OYE, intense debut sapphic novel of adolescence in an immigrant family under HUGE life-stresses

OYE
MELISSA MOGOLLON
The Hogarth Press
$29.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: A coming-of-age comedy. A telenovela-worthy drama. A moving family saga. All in a phone call you won’t want to hang up on…

A young woman reckons with her rowdy, unpredictable family and the revelation of their long-buried history in this wildly inventive debut.

“Yes, hi, Mari. It’s me. I’m over my tantrum and finally calling you back. But you have to promise that you won’t say anything to Mom or Abue about this, okay? They’ll set the house on fire if they find out…”

Luciana is the baby of her large Colombian American family. And despite usually being relegated to the sidelines, she now finds herself the voice of reason in the middle of their unexpected crisis. Her older sister, Mari, is away at college and reduced to a mere listening ear on the other end of their many phone calls, so when South Florida residents are ordered to evacuate before a hurricane, it’s up to Luciana to deal with her eccentric grandmother, Abue, who’s refusing to leave. But the storm isn’t the only danger. Abue, normally glamorous and full of life, is given a crushing medical diagnosis. While she’d prefer to ignore it and focus on upholding her reputation and her looks instead, the news sets Abue on her own personal journey, with Luciana reluctantly along for the ride.

When Abue moves into Luciana’s bedroom, their complicated bond only intensifies. Luciana would rather be skating or sneaking out to meet girls, but Abue’s wild demands and unpredictable antics are a welcome distraction from Luciana’s misguided mother, absent sister, and uncertain future. Forced to step into the role of caretaker, translator, and keeper of the devastating secrets that Abue begins to share, Luciana suddenly finds herself center stage, facing down adulthood—and rising to the occasion.

As Luciana chronicles the events of her upended senior year over the phone, Oye feels like the most entertaining conversation you’ve ever eavesdropped a rollicking, heartfelt, and utterly unique novel by an author as original as she is insightful.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: A funny, modern updating of the epistolary novel, with all its strengths and weaknesses intact. The biggest strength for me was Luciana's voice: Raw, unregulated, intensely immersed in a very difficult moment. I have heard criticism from readers about the "foul language" Luciana uses, to all of whom I say, "go read a religious tract if all you want is sweet, uplifting pablum." Luciana's in a car fleeing a bloody hurricane! She's trying to reach her sister! She's left her Abue (Grandma for the monoglots) behind...at the old lady's insistence!

If anyone has a reason to use Language, it's this girl; plus she's talking to her sister! Not an Authority figure. Which brings me to, who says you, the reader, get to be an authority entitled to pass judgment, anyway?

And here I am, passing judgment....

Well, hypocrisy thy name is me, I guess. I disagree with those pursey-lipped objections because I don't agree with them, anywhere, period. To me, this is a feature not a bug: Immediacy and authenticity enhancing the usual epistolary read's sense of becoming privy to another person's intimate communications to someone not you. That style is emotionally more intense, more immediate, than third-person or *shudder* the Satanic Second person narration. That becomes ever more relevant as the hurricane threat is survived and the aftermath begins.

What the story does is deeply unfamiliar and absolutely terrifying to me. It chronicles the emotional reality of a child's bearing the burdens of adulthood, of responsibility for interpreting...on every level that word has in English...the world for the nominal adults around her. I can think of nothing more frightening to read about than that imposition on someone who is also coming to terms with her sapphic love needs. The latter would be enough to stress a kid out, and it certainly has, but add on top the cultural and language interpretation demands...!

This is, to me at least, the very most unnerving of isolations. Luciana is left, by the sister she's leaving these voicemails for, to be in charge of some deeply stressful navigations of her world that I feel sad she has to be burdened with, things that by all rights a teenager should not have to be in charge of. That's conveyed very well by the updated use of the epistolary format.

There are the usual limitations, of course. The fact that this is not a conversation, a la that ur-telephone novel Nicholson Baker's Vox, means that the story is solely the one Luciana sees and feels. We get her character, but are asked to fill in the spaces where the other characters...reduced to names here...need to be. That is inherent in the format, so it does nothing wrong, just leaves more work for the reader. I found that a bit off-putting as time went by; why is Luciana pouring her heart out to Mari anyway, I kept wondering, when there's nothing coming back...and the realization of Luciana's actual, heart-rending isolation came crashing in again.

As an evocation of the absolute intensity of adolescent emotions, passions, and fears, it works. As a novel, it can feel overly dramatic and one-note. That is a risk that the epistolary format carries within itself. I liked the read, but was too overstimulated to love it, as I could never be anywhere but in medias res.