Catalina
A Novel
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3.8 • 31 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD • A year in the life of the unforgettable Catalina Ituralde, a wickedly wry and heartbreakingly vulnerable student at an elite college, forced to navigate an opaque past, an uncertain future, tragedies on two continents, and the tantalizing possibilities of love and freedom
“[A] sparkling fiction debut.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)
“[A] fresh and unflinching take on the campus novel.”—People (Ten Best Books of the Year)
“Diabolically charming and magnetic.”—Ira Glass
FINALIST FOR THE PEN/HEMINGWAY AWARD • 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.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
The American Dream looks pretty different once you see it through the eyes of this novel’s heroine. Catalina seemingly scored the jackpot when she got into Harvard—but the prize came with a catch. Originally born in Ecuador, she’s undocumented and so are the grandparents who raised her in Queens. As she begins her senior year in a pre-DACA world, her looming graduation will mean little more than not being able to land a job. Written in Catalina’s voice, her stream-of-consciousness observations explore the many sides to her own in-progress identity. And from her half-remembered native culture to her complicated relationship with her grandfather to the kinda pretentious crowd at her summer internship, all of it is impactful—and messy. (The part where a college boyfriend suddenly prompts her to consider things like what her signature drink order should be and whether she should listen to Lou Reed is too real.) If you liked Elif Batuman’s The Idiot, be sure to check out Catalina.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
An undocumented Harvard student faces an uncertain future in the scorching first novel from Villavicencio (The Undocumented Americans, a memoir). Catalina Ituralde, who was born in Ecuador and has lived in the U.S. since she was five, begins her senior year in fall 2010 with cautious hope, because the DREAM Act bill, which would offer her permanent protection from deportation, is expected to finally be taken up by Congress. Flashbacks reveal her painful life story and determination to succeed. When she's a baby, her parents die in car crash in Cotopaxi and she's eventually brought to her grandparents in Queens. As a student, she quickly becomes an overachiever, and by high school she's a published journalist. While working at Harvard's Peabody Museum, she meets legacy student Nathaniel Wheeler, who's obsessed with his anthropological research on the Incas but struggles to understand the experience of contemporary Ecuadorians. When the DREAM Act fails in November, Catalina spirals into a mental health crisis ("All my body felt was a sinking tired dread"). Villavicencio expertly illuminates Catalina's precarity and Nathaniel's tokenizing of other cultures. The result is a moving coming-of-age novel that doubles as a no-holds-barred cultural critique.
Customer Reviews
middle of the road
There were those oddly brilliant paragraphs, phrases, and carefully chosen words.
There were times when I wondered what kind of outline the writer followed (especially after she credited someone with teaching her how to outline).
Then there were those blatantly in-your-face scenes of self-inflicted violence and self-absorbed doubt.
I know there are people out there who are like Catalina. And they have my sympathy. I just can’t say I liked her. Or her grandparents. Or the other people who barreled into and flew out of her life.
3⭐️ because I don’t feel that either Catalina or I learned anything from her experiences. 3⭐️ because the story had some beautifully poignant moments (and I wish they were enough to bury the ugly ones).