The Namesake
Perfection in a book.
For some reason I thought that maybe I had already read The Namesake … until I started it (because I wasn’t 100% sure) and realized that nope, I had just seen the movie.
One of my college friends is now a beloved high school English teacher. And I know that this, Jhumpa Lahiri’s first novel, is one of her absolute favorites to teach. And it makes complete sense. Everything about The Namesake — from the way it chronicles the life of American-born Gogol and his Indian-born parents, to its narrative arc, to its beautiful exploration of identity, to Lahiri’s precise (but not overbearing) descriptions — feels effortless. (But of course it’s not; that’s just the trick of a good writer.)
The Namesake: penned by a Pulitzer-winning author + classroom favorite. What a fantastically awesome combo.
originally published on instagram