This book follows the life of Gogol Ganguli. He is born in America to Indian immigrants, and he struggles to find a balance between being American and being Indian. Named after the Russian author Gogol, he agonizes over his father's name choice, as it is neither American nor Indian. The first part of the novel spends a lot of time on the history and story behind his name. The second part focuses more on Gogol's adult life and how his unusual background leads him to make various romantic choices.

I liked when the book showed how the Ganguli family did things differently. Having never known much about India or Indian culture, the explanations behind some of the traditions was particularly interesting to me. I enjoyed Lahiri's prose. She has a minimalist style that highlights interesting, often unexpected details.

Having never had problems with my name or my family background, I couldn't relate to Gogol's conflict. The passages where it shows him obsessing over his name or his different family were rather annoying to me. I don't doubt that this is part of the immigrant experience, but it isn't something I could personally relate to. I also felt that the book could be longer and perhaps explore other characters more. I thought Gogol's mother and sister could have bigger parts, maybe highlighting some of their experiences and whether they felt differently about their situation.

*shrug* This book was so-so for me.

The reason I picked up this book is because the author Jhumpa Lahiri won a Pulitzer Prize for her book of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies. I haven't read that book, but I was curious about her style.

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Created Sep 18, 2007 at 12:55pm • Submit your own review...