BOOKS: Blue Boy, Rakesh Satyal (2009)

It's not easy being Kiran Sharma. Being a 12-year-old Indian-American in Cincinnati in 1992 would be bad enough, but that's hardly the only thing that sets Kiran apart from his classmates. There's his preference for ballet over basketball, for one thing, not to mention his fondness for Strawberry Shortcake dolls or his habit of sneaking into his mother's bathroom to play with her makeup. Kirin has begun to think that he will never fit in anywhere when he has an epiphany: He must be the long-awaited tenth incarnation of the Hindu god Krishna.

Satyal's novel is a marvelous entertainment that does a lot of things well. It's a sharp portrait of a tight-knit community of recent immigrant families, a viciously accurate look at elementary school social dynamics, and above all, a compassionate story about a boy learning to find strength in his difference. Kiran is an unforgettable character, and his frustration and confusion about a world that seems to have no place for him could be heartbreaking; that pain is leavened, though, by Satyal's wit and warmth, and by Kiran's own resilience and his refusal to give up on himself.

I have only one real reservation about the book, and that's the narrative voice. Kiran narrates, in the present tense, but this is not the voice of any 12-year-old who's ever lived. Take this passage, in which Kiran explains his love of ballet:

I want you to see the world the way that I see it. I want you to feel the lift of my body when I see the beauty of a pirouette or the ecstatic fact of a swishing sari. I want you to see the beauty in locking your face in colorful makeup and the beauty in twirling around and puckering your lips. I want you to know the meaning of dance, the things you do when no one is home, when you grab your ballet slippers and slap them on your feet and fly around the house, leaping over footrests and spinning around the island in the kitchen. I want you to understand the joy of pulling out several sheets from a paper towel roll and running around the empty house with it trailing behind you, then letting it go, letting yourself fall to the ground, and then letting the white streamer float onto you. I want you to understand how fluent my feet are, how they kiss the linoleum, the carpet, the kitchen table, armchairs, desks, beds. I want you to understand that this is the world, this is the acceptance, this is the big bear hug and the gold-star sticker. There is such beauty in the world, despite all of the harsh realities about it, and they are contained here for me. They are contained in a plié, in a rond de jambe. I have my own language. I am my own language.

Now that's nice writing -- spectacular writing, even. But it's not the voice of a 12-year-old boy from suburban Cincinnati. I found myself too often yanked out of the story by passages like that, which just don't suit the character.

Still, Blue Boy is a delightful novel, and all the more impressive for being Satyal's first. Can't wait to see what he brings us next.