The Namesake Summaries

What happens in chapter 1 of The Namesake?

1968 It is August 1968. Ashima and Ashoke are in their apartment in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Ashima tries to make her favorite Indian snack, while Ashoke studies for his electrical engineering degree in the bedroom. Pretty standard domestic fare, right? Cue craziness: Ashima starts to go into labor. Yikes. The couple heads to the hospital, and after checking Ashima in, Ashoke heads to work. What? He's not staying for the birth? While talking with a nurse, Ashima uses an Indian English idiom, but the nurse thinks she has made an error, which reminds Ashima of how she met her husband. Here's the scoop: Some years ago, back in Calcutta, Ashima was a nineteen-year-old college student working as an English tutor. When Ashima's mother invited a bunch of potential suitors for Ashima over to the house, one of them turned out to be Ashoke, who came to the house with his parents in tow. In a moment that reminds us of Cinderella with a twist, Ashima saw Ashoke's shoes in the hallway, and couldn't resist trying them on before she met him. It's a memorable scene, that's for sure, and we guess the shoe fit, because here they are married. Ashima thinks back on that moment every Sunday, when Ashoke polishes his shoes. And apparently she's thinking of it now, while she's in labor with their first kid. Meanwhile, Ashoke has returned to the hospital at 4:30 a.m., where he paces the waiting room. His slight limp on his right foot reminds him of his accident. Fire up the flux capacitor, awesome readers, it's time for another trip back into the past: Back in India, he was on his way to visit his beloved grandfather, who had introduced him to the great works of Russian literature. His grandfather had recently gone blind, though, so he was going to give all his books to an eager Ashoke, who was on his way to pick them up. Instant library? Yes please. So, on October 20, 1961, Ashoke was on a train from Calcutta to Jamshedpur, and one of his compartment-mates was a middle-aged Bengali businessman named Ghosh, who encouraged Ashoke to travel the world. As Ashoke was reading Nikolai Gogol's "The Overcoat" in the early morning hours, the train crashed. Half buried under the rubble, Ashoke was nearly missed by the rescuers until a page from Gogol's short story caught their attention. Gogol to the rescue. After a year of recovery, Ashoke returned to college and graduated. We wonder if he ever got his hands on his grandfather's books. If not, can we have them, please? Having taken Ghosh's advice, Ashoke applied for graduate school at MIT. Time for some world travel. He only told his parents his intentions when he was awarded a fellowship, and it was too late for them to convince him not to go. In the midst of all these memories, a nurse walks in to the waiting room. Is he a proud papa, yet?

What happens in chapter 3 in The Namesake?

1971 The Gangulis now live in a comfy university town outside Boston. During the day, Ashoke goes to teach at the university, Gogol goes to nursery school, and Ashima hangs out at the library. Sounds like a pretty nice life. A couple of years later, they move to their first house at 67 Pemberton Road. They spend their free time exploring the area, and sometimes they vacation on the North Shore of Cape Cod. It is now August 1973, and Ashima is pregnant again. The poor woman has horrible morning sickness. In September, Gogol starts nursery school. Ashoke tries to get the folks at school to call Gogol by a more formal name, Nikhil, but Gogol won't have it. He's Gogol through and through. In May, Gogol's sister Sonali is born. Her parents settle on Sonia as a nickname. See? Keep it simple, folks. In contrast to Gogol's modest annaprasan (rice ceremony), Sonia's rice ceremony is a real shindig. All the fellow Bengali immigrants her parents have befriended over the years attend, and Sonia grabs the money and the dirt, unlike Gogol, who just cried. As the years go by, more of Ashima and Ashoke's relatives in India pass away, and the Gangulis start to fit into American culture a bit more. They even start celebrating Christmas. Now that's American. Still, they try to keep up Bengali customs when they can. By the age of 10, Gogol has made three trips back to Calcutta. On his last trip, he was totally surprised to find that over there Ganguli is a very common last name. When he is 11 and in the sixth grade, Gogol goes on a field trip to visit the home of a famous dead writer. As part of the trip, the students are taken to the cemetery where the writer is buried and do rubbings of the gravestones, which sounds like a pretty creepy in-class activity for a bunch of kids. When Gogol brings his rubbings home, his mother is shocked that the children would be exposed to death in that way. Morbid, much?

What happens in chapter 6 of The Namesake

1994 After earning his graduate degree in architecture, Gogol settles in the Big Apple, where he gets a cushy job at an architecture firm. He's doing it, folks. He's totally living the American Dream. He remembers a trip to New York City that he took with his family when he was a kid. They drove right past all the sights, and headed straight for the Indian grocery store. No Statue of Liberty, no Empire State Building. No nothing. One night, he goes to a party at a posh loft with a co-worker, where he meets an artsy woman named Maxine. They really hit it off. Sparks are seriously flying. Lo and behold, the next morning, Maxine invites him over for dinner at the swanky house she shares with her parents. Gogol has an awesome time, and really likes her parents, Gerald and Lydia Ratliff. Maxine seems like a great catch, right? So it's no wonder, then, that Gogol begins to date her. In fact, he spends all of his time with her, and barely ever goes home to his own apartment. In June, Maxine's parents head up to New Hampshire, so Gogol and Maxine have the house to themselves for the summer. Sounds pretty nice to Shmoop. In August, Gogol's mother calls him and asks him to visit home before his father leaves for a research fellowship in Ohio. The couple decides to stop by his parents' house on their way up to New Hampshire to visit her parents. When they arrive, Gogol discovers that his parents are having a home security system installed for some reason. We wonder what that's about. After lunch, they briefly celebrate Gogol's birthday and Gogol tells his father to have a good trip to Ohio. Then Ashoke accidentally calls Gogol "Gogol" in front of Maxine. Uh oh. How's he going to explain that one to his ladylove? By avoiding the subject entirely, apparently. Maxine doesn't push it, and they head on up to New Hampshire, where Gogol settles into country life with the Ratliffs, who own a house by a lake. The Ratliffs throw Gogol his 27th birthday party, during which a woman named Pamela makes annoying comments about his Indian background. Not cool, Pammy.

What happens in chapter 10 of The Namesake

1999 Just to warn you guys, in this chapter, Gogol will be called Nikhil, after the more formal name that his parents tried to give him all those years ago. Nikhil and Moushumi are all set to celebrate their first anniversary, and the fact that Moushumi has just passed her oral exams for graduate school. Moushumi also finds out that she received a research grant to work on her dissertation in France, but she rejects it and throws it away since it would mean living away from Nikhil for a year. Despite all she and Gogol have to celebrate, Moushumi often sneaks out to eat alone or have lunch with her friend Astrid, just to assert her independence. It's a Sunday night, and Moushumi and Nikhil walk to a restaurant to have dinner. Moushumi is not a fan of the restaurant, or of the food. Nikhil doesn't get why. Two days later, Moushumi begins teaching the fall semester at NYU, and on her first day of class, she arrives at work to discover that the departmental assistant, Alice, died suddenly of an aneurysm that morning. Yikes. Stunned, she finds herself sorting the mail, which is usually Alice's job. She discovers a cover letter and CV for a former flame, Dimitri Desjardins. She flashes back to her high school days, when she and her friends had visited Princeton, pretending to be college students. They wound up going to Washington D.C. for a protest with the Princeton crowd. On the bus ride to DC, Moushumi sat next to a guy who introduced himself as Dimitri. Dimitri started to put the moves on her, and Moushumi was not complaining. But then he abruptly stopped. Dimitri and Moushumi went out on a date, but Moushumi made the mistake of asking him to her prom. Um, Moushumi, the dude is 27. He politely declined. Later, she saw him around town with another girl. He told her he was headed to Europe, and while he was over there, he sent her postcards at Brown, where she was in school. Snap back to the present. Moushumi writes Dimitri's phone number down. That is so not a good idea. In her and Gogol's apartment, Moushumi finds a gift Dimitri had sent her. It's Stendhal's The Red and the Black, which she reads from cover to cover. Shmoop smells trouble. And trouble comes knocking. The next week, she calls up Dimitri. They start having an affair, meeting at his place on Mondays and Wednesdays after she teaches class at NYU. Poor Nikhil doesn't suspect anything. One night Moushumi can't sleep because of the noisy rain, and begins to cry. She tells Nikhil she is crying because the rain has soaked through part of the ceiling. Yeah, like that's believable. In Dimitri's apartment, Moushumi looks at a book of Atget photographs while Dimitri picks up some groceries. She puts the book back on the shelf when she hears him enter.

What happens in chapter 11 of The Namesake?

2000 Time for another fast forward. It's the day before Christmas, and Ashima is preparing croquettes for her Christmas Eve party. With Ashoke gone, she has sold the house, and will shortly leave for India, where she plans to spend six months out of every year. After finishing cooking, she heads upstairs to change clothes. The poor woman weeps at the memory of her dead husband. After her shower, she puts on a bathrobe that was a gift from Ashoke, picked out by Gogol and Sonia. Meanwhile, Gogol is waiting at the train station to be picked up. He flashes back to Christmas the year before. While on the train, Moushumi had let slip the name Dimitri. Of course this mean she had to come clean and tell Gogol that she had been having an affair. Ouch, that's gotta sting. The couple made it through the holidays, but Moushumi left early to clear out her stuff from the New York apartment, and now the marriage is kaput. Back on Christmas Eve of the current year, Sonia picks up Gogol from the train station. At home, Gogol, Sonia, and Ben, Sonia's fiancé, set up the Christmas tree and the decorations. At 7:30, the party begins and soon enough the house is jam-packed with Bengali families. Gogol goes upstairs to find his dad's camera so he can document the evening. Then he has to go to his old room to change the battery and insert a new roll of film. In his room, he looks at his books and notices The Short Stories of Nikolai Gogol. He sits down to read.

What happens in chapter 2 of The Namesake?

At 5:05 in the morning, Ashima and Ashoke welcome their son into the world, and while they're still in the hospital, three Bengali friends visit them. Having allowed Ashima's grandmother to name their child, Ashima and Ashoke have to wait for the grandmother's letter, since neither family has a telephone in India. But over a month has gone by, and there's still no letter. So what in the world are they supposed to call the baby? Baby? Kiddo? Him? Ashima spends three days in the hospital. Still no letter. Finally, since the hospital won't discharge the baby without a name, Ashoke decides to name him Gogol. Boom. It's forever entered into the birth certificate bureaucracy. When they return home, their landlords, Mr. and Mrs. Montgomery, come downstairs from their apartment to see Gogol. The Montgomerys bring their two young daughters along. At first depressed and overwhelmed by the burden of caring for a new one, Ashima soon begins to develop some independence and goes out into the world. She shops, she takes her son out on walks. Typical new mom stuff. In November, Ashima and Ashoke receive a letter from Ashima's father dated three weeks before, which tells them the sad news that Ashima's grandmother had a stroke. The chances of ever getting that letter from grandma with Gogol's name in it are looking pretty slim. In February, Ashima and Ashoke celebrate Gogol's annaprasan, or rice ceremony, at which a baby is fed rice for the first time. While Gogol totally digs the rice pudding, he does not enjoy the end of the ceremony, in which some dirt, a ballpoint pen, and a dollar bill are set before him. What's this all about? Well, according to tradition, his choice will determine his future career. Unfortunately, little Gogol doesn't pick anything - he just wails. Does that mean he will spend the rest of his life whining? Gosh, we hope not. Now it's August, and Gogol is one year old. Ashima and Ashoke are eagerly planning a family visit to Calcutta in December. After a trip into Boston with Gogol to buy gifts for her family, Ashima accidentally leaves all her bags on the subway. When Ashoke calls up the lost and found the next day, they find that some ridiculously nice person has saved the bags and turned them in. Practice random acts of kindness, people. One night, Ashoke and Ashima are awoken by a phone call from Rana, Ashima's brother in India. Ashoke speaks to Rana first, and then he hands the phone over to his wife. After they get off the phone, Ashoke realizes that Rana hasn't told Ashima the bad news, so now he's the one to deliver the blow: her father has died of a heart attack. Six days later, Ashoke, Ashima, and Gogol head for Calcutta, feeling pretty blue.

What happens in chapter 7 of The Namesake

At some point between Thanksgiving and Christmas, Ashima is home alone addressing Christmas cards, which she has decided to make herself. These days, life is pretty quiet. Ashoke comes to visit from Ohio every three weeks, where he helps her with household chores and pays the bills. And when she is alone, she works at her part-time job at the library. At 3 pm, Ashoke calls her to let know that he is at the hospital because he's been having a bit of trouble with his stomach. He promises he'll call her back after his hospital visit. No sweat, right? Wrong. She is totally sweating. By the next morning, Ashoke still hasn't called. She finds the phone number for his hospital and gives it a ring. The intern at the other end of the line informs her that Ashoke has died. Ooph, that's sad. Immediately, Sonia flies back to Massachusetts from San Francisco, where she has been living with a few friends. Gogol and Maxine have just returned from a party when Sonia calls to tell Gogol about his dad's death. Refusing Maxine's offer to come with him, Gogol heads to Ohio to arrange his father's cremation and take care of business. At the hospital, Gogol identifies his father's body. Then he drives to his dad's apartment, where he spends the next few days clearing things out. Once he's done with that painful task, it's time to head home. On the plane ride to Massachusetts, Gogol remembers that when his paternal grandfather died, his father had shaved his head, a ritual performed by Bengali sons when their parents die. So is he going to shave his head? We kind of doubt it. At his parents' house, Ashima, Gogol, and Sonia go through ten days of mourning, and they receive a lot of visitors and condolences. On the eleventh day, Maxine comes to visit, and the Gangulis hold a party to mark the end of the period of mourning. Maxine invites Gogol to New Hampshire, but he wants to stay to help his family through the tough time. Gogol and Sonia help Ashima get her life in order, and drive her around town so she can visit her friends. By now, it's early January, and Gogol finally heads back to New York City, where Maxine is all set to meet him at Penn Station. On the train, he has a memory of driving to Cape Cod with his family, and walking with his father to the furthest edge of the breakwater.

What happens in chapter 8 of The Namesake

Fast forward a year. Gogol is still working as an architect in Manhattan, but he is no longer dating the lovely Maxine. It turns out that they broke up after she complained that he spent too much time with his family. And now she is engaged to another man. Well, it was fun while it lasted. Gogol visits his mother and his sister, who now lives at home, every weekend. Sonia has a job as a paralegal in Boston. The family celebrates Ashoke's birthday and commemorate the day of his death, too, by draping a garland of rose petals over his picture, and anointing his forehead with sandalwood paste. At a review group for his architect's registration exam, Gogol meets Bridget, whose husband teaches in the Boston area. We hate to say it, but the two of them have an affair. In an attempt to find him a more suitable match, Gogol's mother convinces him to call the daughter of a family friend, Moushumi Mazoomdar, whom he vaguely remembers. We vaguely remember her, too - from the birthday party, right? Gogol's memory is not quite as good as ours. Gogol and Moushumi, who is now a grad student in French at NYU, meet up for a drink. Then they go to dinner and have a nice enough time. The next week they meet for lunch by his office, where a waiter mistakes them for siblings. Awkward. On the way back to work, Moushumi helps Gogol pick out a hat. She ogles an expensive one for herself, so after they part ways, Gogol goes back to the store and buys it for her. The next time he goes home to Massachusetts, Gogol looks up Moushumi's picture in the family photo album. He finds her in a picture from one of his birthday parties. Oh so that's who she is - the girl who read in the corner the whole time. The next weekend, Gogol goes over to Moushumi's place for dinner, after which they wind up sleeping together. And over the next three months, they begin dating. Telling Gogol about her life up to this point, Moushumi says she remembers her childhood in England, and moving to America. She double-majored in French and chemistry at Brown, and after graduation, left for Paris, where she had a lot of affairs with men. Paris is also where she met Graham. Uh oh. Who's Graham? As it turns out, he is her former fiancé. In fact, he's the whole reason she moved back to New York City. She proposed to Graham, and he was all for it. He even gave her his grandmother's diamond. They couple had visited Calcutta together, and planned a summer Hindu wedding in New Jersey. But then, Graham showed a darker side. A few weeks before the wedding, he made some not-nice comments about her family in Calcutta, which sparked a whopper of an argument. She threw his grandma's diamond in the street. Ouch. He slapped her. Serious ouch. Needless to say, those two crazy kids called the wedding off. So a devastated Moushumi moved in with a couple in Brooklyn for a while, and then she got her own place, and became determined to study her butt off at NYU. It turns out all of this happened the summer before she met up with Gogol. Hmm. Is that enough time to have gotten over a heartbreak? Guess we'll find out.

What happens in chapter 4 in The Namesake?

Gogol celebrates his fourteenth birthday with a party with his friends on one day, and a party with his family and his parents' friends on the Saturday after his birthday. Two whole parties. We wish we were that lucky. At the party his parents throw, he's the oldest kid. The only other kid who is even close to him in age is a girl named Moushumi, but she prefers to sit alone and read. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Later that night, his father hands him a birthday present: a copy of The Short Stories of Nikolai Gogol. Uh, gee, thanks, dad. What is he supposed to do with a book by a dead white guy? Needless to say, Gogol doesn't bother reading his namesake's stories. The next year, Ashoke is on sabbatical, so the whole family ships off to Calcutta for eight whole months. They stay with one family member after another. Toward the end of their stay in India, they go on a trip to visit the Taj Mahal, and Gogol is totally impressed by the gorgeous architecture. Hmm. Do we spy a passion brewing? On the way back from their trip to the Taj, Sonia has an allergic reaction to some jackfruit, and, in the middle of the night, another passenger gets robbed and murdered. This family should really learn to stay off of trains. In August, they return to Massachusetts, and in September, Gogol begins his junior year in high school. His English teacher, Mr. Lawson, is inspired by Gogol's name and assigns a short story called "The Overcoat" as homework. Then, in class, he goes into graphic detail about Nikolai Gogol's life and grisly death. Ugh. Gogol Ganguli is not amused. One Saturday, his family goes on a trip to Connecticut, leaving him alone in the house. And you know what happens when teenagers are left alone in the house. Nothing good, that's what. Invited by some friends, Gogol goes to a party in a dorm at the university where his father teaches. Gogol pretends to be a freshman at Amherst so he can blend in. At the party, Gogol introduces himself as "Nikhil" to a girl named Kim. This new name gives him a little dose of bravery, and he musters up the courage to kiss her. It's his first kiss.

What happens in chapter 5 of The Namesake?

In the summer of 1986, before he leaves for college, Gogol goes to the Middlesex Probate and Family Court in Boston and officially changes his first name to Nikhil. Gogol's gone for good. At Yale, everyone knows him as Nikhil, and he makes sure that all the official paperwork at the university reflects his new name. As Nikhil, he gets a fake ID to go drinking, and loses his virginity to a random girl in a bar. Way to stay classy, Gogol. In college, he develops a love of architecture in his drawing class, which reminds us of his experience at the Taj Mahal. Despite his new identity, he often goes home to Massachusetts on the weekends, where his family still calls him Gogol. His sister Sonia is now in high school, and she's totally popular, unlike Gogol. In the fall of his sophomore year, Gogol boards the train in New Haven to head home, and on the train he strikes up a conversation with the girl sitting next to him. She's a fellow Yale student named Ruth. They fall in love and begin to date. Hey, maybe trains aren't so bad. They are still dating the next year, when Ruth departs for a spring semester abroad at Oxford, which leaves Gogol alone and lonely. At one point, he attends a panel discussion about Indian novels written in English, where the panel members talk about ABCD's (American-born confused deshis). Hmm. That sounds pretty familiar to Gogol. Maybe he's an ABCD, too. After all, he was born in America and is confused about his Indian roots. When Ruth returns in the fall, she and Gogol stop getting along, so they break up. Now a senior, Gogol goes home for Thanksgiving. His dad will be the only one around, because his mother and Sonia have gone to India. On his way home, Gogol's train gets delayed due to a suicide on the tracks. Seriously, Gangulis, just take the bus. When the train finally arrives, Gogol notices that his dad seems worried. But why? After pulling the car into the garage, Ashoke turns to Gogol and tells him about his own train accident, and Gogol finally learns the origin of his strange, frustrating name.

What happens in chapter 9 of The Namesake

Within a year, Gogol and Moushumi are married in a Hindu ceremony in New Jersey. The wedding is organized by their respective families, and the couple themselves have very little input. On the day of the wedding, Sonia gives Gogol a belated birthday present. During the ceremony, they dress traditionally. Gogol wears his father's Punjabi top; Moushumi wears a sari. There was no rehearsal, so, during the ceremony, Gogol and Moushumi have to be told what to do at each step. It all goes off without a hitch. For the reception, Gogol changes into a suit, and Moushumi into a red Banarasi gown. In the midst of the festivities, the thought occurs to Gogol that two years ago, he might have been watching Moushumi get married to Graham. The dress she is wearing, and many of the preparations, were for her wedding to Graham. Honestly, it's a little awkward. Gogol and Moushumi head off to the honeymoon suite, where Gogol remembers how he asked her to marry him in the spring, on her birthday. He had given her a gift of the hat he bought months before, and included in the box a smaller box with an engagement ring. In the suite, they make love, and afterwards, they count up the cash gifts they received at their wedding, a whopping $7,035. That's a lot of dough. Moushumi decides to hold on to her maiden name, and they move to an apartment together and settle into a routine. Wedded bliss? Not so much. Gogol finds all sorts of reminders of Moushumi's life with Graham. He even spots the wedding dress she was planning to wear at a second ceremony at Graham's father's house. In March, Gogol accompanies Moushumi to a conference in Paris. While Moushumi prepares a paper for her conference, Gogol goes sightseeing. Then, after she gives her paper, they meet up at a café in the Latin Quarter. Gogol wants to take Moushumi's picture, but she refuses; she doesn't want to look like a tourist. Fast forward to a Saturday evening in May. They are at a party thrown by Moushumi's friends, Astrid and Donald. Gogol isn't having fun because it turns out Moushumi had met Graham through Astrid and Donald. There are some seriously bad vibes at this party. Astrid is pregnant, and the guests discuss baby names. But Gogol has issues with the whole name thing, so he wanders around their place instead of chiming in the conversation. Then Gogol helps Donald cook, and Donald makes a comment about Moushumi and Graham that makes Gogol uneasy. Done playing sous-chef, Gogol returns to the other guests, who are still debating baby names. Moushumi tells everyone how Gogol changed his name, and Gogol is ticked off that she shared his secret.