Starts with the Name

          Over these six chapters Gogol or Nikhil has changed dramatically as a character. The biggest change that I see in him is that he continually wants and is growing apart from his Bengali roots. I think that this really starts off when he decides to legally change his name from Gogol to Nikhil. Even though the name Gogol wasn't a traditional name it still was Nikhil's name for his entire childhood. When Nikhil arrives to college at Yale he gets a fake ID so he can go drinking. In addition to drinking one night while Nikhil was at a bar he lost his virginity to some random girl, which I'm no specialist in Bengali culture but I'm pretty sure his parents would not be down with that. Anyways after this Nikhil goes on to find a nice girl named Ruth, but after a while of dating things don't really work out and they had to break up. But then later on in chapter six Nikhil finds this artsy girl named Maxine and they really hit it off. So far in chapter six Nikhil seems to be doing great! But I wouldn't be surprised if something happened to him or someone he know. Maybe on a train.

First Impressions

          The first thing that I noticed and liked about the book is that it starts of with one of the characters named Ashima giving birth. I really like how the "Namesake" by Jhumpa Lahiri starts of like this because it really got me interested in what was coming next, apposed to in "Notes from the Underground" where when I started it I kinda wanted to put it back down. Although I really like how the book started as I kept reading i noticed that the writer went into a lot of detail about almost everything, which just made everything kind of seem longer than it needed to be. A little example of this is when Lahiri is writing about Ashoke's glasses and says, "He takes off his thick-rimmed glasses, fitted by a Calcutta optometrist, polishes the lenses with the cotton handkerchief he always keeps in his pocket, A for Ashoke embroidered by his mother in light blue thread." (Lahiri, 11) I understand that creative writing is a great thing but this just seems to me like a little to much information about one thing. Overall I am very intrigued about where this book is going and I think I am going to like it!