The Namesake

#502
Title: The Namesake
Author: Jhumpa Lahiri
Publisher: Mariner Books
Year: 2002/2004
291 pages

Read as an audiobook.

It pains me to say it because I thought Interpreter of Maladies was just lovely, but I found the latter 2/3 of this tedious. The protagonist, Gogol, seems to learn little from his experience and is passive or obstinate by turn. He is a paralyzed man, I get it. Unfortunately, he is not a very interesting paralyzed man, and his biggest accomplishment seems to be dragging down those around him with his inertia, narcissism, and entitlement. I don't need him to be a sympathetic character, but I do need something beyond 10 hours of torpor. Perhaps Lahiri is just better suited to the short story than to the novel. The movie was showing on the television of a bus I took on my most recent trip in Mexico. Though I tried not to watch or listen (it was dubbed in  Spanish) because I get severe motion sickness, I still threw up. Sadly, this was a more interesting experience than listening to the  novel.