The Namesake
Lahiri holds onto details that most people would toss away, like diamonds in the rough.
I was concerned about reading this book, because I had seen the movie a couple of weeks ago. To my relief, the novel didn't disappoint. The plot suffered a little, since I knew what was going to happen, but Jumpa Lahiri's gift shows in the descriptive passages. Replace the curries and with pho and the saris with ao dais and the story of Gogol, a first-generation Indian, becomes my own story, a first-generation Vietnamese.
Lahiri holds onto details that most people would toss away, like diamonds in the rough. She burnishes the memories with enough emotional gravity to reward readers with moments of pause – where the book is put down in order to have a private moment of relish. I relived my own fifth birthday, when unknown aunties and uncles filled the house and children were relegated to watch TV upstairs, a time when a birthday party were just another excuse for adults to have a pow wow...
And a noteworthy point: Lahiri resists condescension -- allowing her characters to breathe . Their flaws are universal but not stereo-typed, and their quirks are individualized but not approximated. There's a realness that can only come from harsh honesty: First loves are big confused and jittery heaps (versus exhilaration), and cross-generational communication -- it's stuck in the passive neutral gear most of the time (and not in the confrontational off-road), isn't it?
Wallowing in no-man's land, immigrant stories often devolves into comparisons of prior and current lives. (And they often give way to amusing anecdotes that attempt to 'illuminate the reader'.) The Namesake doesn't get away from the generic, but to it's credit, the story is real enough where the lines of demarcation between cultures and generations come down, however briefly.