Abstract

The novella follows Yanet, a 23-year-old Film Production student and aspiring filmmaker living in Toronto, as she struggles with ebbing friendships and artistic failures after being put on academic probation at her university a year after the death of her father. The story is told in first-person narration to reflect Yanet’s stream-of-consciousness about her experience and the various relationship dynamics between her close friends, her Colombian immigrant parents, and her siblings. The title gestures to the narrative tailspin following Yanet’s academic probation and to one’s familial and cultural origins.
The coming-of-age story explores a number of overlapping themes: grief, failure, artistic aspirations, and the formation of a cultural identity for children of immigrants in Toronto. Her friends, Paola and Toni, are students at the same university, and they are in their final term before graduating. A fourth friend, Michelle, has already graduated, and Yanet attends the release of Michelle’s first film.
The narrative follows the protagonist’s endeavor to complete her capstone project, a documentary of female friendship, among a burgeoning arts community in Toronto, and as she attends the anniversary mass of her father’s death. Divided into three parts, the novella’s structure symbolizes how Yanet partitions her life: her social life downtown and her family life are kept separate, with her friend, Paola, being the only link between the two.
Something of an anti-Künstlerroman, Yanet struggles to fulfill her artistic potential and fails in many ways.