Vida

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.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Grove Press, Black Cat
Published: 09/07/2010
ISBN: 9780802170781
Pages: 182
Weight: 0.59lbs
Size: 7.34h x 5.00w x 0.77d
Award: Independent Publisher Book Awards - Silver Medal Winner
Award: Florida Book Award - Silver Medal Winner
Award: Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award - Finalist

Review Citations: Kirkus Reviews 07/01/2010
Publishers Weekly 07/05/2010
New York Times Book Review 10/10/2010 pg. 17
New York Times Book Review 10/17/2010 pg. 26
NY Times Notable Bks of Year 12/05/2010 pg. 29
Shelf Awareness 01/01/0001