So the story starts with the birth of our main character Gogol Ganguli aka Nikhil. There is a story about Gogol’s name which he himself is unaware of in the beginning but he likes the name as a child so much so that when he was admitted in kindergarten he wants everyone to call him Gogol and not Nikhil(what his parents wanted). The author has beautiful portrayed the childhood of both Gogol and Sonia (his younger sister).
As times change you can see how the innocent child turns to be a teen and then into a university student. What changes with his age is his hatred for his name, Gogol. And later he himself decided to change his name to Nikhil going against his family’s opinion.
Slowly the story progresses into something which mostly is being seen in today’s generation — children wanting to be away from their parents. Slowly Sonia and Gogol move out of their house and be in different places due to their studies and work.
Later when everyone is at different places the void of family Ashima(his mother) feels is depicted in an alluring manner. The feeling of being with your family is something which we all could enjoy during the lockdown and somewhere we could understand that family is one of the most important things in our life. No matter how many people leave and come into your life but family is always the constant one. The last 60–70 pages are quite intense in terms of emotions. A lot of things are going on which literally make you feel what all the characters must be feeling in the story.
The best part I like about this book is the way it set forth how innocent we are as kids and that we don’t care about our name, our appearance but as we grow up we get more conscious about everything and more specifically what people would think about us. We always want to be appealing to people rather than our own selves. Jhumpa Lahiri is one author after Khaled Hosseini who transported me into the character's life and made me feel every situation. It was quite disturbing and emotional towards the end. And definitely a great book! Would recommend it to everyone
