Reader Score
77%
77% of readers
recommend this book
Critic Reviews
Good
Based on 8 reviews on
"[A] sparkling fiction debut."--The New York Times Book Review
"[A] fresh and unflinching take on the campus novel."--People (Ten Best Books of the Year)
"Diabolically charming and magnetic."--Ira Glass
A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: Time, The Washington Post, NPR, The Boston Globe, them
When Catalina is admitted to Harvard, it feels like the fulfillment of destiny: a miracle child escapes death in Latin America, moves to Queens to be raised by her undocumented grandparents, and becomes one of the chosen. But nothing is simple for Catalina, least of all her own complicated, contradictory, ruthlessly probing mind. Now a senior, she faces graduation to a world that has no place for the undocumented; her sense of doom intensifies her curiosities and desires. She infiltrates the school's elite subcultures--internships and literary journals, posh parties and secret societies--which she observes with the eye of an anthropologist and an interloper's skepticism: she is both fascinated and repulsed. Craving a great romance, Catalina finds herself drawn to a fellow student, an actual budding anthropologist eager to teach her about the Latin American world she was born into but never knew, even as her life back in Queens begins to unravel. And every day, the clock ticks closer to the abyss of life after graduation. Can she save her family? Can she save herself? What does it mean to be saved?
Brash and daring, part campus novel, part hagiography, part pop song, Catalina is unlike any coming-of-age novel you've ever read--and Catalina, bright and tragic, circled by a nimbus of chaotic energy, driven by a wild heart, is a character you will never forget.
Emma Bolden is a poetry writer.
I’m so late in getting to this book but oh my god what a necessary, gorgeous, funny, devastating, must-read book
Francisco Goldman is an author.
Catalina is wildly, movingly, mercurially alive – one moment terrifyingly unhinged and lonely, and in the next, knockdown glorious. The amazingly gifted Karla Cornejo Villavicencio is even more fearless, letting her brainy, irreverent protagonist skewer one sacrosanct cultural complacency or dogma after another.
"Written in brilliant, overflowing prose, Catalina is one of the best, most fun-to-read books you will find. You may see a bit of yourself in Catalina, or you may learn how to empathize with someone whose entire life is chaos."