Joanna Topor

For a long time after my family immigrated to Canada from Poland, I enjoyed correcting my parents' pronunciation, begged for "normal" food like peanut butter and jelly, and forced my mom to learn how to bake chocolate-chip cookies, much like the children in Jhumpa Lahiri's "The Namesake."

Spanning thirty-two years, this highly anticipated follow-up to the Pulitzer Prize-winning "Interpreter of Maladies," is a penetrating investigation of two generations of the immigrant condition. Ashoke brings his new bride Ashima from India to the United States while he finishes his doctoral studies at MIT. Determined to maintain their native traditions, the couple patiently waits for a letter from Ashima's great-grandmother containing the name for their American-born son. But the letter never comes. Thinking that it's a temporary postal delay, the couple decides to give their son a provisional nickname, one that ultimately predetermines his future. The name "Gogol" (inspired by Ashoke's favorite Russian writer, the nineteenth-century author of "Dead Souls") foreshadows their son's identity as both American and Indian, and his insusceptibility to be claimed by either culture. Although he grows up like any first -generation American, speaking only English and dreading Saturday-night parties with his parent's Bengali friends, Gogol Ganguli finds it equally as hard to lead an inconspicuous American life. In poignant vignettes, he tries to distance himself from the trenchant anomaly of his existence. He takes a job in New York, tries to date WASP-ish girls, and even changes his name to Nikhil in his frustrated fight to assimilate.

Lahiri compassionately depicts Gogol's inability to fully sever himself from these cultural impositions, his Bengali tradition and his name. This piercing and astonishingly honest depiction of the human search for acceptance ultimately transcends the subject of ethnicity to give the reader keen insight into the most challenging experience of all--everyday life.

The Namesake

BY Jhumpa Lahiri

Houghton Mifflin, $24, 304 pages

(2003-09-10)

Also by Joanna Topor

A stab through the heart
Fan sites and Thursday lunch meetings have given rise to entire sections at Borders devoted to unofficial viewing guides dissecting vampiric archetypes in Buffyverse, an online academic journal entitled "Slayage," and academic conferences where hip scholars looked to this campy movie spinoff as a higher aesthetic.
(2003-04-09)

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