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It's eye-opening to read a bit about Jhumpa Lahiri's life (you pronounce her first name with the "u" sounding more like the one in "June" than in "jump"). Just like her characters in The Namesake, she is a creature of the East Coast. Although born in London, she was raised in Rhode Island, graduated from Barnard undergrad and then Boston University with multiple advanced degrees. She has taught creative writing at BU, the Rhode Island School of Design, and the New School, and lives in New York City.

Like Ashima and Ashoke, Lahiri's parents were Bengali immigrants from Calcutta and tried to raise her to observe Indian traditions while surrounded by American culture. Like Gogol and his sister, Lahiri returned to Calcutta many times to visit her extended family. She and her husband even had a traditional Bengali marriage ceremony, albeit in Calcutta, not New Jersey (and in Singhi Palace, not the Doubletree Suites).

There are plenty of angles we can take to analyze The Namesake, but let's start with the whole question of the immigrant experience, how it affects the older and younger generations in a family, the wish to assimilate--or not to--and to what degree. Whatever I say will be colored by absolutely no firsthand experience, since no ancestors of mine that I personally knew were first-generation immigrants. So I'd rather hear from the rest of you on this. If you are from India, or your parents are, how good a job did Lahiri do in depicting the tensions surrounding life in this country? Maybe you're not from India, but yet a third country, or you have parents or grandparents from elsewhere. Does the Ganguli family's experience resemble the one you are familiar with?

By titling her book The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri indicates that Bengali naming traditions are one of her central themes. Pages 25 to 29 describe those traditions and tell the story of naming Gogol.

I found myself comparing the Bengali custom of good names and pet names to American use of nicknames and formal names. I think one difference is that not every American has a nickname, but every Bengali does have a pet name. Another difference is that American nicknames are often standard ones--either abbreviated forms, like Pat for Patricia or Rob for Robert, but also variations on the formal name--Peggy for Margaret, Bill for William. But we also often come up with nonstandard nicknames--almost terms of endearment--for each other, that are given by parents, children, spouses, or lovers, not as widely used as the Bengali pet names seem to be.

In the book, Gogol loses both his good name and his pet name; the good name when the letter from Ashima's grandmother is lost in the mail; the pet name, when Gogol himself decides to legally change it. The manner in which he loses his good name to me is one of the first symbols in the book illustrating the Ganguli family being forced to separate themselves from their homeland. The manner in which he loses his pet name illustrates Gogol's choosing to separate himself from his parent's homeland.

While I was writing this, my book happened to open to page 9, and in the middle of the page I saw this sentence--"It was only after the betrothal that she'd learned his name," referring to Ashima and Ashoke. What do you think is the significance of that?

[I know that many of you Nashua Public Library book-discussion regulars are new to blogging. Don't forget that you can just click the "comments" link right below this sentence and join the discussion. When you enter a comment, you can tell us your full name, your first name, or remain anonymous.]

You can find plenty of information about The Namesake (or just about any novel for that matter) in the literature-related databases that the library offers to cardholders. For example, Novelist has book discussion guides that include biographies of the authors, summaries of the books, questions for discussion, reviews of the book, and lists of similar novels (that part reminds me of what you see when you go to amazon.com, and they say "We have recommendations for you."). To use Novelist, go to www.nashualibrary.org and click on "iBrowse Databases."

Another database we offer is called Literature Resource Center. There I was able to find a couple of biographies of Jhumpa Lahiri and some literary criticism of her books (a lot more was available about her collection of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies, than for The Namesake, however. Probably because Interpreter won the Pulitzer.) To use Literature Resource Center, go to www.nashualibrary.org and click on "iBrowse Databases."

(If you don't have a Nashua Public Library card, your own library's Web site may give you access to these databases, or similar ones. Go to your library's Web site and see what they offer.)

Lahiri's publisher, Houghton Mifflin, has a reader's guide to The Namesake that includes a link to a video of an interview with the author. In the interview she talks about parallels between her life and the lives of her characters. I'd be interested to hear whether watching this video gave you any additional insight about the novel. Just click on "Comments" below to answer.

"On a sticky August evening two weeks before her due date, Ashima Ganguli stands in the kitchen of a Central Square apartment, combining Rice Krispies and Planters peanuts and chopped red onion in a bowl. She adds salt, lemon juice, thin slices of green chili pepper, wishing there were mustard oil to pour into the mix."

Those are the opening lines of The Namesake. Descriptions of food and rituals relating to it are central to the novel.

Here are more examples:

On page 5, the author describes a meal served to Ashima in the hospital which includes Jello, applesauce, and chicken with the skin on it.

On page 33, Ashima and Ashoke's neighbors bring them a Western meal, broccoli quiche and champagne, to celebrate the arrival of the new baby.

On pages 38-40, Lahiri gives an elaborate description of Gogol's rice ceremony, or annaprasan, his first taste of solid food.

Pages 133-137 describe the gourmet meals served at the home of Gogol's girlfriend Maxine and her parents, Gerald and Lydia.

Why do you think the author gives such precise, detailed descriptions of food and meals? Besides the food itself, what other types of details about eating rituals does she describe, and what is she trying to show when she does so?

With Thanksgiving nigh, my thoughts still linger on the place of food in the novel.

I think Lahiri uses food and meals to draw contrasts between the culture Ashima and Ashoke left behind in India and their new one in Massachusetts. Obviously an experienced cook, Ashima feels lost and incompetent when it comes to preparing the American food her children ask for. Likewise, many of us who grew up in the States and know our way around a kitchen might lose confidence if instead of turkey, stuffing, and pumpkin pie, we were expected to prepare pakora, dosa, and kheer for the Thanksgiving meal.

The novel's descriptions of food and meals reminded me of a sight gag in an old Woody Allen film. Someone (I think it was probably a gentile girlfriend played by Diane Keaton) offers to bring Allen's character lunch, and shows up with a grocery bag from which she pulls bologna, mayonnaise, and Wonder Bread, fixings that are the antithesis of Allen's Jewish notion of lunch, which would more likely include corned beef, mustard, and rye. This scene gets a big laugh, not because of any dialogue but because the visual of the food itself conveys so much information about the differences between Jewish and gentile culture.

Often here in the US teenagers from carnivorous families decide to become vegetarians, which can lead to interesting family dynamics concerning cooking, eating, and nutrition. Have you been on one side or the other of such a situation?

Read this interview with the author in which she talks about the role that food plays in the life of an immigrant: www.bookpage.com/0309bp/jhumpa_lahiri.html. Then come back and share your thoughts.

P.S. If you like Indian food and want to learn how to cook some of it, come to the library's Indian cooking class on December 14. Call me at 603-589-4610 to preregister.

I found the author's writing style in The Namesake quite distinctive. For one thing, the novel is written in the present tense. Why do you think she chose to do that? Do you think the present tense makes the characters seem closer to the reader or more distant?

I'm reminded of Empire Falls by Richard Rousseau (great book, by the way; it was the Nashua Reads title in 2003), which was written in the past tense except for chapters using the point of view of a teenager. My thought was that he did that because adolescence is often characterized as a time when the present is all-important, and many teens think they are immortal and many are not yet mature enough to think through the future consequences of their actions.

But some critics have said that Lahiri's use of the present tense creates distance between the reader and Gogol. Is that how you felt when reading it?

(By the way, I see that Seattle has chosen "The Namesake" for its Seattle Reads program in 2007.)

Another characteristic of the writing in The Namesake is its prolific use of detail and description.

For instance, over the course of four pages (150 to 154), Lahiri tells us about Gogol and Maxine's drive to her parents' cabin in New Hampshire, how they live ("There are exposed pipes in the bathrooms, wire stapled over doorsills, nails protruding from beams"), eat, and pass their days there ("Gerald spends most of his time in his vegetable garden, his nails permanently blackened from his careful cultivation of lettuce and herbs"), using maybe one sentence of dialogue on each page, buried within descriptions of the dirt road to the cabin, how Gerald and Lydia are dressed, the furnishings, etc. But aside from some swimming, runs around the lake, antiquing, and such, there's little action. And the minor events that do occur don't contribute much to the plot.

One reviewer, in Publishers Weekly, said that the author "offers a number of beautiful and moving tableaux, but these fail to coalesce into something more than a modest family saga." Kirkus Reviews said that "Many scenes cry out for dialogue" (especially the one later in the book where Maxine and Gogol break up).

There certainly is not a lot of action in these pages. Was the descriptive writing style the author used successful in maintaining your interest? Do you think it succeeds in revealing the personality and motivations of the characters, or does she need to have them do more, talk more?