For better or worse, I joined a bookclub. Not a joiner, I know, but our first book is The Namesake. What does it matter what a bunch of overeducated women think about this book when A Million Little Pieces of Shame is still #9 on Amazon? But, I did really like this book a lot: I stayed up all night to finish it when I read it for the first time about two years ago. A little contrived (father's love for Russian literature saved him from a train wreck) and a little cliched (protagonist succumbs and marries a Bengali girl, who leaves him for a French scholar. Who wouldn't leave whoever for a French scholar?) but descriptions of cooking for big family parties, sneaking booze and cigarettes, the gulf of misunderstanding separating Indian parent and 'desi' child which only highlights the love and tenderness in their relationship made this book a worthwhile read.

It's been a long time since I posted, I guess contented=more blogging, cranky=less. That doesn't really translate for the great writers of the world, though. Usually when there's more angst, there's more and better writing (and more bad writing, but I digress...) At any rate, rereading Jhumpa (not her good name, btw, but her pet name. I should publish under 'mole') made me miss my mother and father and then not, and miss good food, but the whole book is written with a sense of nostalgia, of moments melding into each other into the blur that is Gogol's 32-year old memory. I can't help but think of Marquez and the vivid prose of a nonagenarian (though Melancholy Whores was not his finest work) and how he treats memory and nostalgia and I think Lahiri has more to grow as a writer. Which is unfair, but whatever. She's gorgeous and young and a Pulitzer Prize winner, I can be jealous...