Publishers Weekly
★ 03/11/2024
In this riotous first novel, a Florida high school senior is thrust by her cantankerous Colombian-American mother into the role of caretaker for her grandmother. Nana is already struggling to complete her graduation requirements when doctors find a mass in her grandmother Abue’s gallbladder. With Nana’s older sister, Mari, away at college, Nana’s mother, Elena, expects her to accompany Abue to her doctor’s appointments and serve as interpreter. Shenanigans ensue as Elena insists they hide the full extent of Abue’s health crisis from her, convinced that “if Abue ‘finds out the wrong information at the wrong time,’ she’ll just give up and die.” Meanwhile, Nana argues in vain that they are robbing the family matriarch of the ability to decide on her course of treatment. Nana’s mordant wit supplies laughs—“Sorry if I’m out of breath. It’s all the running away from our problems”—even as family secrets spill forth to reveal the intergenerational trauma that caused Abue to cut off communication with nearly all of her relatives in Colombia. Amid the frequent histrionics—Abue often threatens to drop dead or kill someone to make a point—Mogollon also manages to convey the fierce love that binds the women across generations. When they finally arrive at varying degrees of acceptance, it feels inevitable rather than contrived. Mogollon wows with tenderness and uproarious profanity. Agent: Mariah Stovall, Trellis Literary. (May)
From the Publisher
Fresh and wise, innovative and laugh-out-loud funny, warm and stylish, Oye is a propulsive delight full of verve and heart.”—Sarah Thankam Mathews, author of All This Could Be Different
“By a dazzling new voice, this book is a funny and heartfelt exploration of growing up, resilience, sisterhood, and finding your path.”—Electric Literature, “8 Books Featuring Columbian Protagonists”
“A swoon-worthy family saga that will make you fall in love with the characters. It’s a reminder that though life can drag you down, there is hope lurking around every corner.”—Debutiful, “Most Anticipated Books of 2024”
“If listening in on a stranger’s animated phone call sounds like your idea of entertainment, you’ll be hooked . . .”—Reader’s Digest, “New Books We Can’t Wait to Read in 2024”
“This is a novel for the ear hustler in all of us! Both hilarious and heartbreaking, Mogollon’s story will stay with readers for a long time.”—National Book Award winner Elizabeth Acevedo, author of Family Lore and The Poet X
“Heartbreaking and humorous, mature and mischievous, Oye feels like home in delicious and furious ways. Melissa Mogollon did not come to play.”—Kiley Reid, New York Times bestselling author of Such a Fun Age
“An emotional roller coaster of multigenerational chisme, Oye jump-starts your heart in the same way the expletive piques your ear.”—Xochitl Gonzalez, New York Times bestselling author of Olga Dies Dreaming
“Funny and smart, Oye grapples with the messy inheritance of intergenerational trauma and how it manifests in the everyday conversations with the people we love. Mogollon has written a beautiful book.”—Claire Jimenez, author of What Happened to Ruthy Ramirez
“Oye is vibrantly alive, a pitch-perfect, boisterous, gossipy portrait of the chaos that is family and love. A gem.”—Rufi Thorpe, author of The Knockout Queen
“Luciana won’t just woo you; she will thoroughly win, and at times break, your heart.”—Regina Porter, author of The Travelers
“With its singular voice and vibrant characters, Oye commands your attention from the very first page. It’s a novel that, like the ageless abuela at its heart, laughs and dances in the dark.”—Dawnie Walton, author of The Final Revival of Opal & Nev
“I love these characters—no one gets away with anything—and I love Melissa Mogollon’s unmistakable, irrepressible voice.”—Margot Livesey, author of The Boy in the Field
“Oye, a novel of chisme, is innovative, heartfelt, and hilarious. Melissa Mogollon’s voice is a gift.”—Myriam Gurba, author of Creep
“Oye me, this book will be the unexpected ride of your reading season. Read it to listen in on a breathless, funny, inventive, and revealing conversation that peels back all our assumptions about love and family roles.”—Melissa Coss Aquino, author of Carmen and Grace
“A smart, wildly inventive, and funny tale that’s both heartbreaking and heartwarming.”—Booklist
Library Journal
04/01/2024
DEBUT Mogollon debuts with a coming-of-age comedy, told as a series of one-sided telephone conversations between Luciana, a struggling Colombian American high school senior, and her older sister Mari, who shines academically. Luciana's family finds themselves in the path of Hurricane Irma and are unable to convince Luciana's wildly independent grandmother Abue to evacuate, so they reluctantly leave without her. The storm changes course, leaving Abue safe, but when they return from their road trip they discover that she is seriously ill with cancer. At the hospital, Luciana is called upon to act as translator/referee between the medical staff and her family. At home, the need to keep Abue in check often requires Luciana to be the adult in the room. In the hours they spend together, she learns about her grandmother's traumatic childhood and the reasons for her fierce need for independence. Through this experience, Luciana learns to be herself and to see death as new beginning. VERDICT Luciana's emotional journey to self-acceptance, via the many trials she encounters, is compelling. The unique structure of the novel and its emotional and often hilarious dialogue will appeal to all audiences.—Joanna M. Burkhardt
Kirkus Reviews
2024-02-17
The fortunes and misfortunes of a Colombian American family in South Florida.
Just as she’s about to start her senior year of high school, Luciana finds her life going off track: Hurricane Irma is about to make landfall and her mother insists that they evacuate. Although they plead with her grandmother to go with them, the strong-willed Emilia absolutely refuses. In Mogollon’s bouncy debut novel, angry, exasperated, melodramatic Luciana is the voluble narrator, recounting the events of her life in phone calls to her older sister, Mari, a student at George Washington University. Luciana sorely misses Mari, envying her freedom, jealous because their mother obviously favors Mari, but needing her love. She shares with Mari predictable teenage angst about her dismal grades, the stress of applying to college, and her mother’s obsession with her weight. She resents, too, her mother’s homophobia. “When I told her that I liked girls,” Luciana says, “…she didn’t go to work for like two weeks.” But after she and her mother return to Florida, Luciana’s calls to Mari become focused less on her own problems and more on a family crisis: Her beloved grandmother—a foxy woman who has had two boob jobs and won’t leave the house without full makeup—is seriously ill. Suddenly, Luciana becomes her mother’s confidante; she gets close to her grandmother’s sister, long estranged, who has come to help out and, she hopes, to be forgiven; and she is privy to dark secrets from her grandmother herself. In call after shocking call, Luciana imparts to Mari a tangled history of their Colombian American family, which began with the murder of a great-grandfather and involves incest, sexual assault, abandonment, blackmail, and betrayal. “This is all basically a Telemundo soap opera,” Luciana tells Mari. Mogollon’s fresh, ebullient narrator is at once irreverent and caring, anxious about the future but eager to embrace adulthood, fearful of loss and filled with love.
A sprightly debut.
