Rating: 
Summary: A beautiful read
Review: I adored this book. Ms. Lahiri looks at the complexity of families and the crossing of cultures. When a couple from India immigrates to the United States and starts their life here, where is their home? Which culture do they belong to?
The book starts with the main couple and then gradually moves on to examine their son's life, and the conflicts between his parents' ways and culture, and his own as a first-generation American. The son is shamed by his parents' non-American ways and tries to create a life very separate from them. He makes many mistakes in his life until he learns to appreciates his family and that part of himself.
I coulnd't put it down. A sweet, sad and smart novel.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: Jhumpa has a extraordinary ability to describe a story and the namesake is written beautifully.A must read. Now I am even interested in reading Gogol after this.
Rating: 
Summary: THOSE CREVICES BETWEEN TWO CULTURES..
Review: Lahiri's characters come alive in her simple yet moving language, almost like Italio Calvino's. If you read "Interpreter of Maladies," you need no introduction to this brilliant writer. Get this book and savor it. The fluid style, an undercurrent of the vagaries of cultural dislocation, and the worldliness of her characters are almost in continuation of her touching yarns from "Interpreter.." If you are considering this author for the first time, Lahiri has a way of getting under the skin of her characters and painting a wonderful web of life's simple moments. The lead character, Gogol, is vintage Lahiri: a man baffled by split national identities. We follow a trail of his life as he grows up in an alien environs, with different people and mores. But Lahiri, with her seamless literary skills, cuts through life's usual messiness to reveal some fundamental themes - about how people cope with love, adaptation, family, and the perpetual quest for a mooring. To allow myself a "harsh critic" moment, perhaps some of the non-protagonist characters get a short shrift in terms of ink-time -- the parents and the sister of Gogol, for instance, never really transcend their cardboard descriptions. The novel overall left me with a feeling of not having taken any risks other than what her stories in "Interpreter.." had already embraced. But these are trivial, subjective quibbles. This is a highly recommended gem of a read.
Rating: 
Summary: Did the Author Stop to Think.......At All??
Review: I did like the Interpreter of Maladies.
Though not one of my all-time favorites, it certainly had its moments of some splendid literature. So what happened in this work of Ms. Lahiri's? Utterly boring, completely clichéd and totally a waste of time, this book portrays an aspect of a community, that was real, perhaps, a 100 years ago. Biased, prejudiced and mostly incorrect, this book is surviving either on ignorance, or because it feeds greedily from the innumerable stereotypes that have surrounded the Indian Immigrant population for years.
And, today, through this book, Ms. Lahiri has single-handedly destroyed the years of effort spent by numerous individuals in dispelling the STEREOTYPES surrounding their life-styles. She has, through this book, restored those clichés and stereotypes firmly back in place!
Rating: 
Summary: Lahiri pens a gem
Review: A fantastic, one sitting read. Specially for people who live away from home. Gogol is brilliantly etched. The book suffers from some weak links though - Moushumi breaking up with Graham and even why she leaves Gogol - too hastily written in. On the whole, elegant yet easy prose and a very pluasible life.
Rating:
Summary: A gift of a novel
Review: I had knew that Jhumpa Lahiri was an author I should be mindful of from reading "Mrs. Dutta Writes A Letter" in a short story writing class, so I came to "The Namesake" with a good deal of anticipation. Would I be adding Lahiri, to my list of "must buy" Indian authors, Mistry, Mukherjee and Divakaruni? The answer...absolutely! "The Namesake" is a peek into the world of immigrant Americans that I can only imagine. I have always wondered how one lives between cultures, not entirely part of one or another. "The Namesake" gives me a snapshot of that world. Helps me to understand. A wonderful gift of a novel.
Rating:
Summary: ANOTHER PULITZER PRIZE?
Review: Her second book and first novel deserves another Pulitzer Prize. And anyone who gives it fewer than 4 stars is probably prejudiced in some way. Easily read; incredible depth. In today's world, everyone should read it and think its message over. BRAVO, Jhumpa! MORE, MORE, MORE!
Rating:
Summary: Loved it!!
Review: I did not read Interpreter of the Maladies, so I began this book with no expectations. I loved the book. Being a second generation Polish American, I totally saw my mom in Gogel. Lahiri's insight and sensitivity were right on. I resisted finishing the book because I couldn't bare losing good friends.
Rating: 
Summary: I Really Wished for More
Review: Based on my reading of Lahiri's fine short story collection that won the Pulitzer Prize, I expected a complex, nuanced novel which would deliver closely observed and clear writing. I was ready for a real treat.
Instead, I got a kind of automatic writing of a drawn out short story. At first, the book opens very well with descriptions of a birth and an awful train wreck that changes the course of Gogol's father's life. I thought I was in for something brilliant. But then the plot, if one can call it that, drags and drags. The writing becomes antiseptic, mistaking minute observation for literature, and losing its overall passion and reason for being. I had to fight through much of this book, skipping pointless passages, and enduring elaborate descriptions of Gogol's lovers, their clothes and hairstyles, their shoes, their parents, and their parents' homes. All for what?
Then, when Gogol must confront his father's death, we see him acting like a zombie, wretching, breaking up with his girlfriend, but never getting to anything that moves us. His mother's reaction to her husband's death seems inauthentic. And in fact, much in this novel is just that. After a while, I just didn't care about the characters.
The real problem is that Lahiri is a short story writer who tried to stretch a short story into a novel, but didn't have the substance in the original idea to bring it off.
I'm frankly disappointed.
Rating:
Summary: What's in a Name?
Review: How does a writer follow up a Pulitzer Prize-winning debut? Jhumpa Lahiri, who at the age of 32 was awarded the coveted literary prize for her masterful story collection, Interpreter of Maladies, once again marvels readers with smooth and elegant prose in her novel, The Namesake. Lahiri clearly illustrates what it is to live an entire life in America, but still feel a bit out of place at times. Her stunning images of the elaborate feasts, the traditional clothing, and the ceremonial rites of the Indian culture make The Namesake a very rewarding and worthwhile reading experience.
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