 Book Reviews
with Robin Osborne
The Namesake
By Jhumpa Lahiri
Flamingo $27.95
 The spirit of Russian writer Nikolai Gogol hangs over this beautifully crafted novel, the awaited follow-up to Interpreter of Maladies, for which Lahiri won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
Gogol, as is explained by a high school teacher to a class that includes an Indian boy who bears the writer's name, was 'not your ordinary guy,' something of an understatement, as the mid-19th century author was 'morbidly melancholic,' a hypochondriac (but often genuinely ill), and possibly died a virgin.
Gogol fell into a deep depression after returning to Russia following twelve years abroad - during which he wrote Dead Souls, 'the novel considered to be his finest work' - and after pronouncing a death sentence on himself, he 'proceeded to commit slow suicide by starvation.'
Not unreasonably, young Gogol Ganguli (dubbed 'Goggles' by classmates) wonders what possessed his father to name him after the Russian, a decision explained to the reader early in the piece but only discovered by him after he reaches adulthood.
One night in October 1961, Ashoke Ganguli, a 22 year old student, had been travelling on an Indian train reading Gogol's short stories, his favourite being 'The Overcoat', a quote from which Lahiri uses to begin her novel: 'The reader should realise himself that it could not have happened otherwise, and that to give him any other name was quite out of the question.'
As Ashoke 'carefully turned the soft yellow pages of his book, a few delicately tunnelled by worms,' the train was derailed, killing almost everyone on board. In the search for survivors, Ashoke is miraculously found, still clutching his Gogol and suffering injuries that require a long stint in a Calcutta hospital.
A year later he graduated and won a fellowship to America where he gained his doctorate in electrical engineering and an academic position at the respected MIT. Marrying Ashima, a fellow Bengali, he parented two children, the first of whom, named Gogol but also known as 'Nikhil', arrives in the world as the book opens.
The story of Gogol's namesake is that of late-century USA seen through the eyes of a Hindu-Indian family, an experience well understood by Lahiri, herself an American resident of Bengali descent.
The novel complements, while differing greatly from, Monica Ali's acclaimed Brick Lane that focused on isolated Muslim Bengalis in London council estates. In showing how others see the west, both books say as much about our society as about their immigrant characters.
- Thanks to Book Warehouse, Keen Street, Lismore for supporting this column.
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