NO ONE CAN PRONOUNCE MY NAME
Fiction Butt the proctologist NO ONE CAN PRONOUNCE MY NAME By Rakesh Satyal 418 pp. Picador Reviewed by Marty Carlock A subtle bias has crept into publishing in the past few years: a predilection for stories from writers of exotic backgrounds, whether skillfully written or not. Yes, most of us readers want to be taken “lands away,” as Emily Dickinson has it; we want to read about lives different from our own humdrum. Yet most of us want to be taken there by a competent guide. No One Can Pronounce My Name is exotic enough. Rakesh Satyal is of Indian descent (his bios fail to reveal when his family immigrated to America) and is gay. His first novel, Blue Boy , winner of the 2009 Lambda Award for Gay Debut Fiction, mirrors his own boyhood growing up in Cincinnati. This current novel delves into the society and culture of immigrants from India living in this country. For women – to hear Satyal tell it – their interchange is about gossip, judgment, back-biting and competition regarding th...