A review by notesofacrocodile
Catalina by Karla Cornejo Villavicencio

challenging dark emotional sad

4.0

There's something about the faces of everyone in my family and in mine. I think you can see in our eyes the kind of sadness, which is in two places at once—mourning the past, grieving the future. Sad in a historically significant and visually satisfying way. 

catalina, the titular protagonist indulges us in a narrative where she dramatically paints herself with an exhibitionistic flair, detailing her days as a student at harvard university. she casts a trained indifferent eye to the literary societies and the fancy parties, the sophisticated students and the celebrity professors. catalina also happens to be a dreamer:  an undocumented immigrant who arrived in the united states of america as a child.

i initially picked this novel up due to its comparisons with the idiot by elif batuman, which happens to be one of my favourite novels. i absolutely adore reading stories centering lonely young women who are discovering themselves and learning to navigate instability and uncertainty, while recording all their thoughts with honesty and the occasional vulnerability. elif batuman's selin offered this perspective, and so did karla cornejo villavicencio's catalina. the novel also notably starts with catalina's remark on the novelty of instagram; reminiscent of selin commenting on the novelty of emails at the beginning of the idiot. i understand where the similarities between the two novels cropped up, but catalina definitely stands by itself, and apart.

catalina operates her narrative with the weighted dimension of being an undocumented ecuadorian immigrant who lives with her overworked grandparents; they firmly vocalise their belief in the necessity of her excelling in her educational pursuits, which she does try to. she is opinionated and seeks a spontaneous thrill to satiate her diet of a life of instability and being denied of what could have been deservedly hers. she would love to appear as though nothing can move her but unfortunately, her inner cataclysmic emotional state is betrayed to us through her narrative. at times her words appear to emerge from a place of bone-deep tiredness, and at other times, through a self that is contorted from feigning a strained nonchalance.

there is a lot that i loved about this novel: i was really interested by catalina as a protagonist and how she observed the world around her, what she had to say. she can be frustrating and nonsensical at times, but within the context, everything makes sense! the writing style also sounded intensely personal at times and when i searched up the author, it made sense when i found out that the author herself is an undocumented immigrant in the u.s. who graduated from harvard in 2011.

the narrative would flow easily at times, one scene into another, one train of thought into another, but sometimes there were abrupt time skips and changes in scene, which i understand some may not necessarily appreciate. much like the idiot, some readers may also feel frustrated about the lack of action in the first two-thirds of the novel, but it is all integral to catalina's story. 4 stars for this one overall!