Catalina by Karla Cornejo Villavicincio

Saturday, May 3, 2025--San Antonio

Catalina by Karla Cornejo Villavicincio was longisted for the National Book Award this past year and was named a best book of the year by TIME, NPR, etc..  It's the story of a young woman who is sent to the US to live with her grandparents.  Her parents died in an accident when she was too young to have memories of her life with them, and she had been raised by an aunt and an uncle until she was flown to the US entering only with a tourist visa to see her grandparents which, eventually when she did not leave, an illegal immigrant living with two other undocumented, illegal immigrants.  The book is the story of her life in the US.  It describes the way she was taught to keep their secret from everyone.  It tells how she was intelligent and learned everything she knew from reading.  Somehow, however, she did not make progress in learning social skills and is quite unlikable.  She made it into Harvard, but she uses her knowledge of situations in the books she had read to try to reason and analyze what is happening as she interacts with others.  And often she just doesn't care to do so leading to disastrous effects.  I really liked the novel at the beginning, but I became frustrated with her bad decisions toward the end.  Throughout her life, she had managed to come through situations with miracle-like results, but that was all coming to an end during her last semester at Harvard.  I gave the book 4 stars out of 5.