. Spinning .

It’s funny, I’m mimicking Jhumpa Lahiri here in using the final post–in her case, final chapter–as a summary and wrap-up of the story.

To be fair, I believe that yes, The Namesake likely (obviously) earned its place on the New York Times Bestseller List at the time. My failure to recognize and accept what that means may have made me a bit harsh on the author. Danielle Steel has been on the List numerous times. It’s more an homage to marketing and the tastes of a large reading audience than a testament to writing, the writer, the story, or anything truly literary. The fact that Lahiri’s first book, a collection of short stories called The Interpreter of Maladies won the Pulitzer Prize helped sell The Namesake, I’m sure. I’m more at home with a book that asks more of me as a reader, and delights me with skill and finesse as a writer.

In the closing chapter, there are some (not) clever references back to the supposed thread (which I still think involves Indian cuisine) of Gogol’s overcoat, books, and trains:

He slips the book he will give her for Christmas into the pocket of his coat, making sure it’s well concealed, and calls the elevator to take him upstairs.  (p. 173)

He’d slept most of the journey to Boston, the conductor poking him awake once they’d reached South Station, and he was the only person left in the compartment, the last to get off. He had slept soundly, curled up on two seats, his book unread, using his overcoat as a blanket, pulled up to his chin. (p. 280)

The prose is simple, no frills, and I do appreciate that to a certain degree. But a few adjectives, similes, metaphors, something to indicate vibrancy rather than the flat image of colors of clothing and what’s on the plate would have been nice. I like eloquence, playing with language, interesting images projected through words; there is none of that here. The best line of the book, even though it is subjected to Lahiri’s love of writing about food, was this:

It’s a pleasant change of pace, something finite in contrast to her current, overwhelming, ongoing task: to prepare for her departure, picking the bones of the house clean.  (p. 277)

What Lahiri does in two pages of this final chapter, is sums up the traumatic change that comes with immigrating to a new country, the integration into a new culture while holding onto the traditions of what one knows (for Ashima, pages 278-279). And something I hadn’t realized, even as only a second generation born American, the melding of two cultures, one that comes along with rites and traditions that may be brought out only on holidays, that school friends do not share, that is intimate to family and friends of the same culture, that Gogol goes through. (p. 281)

We finally do get a quick peek at how Gogol’s marriage has ended and it’s done in typical reporting, this-is-what-happened style and Moushumi is kicked out of the book cleanly and quickly.

The last scene is at Ashima’s home, celebrating Christmas with a big party, the final one as Ashima will be moving to Calcutta to live for six months, then back for six months to stay with Sonia, her daughter, or Gogol. Ashima sends Gogol upstairs to find a camera to take pictures and rooms and things bring memories that are both pleasant and sad. But the killer, the thing I couldn’t believe a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer would even think of doing, is this:

And then another book, never read, long forgotten, catches his eye. The jacket is missing, the title on the spine practically faded. It’s a clothbound volume topped with decades-old dust. The ivory pages are heavy, slightly sour* silken to the touch. The spine cracks faintly when he opens it to the title page. The Short Stories of Nikolai Gogol. “For Gogol Ganguli,” it says on the front endpaper in his father’s tranquil hand, in red ballpoint ink, the letters rising gradually, optimistically, on the diagonal toward the upper right-hand corner of the page. “The man who gave you his name, from the man who gave you your name.” (p. 288)

*Lots of things in this book are described as sour; Maxine’s lips, the part in Moushumi’s hair. Weird.

Yes, folks, there it is. the book Ashoke gave Gogol on his fourteenth birthday. Never opened, never read. Now, at the end of this tale, he’s going to avoid the celebration, the people, his family, one more time, to read “The Overcoat.”

Was this a “bad” book? No. Was it stellar? No. To me, I’d see it as a good airplane trip, or beach vacation book to take along. I will be reading more of Lahiri, most likely getting a copy of Interpreter of Maladies to see what the fuss is all about.

Ohmigod, are you serious?

Chapter 11 has established that Moushumi is having an affair, is traveling with God-knows-who, and Gogol, ignorant, slightly suspicious (because Lahiri once again lets us know this by using clothes as a tip-off, Moushumi has packed a bathing suit), but trusting, is awaiting her return from a trip. That’s how the chapter leaves off:

He imagines her puttering around the apartment, drawing a bath, pouring herself a glass of wine, her bags in the hallway. He slips the book he will give her for Christmas into the pocket of his coat, making sure it’s well concealed, and calls the elevator to take him upstairs. (p. 273)

Leaves the reader anxious, as a good chapter might, no? We know she’s back because Lahiri has the doorman tell Gogol (and us). But we get this opening of Chapter 12:

It is the day before Christmas. Ashima Ganguli sits at her kitchen table, making mincemeat croquettes for a party she is throwing that evening. They are one of her specialties, something her guests have come to expect, handed to them on small plates within minutes of their arrival. Alone, she manages an assembly line of preparation. First she forces the warm boiled potatoes through a ricer. (etc.) (p. 174)

Honest to God, we get the recipe here and slipped in along with the breadcrumbs we find out that Ashima has sold the house and is leaving to spend her time between India and the U.S., and oh yeah, she feels guilty about setting Gogol up with Moushumi.

Aside from the train wreck that Ashoke suffered early on, his death, and that damned name of “Gogol” there’s been little real conflict in the book. That’s why I suspected by the discontented Moushumi at the anniversary meal, together with the within 30 pages back-cover of the novel, that something might finally be coming to a head.

I was right; well, wrong about the pregnancy, right about Moushumi. Discontent boiled down to possibly boredom, lack of need to rebel against something, or just plain old hot pants, she has an affair. Oddly, it stems from her noticing a return address on an envelope in the mail room of the university where she is sorting the mail, finishing the job the dead employee who was wheeled out that morning didn’t get around to. Convenient of old Alice to drop dead; to me, unskillfully contrived.

Before we get the description of Moushumi’s lover, we get a typical Lahiri description of their dinners he makes her at his apartment:

They begin seeing each other Mondays and Wednesdays, after she teaches her class. She takes the train uptown and they meet at his apartment, where lunch is waiting. The meals are ambitious: poached fish; creamy potato gratins; golden, puffed chickens roasted with whole lemons in their cavities. (p. 263)

and, after a quickie glimpse of sex that moves the bed, we’re treated to a flashback of their first meal together:

They drank glasses of prosecco. She agreed to an early dinner with Dimitri that night, sitting at the bar of the restaurant, for the prosecco had gone quickly to their heads. He had ordered a salad topped with warm lambs’ tongue, a poached egg, and pecorino cheese, something she swore she would not touch but ended up eating the better part of. Afterward she’d gone into Balducci’s to buy the pasta and ready-made vodka sauce she would have at home with Nikhil.  (p. 264)

In between Lahiri’s coverage of food, we get our much-needed description of Dmitri:

Some gray has come into Dimitri’s hair and chest, some lines around the mouth and eyes. He’s heavier than before, his stomach undeniably wide, so that his thin legs appear slightly comic. He recently turned thirty-nine. He has not been married. He does not seem very desperate to be employed. He spends his days cooking meals, reading, listening to classical music. She gathers that he has inherited some money from his grandmother. (p. 163)

And this, for the past several chapters we appear to be in danger of losing Gogol as he fades into the distance and focus is on Moushumi’s life, her thoughts and actions, her selfishness instead of his. After losing Ashima and Ashoke, I’m sincerely worried now for Gogol.

Here again, an event of some importance that could be used to round the characters, provide insight into the relationship, indicate change or motive, Gogol and Moushumi go out to dinner for their first anniversary.

They’ve both dressed up for the occasion–when she emerges from the bathroom she sees that he is wearing the shirt she’s given him, moss-colored with a velvet Nehru collar of slightly darker green. It was only after the salesman had wrapped it that she’d remembered the rule about giving paper on the first anniversary. She considered saving the shirt for Christmas, going to Rizzoli and buying him an architecture book instead. But there hasn’t been the time. She is wearing the black dress she’d worn the first time he’d come to dinner, the first time they’d slept together, and over it, a lilac pashmina shawl, Nikhil’s anniversary present to her. She still remembers their very first date, liking the slightly untamed look of his hair as he’d approached her at the bar, the dark pine stubble on his cheeks, the shirt he’d worn with green stripes and thinner stripes of lavender, the collar beginning to fray. (p. 247)

Lahiri’s attention to detail of surroundings, clothing, meals, for me, is just filling up space. It’s like she was asked to fulfill a word count rather then establish setting, provide grounding, or set mood.

Another thing I’ve noticed is that there is no poetry to her writing. Her use of simile is limited and metaphor is near non-existent (“dark pine (?) stubble”). That’s fine, I suppose, but the flat out description of the material world of this novel would certainly benefit from a bit of lyricism. The whole event seems to unfold in this manner, a series of things–shoes in a window, quail bones on his plate, what the waiters are wearing, how many people in the restaurant, should, but don’t seem to define her slowly developing bad feeling in a way that would be better served by actual conversation between the couple perhaps. As a matter of fact, Gogol seems to be in her peripheral vision this evening. I was also expecting this discomfort of Moushumi’s to be trying to tell me something, maybe that she’s pregnant, rather than merely still dissatisfaction with her life. And here again, I have little sympathy for someone who has all the advantages she has had and still is “unhappy.”

This was the kicker to the clothing detail Lahiri loves, when the next day as Moushumi is entering the university campus to teach a class she is upset by an ambulance and a body being wheeled out.

A number of onlookers cry out in alarm. Moushumi’s hand goes to her mouth. Half the crowd is looking down, away, shaking their heads. From the splayed feet at one end of the stretcher, wearing a pair of beige flat-heeled shoes, she can tell it’s a woman.  (p. 255)

Ah yes, but what size shoe?