interesting and all we get about them is present tense, descriptive reporting on their past and current ... Read More Rating: - Tale of a 1st generation Indian immigrant - different!I read this book because my daughter's freshman college class was asked to read it, so I knew it must be something pretty special. It's not a book I would have been likely to pick up otherwise. Though my grandfather was a first generation Italian, I think the book was so unique to me because I knew very little about the Indian culture. It was a beautifully told story and portrayed well the tension that a first generation American feels, wanting to fit in and sometimes ashamed of ... Read More |
