Readers might never want to visit attractions featuring trained, captive orca whales after reading Say Hello to My Little Friend (Simon & Schuster 2024) by Jennine Capo Crucet, and this intense, haunting novel establishes why that would be a good thing. Which is to say, though the book focuses also on Cuban youths Ismael Reyes, known also as Izzy, and his sidekick Rudy, the real star is a captive orca improbably named Lolita. In some ways, this is a devastating read, but also surely a fascinatingly original one.
The book begins with a chapter called “Etymology,” in which Lolita is brutally captured and ripped from her family. The use of explosives to separate the orcas and the deaths of five in the family—drowned by the nets used—are heart-breaking. They reveal the cruelty involved in the capture done for profit and entertainment. The author’s remarkable ability to get inside the captured Lolita’s mind, emotions, and memories to create her voice makes this book special and gives the story much of its strength, impact, and power.
In a soon-to-merge storyline, restless Izzy, recently turned twenty, has failed at being an impersonator. She recruits a high school acquaintance named Rudy on a quest to become a modern-day Tony Montana of “Scarface” movie fame. Neither particularly wants the violence or drugs involved with Montana’s “Scarface” life, but they want to be someone important and that’s what came into Izzy’s confused head. He explains, “What we want—what we need is to move up in the world in an aggressive way. That’s all we’re trying to do.”
Lolita is held captive at the Miami Seaquarium in a concrete tank far too small for her. For years, she has been mourning for years the loss of her family. Nonetheless, she has a certain mystical power—at least over Izzy. But before readers see that power, they first see the suffering of these captive orcas. As the omniscient voice narrating the novel observes about Lolita’s tank mate, Hugo was “a whale not much older than her, captured three years earlier, who would, in time, devote an entire afternoon to bashing his own head against the concrete walls of their tank in order to kill himself.”
While Lolita dominates the story, Izzy has his moments and the author creates an absorbing, complicated character in this young man as he sets out on a bewildering path toward Lolita and their mingled fate. Orphaned when his mother dies escaping Cuba, Izzy lives in his aunt’s garage as he sets out on his misadventures.
Izzy’s character is further enhanced by his sidekick, Rudy. The omniscient narrator observes Izzy and Rudy are “in many ways, the same man–both young, both treading the water rising around them, both as yet unaware of how lost they are in the version of Miami that leaves them longing for little more than a life prominently featuring nightclub bottle service and a girlfriend with an impressive set of augmented breasts.” Orphaned when his mother dies escaping Cuba, Izzy lives in his aunt’s garage as he sets out on his misadventures.
With more than a touch of magical realism, the author expertly and engagingly weaves Lolita’s tale together with Izzy’s almost as if they are star-crossed lovers. In some ways, they are. From the moment that Lolita first hears “the water lapping its way up Izzy’s driveway” and “shares and knows his bone-deep loneliness,” she understands she might be the “catalyst for all he is truly after.” Thus, the two have a joint destiny that is clear from the onset, but the journey—oh, the journey—to the unsettling and surprising ending will captivate readers.
All in all, this is a rare and marvelous book, full of charm, social commentary, excellent writing, believable magic, mesmerizing plotlines, wry and sometimes bitter observations—and the amazing Lolita the orca whale. Say Hello to My Little Friend is distinctive and bold and showcases an amazing talent in its author, Jennine Capó Crucet. Don’t miss this one.
Jennine Capó Crucet
Crucet is a novelist, essayist, and screenwriter. Born and raised in Miami of Cuban parents, Crucet is the author of four award-winning books, and has contributed to the PBS NewsHour, National Public Radio, and The Atlantic, Condé Nast Traveler, and others. Her novel Your Home Among Strangers won the International Latino Book Award and was cited as a best book of the year by NBC Latino, The Guardian, The Miami Herald, and others. Her story collection How to Leave Hialeah, won the Iowa Short Fiction Prize and the John Gardner Book Award. She’s worked as a professor of ethnic studies and of creative writing, as a college access counselor for the One Voice Scholars Program, and lives in North Carolina with her family.
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