Hi friends, happy Wednesday, I hope you’re all doing well! Today I’m posting my review of Rakesh Satyal’s novel No One Can Pronounce My Name.

No One Can Pronounce My Name by: Rakesh Satyal: In the suburbs of Cleveland lives Harit, an Indian immigrant, where no one can pronounce his name. He lives with his mother in the shadows of his sister, Swati’s death. Meanwhile, not very far off Ranjana is also an Indian immigrant who believes her husband is having an affair and spends her time writing paranormal romance in secret. When their two lives cross paths an unexpected friendship forms and opens up a side of each of them they didn’t know existed. This was a surprisingly interesting and captivating story. This novel focused heavily on the characters and less so on the plot. We spent most of the book following these characters in their lives as different things start to happen for them. Usually, this reader doesn’t care for literary fiction because of this factor, but there was something really compelling about this story that had the reader continuing to find out what would happen to these characters. Satyal did a great job of creating these really strong and vivid characters that the reader couldn’t help but want to know more about. The side characters felt so wild, yet felt very accurate; the reader wanted to hate them at first, but the more we got to know them, the more we realized that they weren’t as bad as we’d originally thought they were. In the beginning, it was hard to get into, not only the story, but these characters because we’re introduced to everyone separately and it takes almost halfway through the novel for the two main characters to start interacting with one another so the beginning was kind of a slog to get through. Once the characters started to connect it got easier, but this was still a slow-paced novel. That aside though, the plot left the reader feeling hopeful; there was so much optimism and growth as all the characters learned about themselves, understood themselves better and started going for the things they wanted. This novel won’t be for everyone, but it did really shine the light on aspirations and breaking out of the mold; it also really showcased the way in which immigrants see not only Americans/Western culture, but themselves in a foreign world, which made for a good read.