The Veins of the Ocean

Read: Yes
Difficulty: II
Length: III
Genre: Fiction – Novel
Quick Review: A young Colombian woman struggles with finding herself amid healing from a life burdened with tragedy and guilt as an immigrant, daughter, sister, and woman.

Patricia Engel is an award winning author, and she doesn’t disappoint in her novel The Veins of the Ocean. A beautiful novel about a young woman who emigrated from Colombia to Miami as an infant with her family. Mere months later, a tragedy strikes her family, which changes her future forever. Engel captured my attention within the first page with her dark yet enchanting style and content. The first chapter is stunning while setting the mood with a unique cadence, style, language, and enough clues to let you know you’re in for a story about gender inequity, culture, family, and so much more.

Reina is in her mid twenties. Her brother Carlito is on death row. Her life has been nothing but reactions to one tragedy after another. She struggles with being a daughter in a traditional latino family, where her brother received all the attention and praise. When there is nothing left for her, she picks up her life in Miami to start a fresh in the Florida Keys. Along the way, Reina grieves and finds love, passion, acceptance, and forgiveness.

It’s hard to describe the depths Engel reaches in her novel. She explores sexism, immigration, communism, religion, grief, the prison system, ecosystem, guilt, sexual assault, and so much more. The characters are beautiful and flawed and relatable. Dealing with Colombian and Cuban characters, Engel brings cultures seldomly discussed.

There are seven parts comprised of many chapters, which vary in length. Along with the compelling narrative, the chapter lengths make you say “just one more chapter; it’s only two pages,” and next thing you know, you’ve read fifty more pages. The story is beyond compelling, and I finished the novel in a day because it was so interesting. It’s beyond quotable about love and pain and loyalty. Engel draws beautiful parallels between life surrounding the characters and their own.

One of the things I enjoyed most about The Veins of the Ocean was the lack of dialogue. The vast majority of the story is Reina looking backward and her thoughts on the present. It’s a stunning look into the mind of someone coping with pain. For me, I found it relatable. I think most people can relate to working through grief and guilt. There’s a unique cadence to the language that is so engaging.

Memorable Quotes:
“It’s good for you to dream about things that will probably never happen.”
“We thought it hysterical that there is an industry of artificial horror when real life is so much more lethal.”
“Making friends with danger is the only way to survive.”
“… the love of a mother is not unconditional or eternal the way they say.”
“I am mourning my sadness.”

Title: The Veins of the Ocean
Author: Patricia Engel
Publisher: Grove Press
Copyright: 2016
ISBN: 9780802126740