Jennine Capó Crucet

Real Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: Scarface meets Moby-Dick in this groundbreaking, darkly comic novel about a young man’s attempt to capitalize on his mother’s murky legacy—a story steeped in Miami’s marvelous and sinister magic.

Failed Pitbull impersonator Ismael Reyes—you can call him Izzy—might not be the Scarface type, but why should that keep him from trying? Growing up in Miami has shaped him into someone who dreams of being the King of the 305, with the money, show more power, and respect he assumes comes with it. After finding himself at the mercy of a cease-and-desist letter from Pitbull’s legal team and living in his aunt’s garage-turned-efficiency, Izzy embarks on an absurd quest to turn himself into a modern-day Tony Montana.

When Izzy’s efforts lead him to the tank that houses Lolita, a captive orca at the Miami Seaquarium, she proves just how powerful she and the water surrounding her really are—permeating everything from Miami’s sinking streets to Izzy’s memories to the very heart of the novel itself. What begins as Izzy’s story turns into a super-saturated fever dream as sprawling and surreal as the Magic City, one as sharp as an iguana’s claws, and as menacing as a killer whale’s teeth. As the truth surrounding Izzy’s boyhood escape from Cuba surfaces, the novel reckons with the forces of nature, with the limits and absence of love, and with the dangers of pursuing a tragic inheritance. Wildly narrated and expertly rendered, Say Hello to My Little Friend is Jennine Capó Crucet’s most daring, heart-breaking, and fearless book yet.

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

My Review: Izzy is as average a guy as you will ever find. He has a crazy-ass inner life which suggests to him that making a living as a Pitbull impersonator:

...so we have a visual lock on Izzy from the off. Though, speaking of "off," the novel opens with Izzy getting his life rearranged by a lawyerly letter telling him to cease-and-desist with the Pitbull-y stuff. Now he has to figure out a way to make a living, and a life. Where is his family, you ask. Nowhere. He’s got none.

That central reality, that lack of mooring chains, allows Izzy to follow his inner voice’s promptings to do the absolute most batshit-crazy nonsense...remember he *was* a Pitbull impersonator until forced not to be...like, oh, lets say, model the entire rest of his life on the character in the film Scarface.

Follow the links, notice the patterns...this is not random pop-cultural detritus the author has randomly picked up.

Them comes the plot twist Lolita the Orca. How in the name of all that is holy did an ORCA show up in a novel about a Cuban-American man’s identity crisis?!

You really need to follow those links. Do some surface-scratching into the culture not already familiar to you. The word "reggaeton" will enter your vocabulary painlessly this way, and you will need it and the ideas it fronts for to wedge into your brain. The world is changing, and unless you intend to try to stop it by joining the banners and deniers on the radical right, you had best expend some brainergy getting conversant with Izzy and his world.

Do it painlessly by reading this novel. Moby-Dick was nowhere near this much fun to read, and Izzy beats Ishmael all hollow as a cicerone through all things whale-y. The resonances with the culture of the past make the culture of this century accessible for us midcentury moderns. The read is fun, it’s fast, it’s trenchant...it’s saying a lot more than the words mean.

Isn’t that more or less a novel’s brief? This one does make you work. It requires some effort to get the pop-cultural zeitgeist. It does not pretend to be all about you and center your experience. That novel exists in droves, elsewhere. THIS novel takes you inside the head of a man so traumatized by his past that he can not afford to go deep into anything. This novel parses the cost of cheap thrills and entertainment. The plot, the spine, is the voyage of discovery that we take with Izzy. Like any voyage of discovery, it is not a straight line from start to finish, so douse that expectation right away. Go on the trip as Author Crucet planned it and it will reward you with knowledge and information about the world of a trauma survivor. That can only be a net gain to your own world, because you are statistically likely to know a trauma survivor.

You might not know it yet, but you could easily pick up on signs you would not have seen before if you get your hooks into this story and its meanings. show less

Lizet Ramirez is the first in her Cuban-American family to go to college, and she doesn't go to one of the schools in Miami: she gets accepted to Rawlings, an elite liberal arts college in upstate New York. She applied in secret and presented it as a fait accompli, but her parents didn't have the reaction she wanted: they allowed her to go, but didn't say they were proud of her (or even recognize her accomplishment), and Lizet's impending departure causes her dad to leave the family, and show more sell their house out from under Lizet's mom and sister, Leidy. (Leidy has a baby, Dante; she got pregnant with her high school boyfriend by secretly going off the pill, but he surprised her by refusing to marry her or be an involved father.)

So Lizet's family sees her leaving more as a betrayal than an accomplishment, as does her boyfriend Omar. And, once at Rawlings, and despite the college's attempt at "diversity outreach," Lizet is in over her head - she doesn't even know what she doesn't know, and she gets in trouble for plagiarism. Lizet is ultimately allowed to stay, and seeks out the resources the college provides in order to bring her work up to the level it needs to be.

But while she's waiting to hear the results of her academic hearing, Lizet flies home for Thanksgiving as a surprise, and it ends up being the same day that Ariel Hernandez (a thinly veiled Elian Gonzalez) arrives in Miami from Cuba. Ariel's relatives are two blocks from the Rodriguez apartment in Little Havana, and Lizet's mother becomes obsessed with his family and their case, attending (and later organizing) protests and regularly appearing on the news.

The split between Lizet's two worlds is sharp: the mostly white, rich world of Rawlings, and the largely Cuban-American working class of Hialeah and Little Havana. Lizet navigates it as best she's able, with little help; none of the people in either of her worlds are able to grasp the reality of the other. (Ethan, an RA who is kind and friendly, and Jacquelin, a Latina student from California, come the closest, but Lizet is largely unable to bridge the gap.)

From the first pages, the reader knows that Lizet becomes some kind of scientist, but her journey there, interwoven with the drama playing out with Ariel's family in Miami and Cuba, makes the story.

See also: Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld (but Make Your Home Among Strangers is richer and more complex)

Quotes

I am not being racist, I said to her back. I can know things you don't know because of where I grew up. That's not me being racist. (Lizet to white roommate Jillian, 90)

When everyone around you thinks they already know what your life is like, it's easier to play in to that idea... (65)

And I did not like that I suddenly had this ability to see her that way, isolated from our shared history. I didn't know if she'd changed or if she'd always looked that way but now I could just see through my feelings somehow. (139)

I was doing something I'd done hundreds of times before, but I was suddenly aware of my performance of making cafe con leche, of trying to pass for what I thought I already was. (166)

This is good, she said. We never, ever use pencil because we never erase anything. You must keep the mistakes there. Mistakes are vital to every scientist's process. Just put a line through whatever you did incorrectly and keep going.
I wrote down this sentence and stared at it. It made perfect sense. The forgiveness built into this basic research philosophy - so simple and obvious - instantly validated by first semester in a way I could finally accept: everything led to this moment in this lab, the beginning of a new challenge of my own choosing. Put a line through it and keep going... (254) show less

Best book I read in uni, and it was, sadly, in my last term. As a first gen student from a similarly volatile background, I wish I'd read this book at the beginning of my college education. I think I would have felt less alone and less like there was something wrong with me. I never could get the hang of all the white, middle class morality that is expected of uni students in the US. That said, it has been something of a healing balm. At least I know now that my observations about higher ed show more were not my imagination. Those of us who try to step outside our caste usually find ourselves no longer fitting in at home and yet we can never quite achieve fitting into that upper crust that we are promised. That said, things have improved a lot since the time this book takes place (i the 90s). But there is still a very, very long way to go, because not just classism remains in the system, the racism is still very much a problem. show less

Say Hello to My Little Friend by Jennine Crucet is a book that caught me unaware recently. Ismael Reyes, or Izzy, spent his days as a Pitbull impersonator before he was issued a cease-and-desist letter from the performer’s legal team. This has Izzy feeling down on his luck and he decides to try and become the next Tony Montana, as in from Scarface. He goes about his plan while living with his aunt, who raised him. Along the way, he becomes obsessed with his past. His aunt and friends show more encourage him to let it go, but he cannot. We are also introduced to Lolita, a captive whale who lives at the Miami Seaquarium. She shares thoughts with us about her captivity and the world. This doesn’t make sense, but we trust the author anyway.

I listened to the audio version of this book and it was spectacular. I could see the water rising in Miami and feel the tension rising in the characters (all the characters were great, by the way). I genuinely felt like I was going along for the ride, but to where I did not know. The author’s words about the area made me remember visiting the Seaquarium and being near the ocean. There was a funny line about going on a date up to a “nice place” in Broward like Bahama Breeze, where I’ve been many times when I lived there. It’s just a feeling you get when an author can describe the places, the feel, and the vibe of the setting of the book you are reading or listening to. It’s so much better than just a random neighborhood. I KNEW it was Miami/Ft Lauderdale, I could smell, taste, see, and hear it. I appreciated the attention to detail. I also learned a lot about the movie Scarface from this book.

After much back and forth, I gave this book 5 stars. It is a wild, fun, and bittersweet ride. If you don’t know anything about Moby Dick or Scarface, don’t let that stop you from reading. It is not necessary to understand the book. When I finish a book and think about it for days or weeks after, I know it’s a 5-star read, and that was the case with Say Hello to My Little Friend. show less