BARNES & NOBLE | Vida by Patricia Engel, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

Vida

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Vida Pub. Date: 9/7/2010 Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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Overview

Fresh, accomplished, and fearless, Vida marks the debut of Patricia Engel, a young author of immense talent and promise. Vida follows a single narrator, Sabina, as she navigates her shifting identity as a daughter of the Colombian diaspora and struggles to find her place within and beyond the net of her strong, protective, but embattled family.

In “Lucho,” Sabina’s family—already “foreigners in a town of blancos”—is shunned by the community when a relative commits an unspeakable act of violence, but she is in turn befriended by the town bad boy who has a secret of his own; in “Desaliento,” Sabina surrounds herself with other young drifters who spend their time looking for love and then fleeing from it—until reality catches up with one of them; and in “Vida,” the urgency of Sabina’s self-imposed exile in Miami fades when she meets an enigmatic Colombian woman with a tragic past.

Patricia Engel maps landscapes both actual and interior in this stunning debut, and the constant throughout is Sabina—serious, witty, alternately cautious and reckless, open to transformation yet skeptical of its lasting power. Infused by a hard-won, edgy wisdom, Vida introduces a sensational new literary voice.

Editorial Reviews

From Barnes & Noble

Patricia Engel's interlinked stories about a young Hispanic woman named Sabina grab you from the very first sentence: "This morning after you left I stayed in bed a long time trying to remember the moment when we both knew what was happening." "It was the year my uncle got arrested for killing his wife, and our family was the subject of all the town gossip." And in this debut fiction, there is no letdown after those lead-ins. "What makes Sabina's coming-of-age story so compelling," noted a New York Times critic, "is the arresting voice Ms. Engel has fashioned for her; a voice that's immediate, unsentimental and disarmingly direct." Editor's recommendation.

Publishers Weekly

Engel navigates issues of class, ethnicity, and identity with finesse in her debut collection, linked stories about Sabina, a child of Colombian immigrants who grows up in New Jersey before heading off to find work and love in Miami. "Diego was this guy that I met on Washington Avenue at three in the morning the summer I quit my job at the art gallery," the 23-year-old Sabina says in her typically understated voice in "Desaliento," a story about how dallying with the handsome Argentinean hustler seems glamorous and subversive. In "Lucho," Sabina, still in high school where her family is considered "spics, in a town of blancos," a neighbor boy with a rough past is the only one who pays attention to her. In the title story, Sabina, working in Miami, befriends an illegal Colombian immigrant who reveals a tale of being sold to a Miami brothel owner and later being "rescued" by the brothel's guard, now her boyfriend. Engel's prose is refreshingly devoid of pomp and puts a hard focus on the stiff compromises Sabina and her family have had to accept; there's a striking perspective to these stories. (Sept.)

More Reviews (3) Fewer Reviews

Kirkus Reviews

A loosely concatenated narrative that features Sabina, a second-generation Colombian-American, as she grows up, has relationships and tries to make sense of her life and world.

Engel's work could be considered either a series of stories or an "approximate" novel. The first story introduces us to 14-year-old Sabina, whose uncle has recently killed his wife. While this act casts a shadow on Sabina's family of "foreigners, spics, in a town of blancos," she's more preoccupied with Lucho, a boyfriend (of sorts) two years older. Lucho is charismatic, an accomplished smoker—and a practiced bad boy. One of the first traumas of Sabina's life is having to deal with his death in an automobile accident. "Refuge," the following story, takes place around 9/11. Sabina, now 22, is a receptionist at an investment bank. While her life is saved because she called in sick that day rather than showed up at her office in Tower One, Engel is interested in the small gesture, not the arc of terrorism. Once again, the focus is on relationships, in this case musician Nico, her irresponsible boyfriend, and Lou, a guitar teacher whose jealous wife keeps a close eye on Sabina. By the end of the story Sabina has learned her relationship with Nico is as doomed as the Twin Towers, and when it ends it is "uneventful, the way most life-changing moments are. You don't see them happening." In the next story we learn of the death of anorexic Maureen, who'd gone to high school with Sabina and made her life unbearable. Here Sabina explores her own ambivalence toward this unlikable, pathetic and sad woman. The longest story (or chapter) is "Vida." In it we find Sabina still wrestling with unfaithful boyfriends, yet she's able to help a friend escape a failed relationship and "escape" back to Colombia.

Engel's portraits—especially of her main character—are edgy, perceptive and razor sharp.

Michiko Kakutani

What makes Sabina's coming-of-age story so compelling is the arresting voice Ms. Engel has fashioned for her: a voice that's immediate, unsentimental and disarmingly direct. Ms. Engel…proves as adept at depicting the staid, highly class-conscious world of Sabina's relatives in Bogotá, as she is at capturing the artsy downtown world of New York, and the Miami club scene where everyone seems to be a model or an entrepreneur just on the verge of success.
—The New York Times

Sophia Lear

Just because something happened to you doesn't make it interesting. Anyone who has suffered through an overly indulgent blog post or cocktail-party anecdote is familiar with this thought, which also roughly captures the risk of first-person fiction. And that's what makes Vida, Patricia Engel's understated first collection of stories, so arresting: Engel never strays from the even-keeled perspective of Sabina, the daughter of Colombian immigrants, an unambitious young woman from New Jersey to whom nothing truly horrible or truly wonderful happens. But by the end of her book, Engel has, with apparent ease, entirely overcome her reader's skepticism.
—The New York Times Book Review

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780802170781
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Publication date: 9/7/2010
Pages: 176
Sales rank: 534,856
Product dimensions: 7.50 (w) x 11.06 (h) x 0.78 (d)

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Diego_Winkle

Posted December 16, 2010

Patricia Engel is a literary genius!!!

From the moment I picked up the book I could not place it down. The metaphors and detailed setting descriptions provided throughout the stories allowed you to integrate with the story. I had the pleasure of meeting Patricia in person and she is a true visionary! Looking forward to seeing what she has up ahead because she can reach great heights in the literary world.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.
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LuciT

Posted December 20, 2010

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Can't stop reading - Need to know what happens next

This is light reading (the paper used for printing is very interesting too). Not one of those book with long, never-ending descriptions of people and places. Something happens on every page and the book interests the reader from the beginning. Great for gifts, to carry in your purse (not heavy), for airport and airplane reading, or to read a chapter each night. Once you start, you can't stop. If has some drama but with good sense of humor in every page.

The best character is Sabina's mother, a funny latin lady, which I can totally identify with other latin mothers I know!
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