The Namesake (Lahiri) A very good, but very sad book. Not sad in the way of death and destruction or sick children, anything like that...just that the main character's life is not at all happy no matter what decisions he makes. The story is about a man, Ashoke, and a woman, Ashima, from India and Bengali who both marry in the traditional Indian way...set up by their parents. Ashima moves across the world from her family in Calcutta to live with her new husband who teaches in Boston. They are steadfast in their marriage, but not in love. They have two children, the first being a son, in 1968. We get a little back story about Ashoke and find that when he was in his early twenties, he loved the Russian author Gogol, and in particular, his famous short story, The Overcoat. On an overnight train trip one evening, he was the only person in his sleeping cabin who didn't climb in his berth and go to sleep. Instead he stayed up to read Gogol. When the train derailed, buckled and crashed, killing many of the people aboard, all of Ashoke's cabin mates were killed, except for Ashoke. Ashoke saw this as a further sign for him to be enamored of Gogol. Flash forward to 1968 when his son is born. Ashima and Ashoke decide to again go with Indian tradition and wait for her grandmother to name their son. A letter is in the mail from India. However, the hospital will not release the mother and child until there is a name on the birth certificate. Not really understanding that this will be his permanent name, Ashoke gives him the name Gogol, planning to change it to the name the grandmother picks as soon as it arrives. Of course, fate steps in the way and the grandmother has a stroke and Ashima's father dies, so they must travel quickly to India. Gogol is the official name written on the baby's passport, and the name he is stuck with for the rest of his life. Gogol and his sister grow up in American schools, with American friends and customs. They never quite appreciate it when their parents force them to leave school for weeks at a time to travel to India to see relatives...India, where they don't have any of the things they're used to. Yet, at school, despite having some friends, they are still considered just enough "different" to be on the outer fringe of being included as well. Caught between spending weekends with his parents' friends, who are all people of Indian and Bengali descent who they have met in America, and between trying to keep up with his American friends, life is not the happiest for Gogol. On his twelfth birthday, Gogol's father gifts him with a copy of Gogol's short stories, including The Overcoat. He does not tell Gogol how he almost died and had to relearn how to walk and how much the name Gogol means to him. Gogol is pretty much a brat, hates his name, and doesn't do much but stick the book on a shelf, never even seeing the inscription his father has written. As he grows into a typical teenager and then goes to college, he exhibits the fairly typical behavior of ignoring his parents, even lying that he needs to be at school for a project when he really wants to spend time doing the things he enjoys instead of going home every weekend. He's a good student at an Ivy league school. He shows a talent for drawing at an early age and has decided to become an architect. One of the first things he does when he's of age is officially change his name! He picks the name Nikhil, which is what his parents had finally decided to call him when he entered kindergarten, but ironically, five year old Gogol had thrown a fit, so his teachers stuck to his official name and kept calling him Gogol. So, in college, everyone gets to know Gogol and Nikhil....but as we read the book, he's always referred to as Gogol. Anyway, Gogol meets an American girl, Maxine, that he falls for, and she for him, and his parents are devastated that he won't be picking an Indian girl to have a traditional marriage with. He doesn't give too much thought to their feelings and ends up spending more and more time with her and her family, who he comes to love. Suddenly, Ashoke drops dead of a heart attack at the age of 46 and Gogol's life does a complete change. He goes back home to help handle things and even though Maxine is very understanding at first, she doesn't understand why many months later he is still mourning, regretful and wanting to spend so much time with his mother and sister. Maxine and Gogol break up and Gogol goes to work at an architecture firm in New York. He deeply regrets that he didn't speak to his father more and spend more time with him. In one of their last conversations, Ashoke had finally told Gogol about the train wreck, and why Gogol the author meant so much to him...but it was long after Gogol had changed his name to Nikhil. Finally, when Gogol is nearing 30, his mother asks him to call up the daughter of an old friend from India...actually, a girl who he used to hang out with as a youngster on all those Indian/Bengali get togethers. Just to appease his mother, Gogol calls up Moushumi and they meet for drinks. Moushumi is every bit as independent and "Americanized" as Gogol Actually, she has also spent quite a bit of time in France, growing up there first before moving to the U.S., so she's even a bit more worldly. However, despite  their insisting they won't, they actually fall for each other and have a traditional Indian wedding which makes Gogol's mother and Moushumi's parents all very happy! The happiness doesn't last long, however. As a matter of fact, they are not even married for two years when Moushumi starts having an affair with an older man who she met and fell for as a teenager, who is now back in New York and in her life! It's so sad. :-( Gogol doesn't do anything wrong....but also, it's not like they are madly in love with each other...they are more just comfortable. But, they do care for each other and Gogol is blindsided by the affair. He ends up divorced from Moushumi by the time he is 32 and he travels back to his mother's house in Boston for one more Christmas before she moves from his childhood home, which she has just sold, to travel to India. When Gogol makes his way upstairs to grab a camera, he sees that most of his old things have been packed away. His mother wants him to go through them before she leaves. His eyes fall on the old copy of Gogol's short stories, which Gogol had never read! Gogol opens the book to see a very sweet inscription from his father, and realizes with even more regret that his father must have known all those years that Gogol never even gave the book a second glance. Gogol sits down and starts reading the book and the story ends. See? Not an earth shattering sad story, but just very sad in terms of Gogol never really finding happiness. He seems to fight all his life trying to fit in between his Indian/Bengali roots and his American upbringing. Lahiri writes very straightforwardly and nicely and really pulls you into the story and the feelings of each of the characters! This is my second Lahiri book and I just might have to read more. Here's a passage near the end that I really liked:

     In so many ways, his family's life feels like a string of accidents, unforeseen, unintended, one incident begetting another. It had started with his father's train wreck, paralyzing him at first, later inspiring him to move as far as possible, to make a new life on the other side of the world. There was the disappearance of the name Gogol's great-grandmother had chosen for him, lost in the mail somewhere between Calcutta and Cambridge. This had led, in turn, to the accident of his being named Gogol, defining and distressing him for so many years. He had tried to correct that randomness, that error. And yet it had not been possible to reinvent himself fully, to break from that mismatched name. His marriage had been something of a misstep as well. And the way his father had slipped away from them, that had been the worst accident of all, as if the preparatory work of death had been done long ago, the night he was nearly killed, and all that was left for him was one day, quietly, to go. And yet these events have formed Gogol, shaped him, determined who he is. They were things for which it was impossible to prepare but which one spent a lifetime looking back at, trying to accept, interpret, comprehend. Things that should never have happened, that seemed out of place and wrong, these were what prevailed, what endured, in the end.