This is a story of pastiche, of pulling together outside and inside influences, and not about which one is right, or better, but rather about how they come to form a life as it is, not as it should be or shouldn't be. The main character, Gogol, carries some of this pastiche in his very name - the grandmother of one of his parents is supposed to send a letter with a Bengali name for him to the United States, where he was born. But the letter is never delivered, and the grandmother dies before anyone can find out what he's supposed to be called. So, in the meantime, his parents name him Gogol on official documents, after the book by Nikolai Gogol that kept Gogol's father up on a train, which saved his life when the train crashed and killed everyone in the sleeping compartments.
Carrying a strange Russian last name as his first name, Gogol fights against that name for most of his life, although it isn't as easy as being right or wrong. It marks him apart, but any other name might have marked him apart as well. His parents try to give him a Bengali name when he starts school, but a kindly teacher notes that Gogol doesn't want to respond to it, and so Gogol it is until he changes it legally as a young man, to the name his parents tried to give him as his school name. By then he will be known as nothing else to his parents and those of his parents generation, within their Bengali circle of friends, but will be known as Nikhil to his peers as he goes to college, and later, lives in New York while he pursues a career as an architect.
But, notably, the narration of the book, the omniscient third person, continues to call him Gogol. As an act of rebellion, Gogol never reads the book his father gave him from his namesake, at least not until the very end of the book. That may seem odd, but I have a similar feeling about the movie The Outlaw Josey Wales. My dad loved that movie, and while I mellowed on other things he liked, I never did watch it before he died. Still haven't seen it, and I may never - not because there's an ideological point to be made, but because the joking argument over it is part of what I still have of my father, much as I had the routine about who taught me how to swear with my mother, the call and response worn smooth by repetition.
What I think I'm trying to say is that while Gogol and his parents are never not at least partially defined by their status as immigrants to the United States, neither are they entirely confined by it. It's a story of individuals - parents who mostly socialize with other Bengali expats, but a mother who starts to work at the library and finds friends there, who is happy when Gogol has a Bengali girlfriend and wife, but is not inflexible or judgemental when things change. It's not about finding the right answer, like there is a right platonic answer that would solve everything, a way of life that would make everything turn out right. Everything proceeds from what came before, and shapes Gogol and his parents and his sister, but what comes after each moment is the product of the sum, not the life that happened before Gogol's parents even left India and conceived him.
The answer is not to date white women, but the major relationship with a white woman does change who he is. The answer is not to date Bengali women, although his marriage also shapes who he is. It's all about what life throws at a person next, and how you react in that moment, not in response to an ideal of what should be, but in response to what is. Sometimes irrational, but mostly quiet, mostly kindly, mostly muddling. There's something very enjoyable about this story, and it's the warm humanity of the characters and the avoidance of neat stereotypes for each decision as it looms on the horizon.
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