*Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection
"Engel navigates issues of class, ethnicity, and identity with finesse in her debut collection, linked stories about Sabina, a child of Colombian immigrants...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."
- Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
"Engel's portraits - especially of her main character - are edgy, perceptive, and razor sharp."
- Kirkus Reviews
"[An] arresting and vibrant new voice . . . Unforgettable."
- Vanity Fair
"[Vida] packs an emotional wallop that will leave you spinning . . . Engel's precision as a writer and her unsparing gaze brings Sabina startlingly to life . . . Many have written about immigrants coming to the United States, but the manner in which Engel explores the shifting identity of a first generation Latina may forge a new pathway in immigration literature."
- BookPage
"Patricia Engel writes with a passion, yearning and care, crafting narratives and characters that are so real, you know them, have always known them. Pitch-perfect, at once restrained and lush, intelligent, funny, and dripping with melancholy, Vida marks the debut of a truly original voice."
- Chris Abani, author of GraceLand and The Virgin of Flames
"Vida is emotional and elegant, a look at life through the wise eyes and fine prose of a remarkably talented writer."
- Uzodinma Iweala, author of Beasts of No Nation
"There's no baloney in Patricia Engel's stories, no falseness or posturing. Young women fall in love and lose their way, as they actually do in life, in every heartbreaking register. The remarkable portrait of immigrant life is not a "literary" portrait or a multicultural cliché, it is unsentimental, unsparing and true. Vida is a unique and unforgettable book."
- Francisco Goldman, author of The Divine Husband
"Between the pop culture and politics of our time, we have become accustomed to language that does not clarify, but clouds. This is why Patricia Engel’s work, with its taut focus, its pained illumination, is so important. In Vida, as much as we come to know her narrator, Sabina, we come to know more fully the inside of our own hearts."
- Asha Bandele, author of The Prisoner's Wife
"Patricia Engel's Vida is that rare thing: a beautifully crafted book that truly has a story to tell. Brutal in its emotional honesty, graceful in its delivery, Vida signals the arrival of a new literary star."
- Mat Johnson, author of Drop and Hunting in Harlem
"Dazzling and profound, Vida pulses with all the exuberance implied in its spirited title. Patricia Engel brilliantly exposes the unsettled hearts of characters who struggle to disentangle themselves from loneliness, cultural disorientation, and the long shadows of violence that follow them across geographic and emotional borders."
- Sandra Rodriguez Barron, author of The Heiress of Water