Review: "Catalina" by Liska Jacobs

Liska Jacobs’ caustic debut novel Catalina follows a string of unapologetic, proto-feminist novels (most of which are debuts) that follow a woman on a path of self-destruction laced with drug and alcohol abuse, sexual promiscuity and general moral degradation that would be typical of the hyper masculine transgressive fiction of the mid 20^thcentury. Of this strange genre some books have been good, such as Merritt Tierce’s brutal Love Me Back and Weike Wang’s charming Chemistry and some have been middling at best like Stephanie Danler’s Sweetbitter and Jade Sharma’s Problems. This book falls somewhere in the middle, with a large portion being a sometimes bumpy journey through our narrator’s shattered world with a few flashbacks which culminates in a rather unique final section that saved the book for me. We follow Elsa, who has just been fired from her job at MoMA after an affair with her married boss as she travels back to California to visit her old friend Charley and her immature husband Jared. But her intentions, demonstrated by an early fling with a stranger, are not of the wholesome variety, and on a trip to Catalina Island with Jared, Charley, her ex-husband Robby and his waif girlfriend Jane, the true power and consequences of her actions and carelessness come to fruition. As I said, the bulk of this book feels like a rehash of other books like it, with a few exceptions, such as Elsa’s relationship with the innocent hotel bellboy Rex and the older man Tom, a figure able to see through Elsa’s smokescreen, even though he himself is predatory. But it’s those final 30 pages that separate this book from others like it, featuring a shocking final scene with Charley, an odd encounter with Tom and the culmination of Rex’s arc, which may or may not be drug induced hallucination. Elsa is tough character to like or even have sympathy for, a product of privilege in a cynical world who ends up being no better than those she looks down upon, but her journey is a fascinating one filled with searing wit and pathos. 

Rating: 4/5