Jhumpa Lahiri: The Namesake

Reviewed by MARGIE THOMSON

A few years ago a wonderful collection of short stories was published, Interpreter of Maladies, haunting, compassionate, elegant tales of Indians in exile. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2000, and is now followed - at last, fans may well feel - by this, Lahiri's first novel.

Ashoke Ganguli, a promising Calcutta engineering student, devoted to his family, is advised by a stranger he meets in a train to "see as much of the world as he can". Shortly afterwards, the train crashes and Ashoke narrowly escapes with his life, saved only when a rescuer sees, in the glare of a search lantern, a single page of Gogol's The Overcoat still clutched in his hand.

As a consequence of these events, Ashoke applies for a fellowship in Boston, thus embarking on life as an exile. He returns to Calcutta in search of a wife, whom he finds in Ashima, and so she also makes that journey to a place most strange which she must, somehow, make her own.

The Namesake opens with the birth of their first child, a boy whom, following a series of accidents, they name Gogol, after the writer Ashoke considers saved his life. The novel's main focus is the life of this son, who grows up to despise his name at the same time as feeling deeply conflicted about his dual identity as American and Bengali.

He eventually tries to eliminate Gogol by changing his name to Nikhil but, as he rides the 30-year trajectory of the novel which is his life's journey (ironically, never more than four hours by train from his parents' house), through prestigious universities (Yale, Colombia), career (as an architect), girlfriends (marvellous evocations of contemporary romantic and sexual experiences), he discovers he can never truly escape what his original name actually symbolised: the culture, values and physical heritage given to him by his parents.

These are ordinary lives in one sense - there are no dramas greater than those any of us might face, such as the death of loved ones, the ending of relationships, the endless sorting-out of ourselves in relation to everyone else - but Lahiri makes the smallest facts of existence both meaningful and awesome. Like Gogol, we come to appreciate the experience of those many courageous people who, like Ashoke and Ashima, "pack a pillow and a blanket" and set out to unknown parts of the world to make themselves anew.

Lahiri is occasionally judgmental about her characters, but is one of the best observers of human behaviour, a goddess of small things, a mistress of crystal-like vignettes. Often exhilarating, The Namesake leaves a poignancy that is hard to shake off. This is definitely one of the best books of the year.

Flamingo, $34.99