kab
In place of exploring identity and belonging, or the transformation of tradition, or class privilege, or a human voice, The Namesake is bogged with unremitting descriptions of everything in a room. Across generations the characterisation is flat and, like in Amy Tan's novels, the American generation is the dullest, and here, aspirationally white-adjacent.
I would have preferred reading a novel entirely about Moushumi, including her later ditching the teenager-grooming Dimitri.
The story in Indravalli blooms, unique to the setting, with a persuasive love anchoring Poornima and Savitha amidst poverty and patriarchal oppression. The titled theme however, despite being drummed at the reader, begins to lose coherence after successions of misery are planted along the pages. Savitha especially has her fire dimmed, loses her wings, is swallowed in pieces. Although the scale of hardship explodes, it is in the worthwhile tackling of monstrous subjects including misogynistic violence and human trafficking.
Notes:
- There's ableism written in regarding Kishore.
- Rao chooses to detail plural instances of stump-based sexual violence.
- Mohan is afforded sympathy. He's a rapist slave owner...but what he really wants is to be a poet.
- An out of place omniscient short story is tacked on with the passing Jacob character.
Struggles presented as universal take on a quality of mocking delusion when the excess of protagonists (only male voices) all become famous millionaires at the top of their fields who own fabulous and plural homes and have access to private jets and Alhambra strolls. The decided main character also has riches in an expansive circle of equally jet-setting friends who over the span of decades never give up on him despite constant vehement testing-our-friendship pushback. We're told they remain devoted and compassionate yet none ever actually do rudimentary research on how to, if not guide him to knowledgeable help, talk to him and make steps to reposition the thinking and identity of a friend who has lived through extremities of harm. The glamour and American dreaming has its counterbalance in a childhood filled with horrors heaped on horrors of sexual, physical, and psychological abuse.
On the length, some expert editing could have kept out:
- White-adjacent ‘post-racial' musings offensively put into Malcolm's voice, besides the pretense that it's a story about four friends
- The additional fantasy of a ‘post-queer' landscape
- The transphobic introduction to Edie's party
- All subject-/interlocutor-vague narration from Harold (in fact letters to a painting of Willem's face) that diminishes Harold's character (‘You asked me once when I knew that he was for me, and I told you that I had always known. But that wasn't true, and I knew it even as I said it—I said it because it sounded pretty, like something someone might say in a book or a movie...')
- Dr. Traylor and his sex dungeon. How did Dr. Traylor even get caught? I had imagined Jude's legs being broken by Jude grabbing the wheel from Brother Luke to steer themselves into oncoming traffic to end his contrivedly torturous life
- The continuation of over the top villainous violence in Caleb
- About 50 pages reiterating self-harm
- The author's dismissal of psychiatry except maybe for the truly damaged in Willem's voice
- The jokes shared between Jude and Willem, which all fall unendearing not to mention unconvincing as connection
- A listing of every New York street the characters put their feet on
- How each of their friends die in the end
Even if it had been thoughtfully pruned and calibrated to a relatable scale, the novel's early glimmers of resonance could not survive the author's carrel of privilege and vision for suffering. The exploration of the aftermath of childhood trauma and the role of friendship in the potentiality of healing is weightily disrespected.
I enjoyed reading most about his return visit to Hong Kong, his personal reflections on identity and belonging. Even tempered with self-deprecation, the rest is a little bit too in the belly of noxious standards of success and masculinity. I would be like his father, though, and have an unspoken devotion and respect—explicit expression of love and pride always comes across as too-American obsessions.
It's a textbook for learning French in Quebec so you'll read about the passé surcomposé for example.
Excellent intermediate grammar notes. I really like how the illustrative sentences stick to the theme of each chapter (language and communication, journalism, entertainment, school, work, economics, accommodation, food, personal care, health, nature, personality, family, law, politics). Plenty of exercises for grammar, reading comprehension, and vocabulary practice. There are incidentally zero images in the book as a note for those who lean towards visual engagement. I appreciated the crispness myself since I find modern textbooks a little too busy/stressful at a glance.
It was published in 1999 so some of the readings could of course be more updated. Some do have staying power though.
An excellent mix of reading, vocabulary, grammar notes, exercises, and suggested discussions and other oral activities for the classroom. It's well-formatted as well which is unfortunately uncommon in language learning textbooks and goes a long way in making a textbook a pleasure to study.
My only complaint is small, in that the vocabulary lists related to each book excerpt is unnecessarily split into at least three sublists—elementary (broken down into nouns, adjectives, and verbs), active, and supplementary (sometimes futher broken down into subcategories by theme)—so when I was trying to look up a word I had to scan multiple lists instead of just a single alphabetised one.
I also appreciate that the content is international and related to that it still feels current (minus some of the ‘Français en couleurs' slang of course) despite being published in 2007 (8th edition).
