The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

This is another book that doesn't have a solid plot. It's a story of Indian immigrants in the US, the main character of the book is Gogol Ganguli, a first-generation immigrant, but we also see this experience from the perspective of his parents, who moved in the US as adults and another woman of Gogol's generation, Mushumi. 

It includes different experiences of being an immigrant and being captured between two cultures. The conflict between generations becomes more intense because of their different immigrant experience and different relationships with culture: while parents who moved to the US as adults miss India, its culture and their relatives, children want to be part of the culture of a place where they are grown up, and they associate India with annoyingly long trips to Kolkata with parents to their relatives they know almost nothing about. Gogol also has a "ridiculous" name that isn't even a name, it's a surname of Russian writer Nikolai Gogol. I like how Jhumpa Lahiri made Gogol pin all his problems to his weird name and become obsessed with it. The book also discusses, how name affects its owner. Can Gogol change his life after changing the name? 

Also, I like how clearly you can see this disconnect between parents and children in this book. They aren't bad parents or bad children, they just have different experiences. For example, Ashima, Gogol's mother, can't understand why he doesn't miss his parents while he is in uni, because she at his age always missed her parents. They were hundreds of miles away in Kolkata, and they could communicate only through letters. 

I feel odd about Gogol's connection with American culture. He always encounters only its nice and progressive part. There are insensitive people, but overall these people seem normal. There is a part of the novel where he is completely charmed by the family of his girlfriend and always compares them to his own family, and in his mind, it's a question of culture, but in fact, these families have very different social standing. He easily can date a girl from an American family which is as patriarchal as his own, with tons of annoying relatives and awful weddings with 300 guests. Maybe it is done purposefully, to show, how some immigrants/children of immigrants tend to demonize their own culture and think of it as old-fashioned, boring, and restrictive, comparing it only with the most attractive parts of the culture of the country they are living. 

I feel this book despite of good writing was a bit basic. Yes, it includes different experiences but all of them are from this narrow social circle of wealthy educated upper-middle-class immigrants. I don't think it's a bad thing, because the book is focused on one family, but... I don't know. I think there could be more. 

And tbh I want to read a story of Mushumi. It seems like she has way more deep inner conflict and was strongly traumatized by her parent's actions. 

The writing in this book is a bit unusual. It feels like someone's narration, so there is a distance between you and the characters. I think it can be off-putting to some readers, but I like it and overall this book was for me super easy to read. 

4 out of 5 stars.