The Namesake

I'm off to Delaware this long weekend to attend the wedding of a cousin of a cousin. Yeah, we're close. It was 3 a.m. once I was done packing my stuff and cleaning the house, and I intended to be awake three hours later to get showered and dressed for my morning flight to Baltimore, so I decided to stay up. While I was well versed in the art of the all-nighter back in college, I seem to have lost my touch.

Anyway, I kept myself awake by finishing The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri. It tells the story of an Indian man born and raised in America, and in certain descriptive passages I couldn't help but identify. But what I appreciated more were the differences that made his Indian-American experience feel foreign to me: the Northeast upbringing, the non-vegetarian standard, the literary and artistic background, and the emphasis on higher education of the graduate school variety.

Up until the end I liked where the story was taking me. The author jumps forward in time quite a bit, so I was surprised (and a little disappointed) when she lets the story end in the year 2000. There's no law that requires everyone to address 9/11, but when the main character grows up to become an architect in New York City, you develop a certain expectation. I felt slightly denied.

I got to the airport gate without fanfare and slept the entire flight.