Sparkling ... Villavicencio’s prose seduces her readers ... This talky, shrewd, irresistible protagonist deepens our understanding of how small slights and epic challenges mold an immigrant’s life.
A singular, owned, undaunted achievement ... She has composed a great lyrical novel that transcends origin. It is neither American nor Latin American nor Pan American. The spotlight on Catalina’s searching heart is of Villavicencio’s own making. It is her original bel canto, in her superlative voice.
Villavicencio has gifted that remarkable voice to her undocumented Ecuadorian narrator as she navigates her senior year at Harvard ... It’s a delightfully audacious and insightful novel, even if at times it can feel a bit too conscious of that audacity and insight ... Toward its conclusion, the novel slows a bit in order to allow its many moving parts to gel, but Cornejo Villavicencio’s decisions never feel formulaic or forced. Catalina is a great novel about the dream of America and the American Dream, which for far too many — including the woman who wrote it — remains deferred and in danger of being lost altogether.
Often delightful and occasionally unsatisfying ... Cornejo Villavicencio’s fluid, digressive prose shines brightest when Catalina’s theatrical self-presentation takes center stage ... After a flurry of events that feels rushed, almost as if it were the outline of a longer book, the novel suddenly ends ... It’s unsatisfying, even disappointing. But perhaps this abruptness is intentional.
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.
While astute, Cornejo Villavicencio’s commentary on the hypocrisy of liberalism and academia aren’t enough to carry a story that relies on coincidence, meanders, and stalls. The novel doesn’t live up to the overwhelming tension and high stakes of its protagonist’s life.
Scorching ... illavicencio 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.
