About the Book Failed Pitbull impersonator Ismael Reyes--you can call him Izzy--might not be the Scarface type, but why should that keep him from trying? Growing up in Miami has shaped him into someone who dreams of being the King of the 305, with the money, power, and respect he assumes comes with it. After finding himself at the mercy of a cease-and-desist letter from Pitbulls legal team and living in his aunts garage-turned-efficiency, Izzy embarks on an absurd quest to turn himself into a modern-day Tony Montana. When Izzys efforts lead him to the tank that houses Lolita, a captive orca at the Miami Seaquarium, she proves just how powerful she and the water surrounding her really are, permeating everything from Miamis sinking streets to Izzys memories to the very heart of the novel itself-- Book Synopsis Scarface meets Moby Dick in Say Hello to My Little Friend --a masterclass in pace and precision...brilliant (Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, National Book Award Finalist of Chain Gang All Stars ) about a young mans attempt to capitalize on his mothers murky legacy--a story steeped in Miamis marvelous and sinister magic. Failed Pitbull impersonator Ismael Reyes--you can call him Izzy--might not be the Scarface type, but why should that keep him from trying? Growing up in Miami has shaped him into someone who dreams of being the King of the 305, with the money, power, and respect he assumes comes with it. After finding himself at the mercy of a cease-and-desist letter from Pitbulls legal team and living in his aunts garage, Izzy embarks on an absurd quest to turn himself into a modern-day Tony Montana. When Izzys efforts lead him to the tank that houses Lolita, a captive orca at the Miami Seaquarium, she proves just how powerful she and the water surrounding her really are--permeating everything from Miamis sinking streets to Izzys memories to the very heart of the novel itself. What begins as Izzys story turns into a super-saturated fever dream as sprawling and surreal as the Magic City, one as sharp as an iguanas claws, and as menacing as a killer whales teeth. As the truth surrounding Izzys boyhood escape from Cuba surfaces, the novel reckons with the forces of nature, with the limits and absence of love, and with the dangers of pursuing a tragic inheritance. Blistering, hilarious, [and] tragic ( The Miami Herald ), Say Hello to My Little Friend is Jennine Cap Crucets most daring, heartbreaking, and fearless book yet. Review Quotes The miracle is not that Say Hello to My Little Friend works, so much as that it enlarges our sense of the possible, recalling the vanity of human aspiration not through a lens of ridicule but through one of empathy. The chorus of voices, the point-of-view shifts--all of it allows Crucet to imagine her way to a larger authenticity...Im not naive enough to believe that a work of fiction can change the way we live. Yet throughout these pages, Crucet insists that we rethink our models for engagement, with one another and with the world at large. --David L. Ulin, The Atlantic To call the novel Say Hello to My Little Friend by award-winning author Jennine Cap Crucet a book about Miami would be akin to calling Moby-Dick by Herman Melville just a book about a whale. Crucet, like Melville, has created so much more than simply a novel. This is an experience...Crucets book...is so rich with dark humor that its sentences can both lift and break the readers heart...a superb, incredibly entertaining and purposefully off-kilter novel about reinvention, memory, and the good and bad baggage that comes along with life for both human and whalekind, surpassing even Tony Montanas wildest dreams. --The San Francisco Chronicle A blistering, hilarious, tragic novel that is simultaneously absurd and painfully real. -- Miami Herald Stunning...Captivating...Both Ismael and the whale are singularly compelling characters, and both will break your heart. Unclassifiable and unforgettable. -- Kirkus Reviews (starred review) An impossible-to-define but highly digestible novel about Cuban heritage, migration, motherhood and the heartbreaking way young men float through life lost and desperate for meaning...Theres something undeniable about Crucets characters -- they feel so real in how the deck remains stacked against them...The novel could easily slip into a text too dark to enjoy -- the loss of Izzys mother is a grim undercurrent throughout the novel, even in chapters all about Lolita. Its a relief, then, that Crucets prose is so sprightly and joyful. -- The New York Times Book Review Crucet brilliantly brings readers inside the mind of a nonhuman intelligence in this tour de force, which alternates perspectives between Lolita, a captive killer whale housed at Miamis Seaquarium, and Izzy Reyes, a 20-year-old Cuban Miamian who works as an impersonator of the rapper Pitbull. . .Crucets vivid and plausible delineation of Lolitas inner life imbue[s] the gonzo plot with genuine emotional depth. This is an impressive feat.-- Publishers Weekly (starred review) Jennine Cap Crucet is one of Americas most distinctive writers, and Say Hello to My Little Friend is her best yet--smart, inventive, hilarious, and brimming with heart. --Dan Chaon, author of Sleepwalk Say Hello to My Little Friend is a masterclass in pace and precision. Crucet can make you cry before youve even realized youve become invested and make you laugh even through the hurt. Brilliant. --Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, National Book Award Finalist of Chain Gang All Stars Cap Crucets new novel is a madcap, beautiful romp through a version of Miami Ive been waiting to see in literature for years: a place of newness and impermanence, where the fluidity of language and culture and history is as central to its identity as the ocean and the tides. I loved this brilliant, hilarious novel, read it compulsively, and loved most of all its protagonist: Izzy, a young man hellbent on achieving the American dream of reinvention, and at the same time in danger of discovering more about himself and his roots than he ever hoped to know. --Daniel Alarcn, author of The King Is Always Above the People I literally couldnt put this book down. Bold, surprising, moving and very funny. A story about minds and bodies, about people and families and cities, about the dreams and desires and histories buried inside. Cap Crucet is a writer of immense talent and range. --Charles Yu, author of National Book Award Winner Interior Chinatown Say Hello to My Little Friend is superb. Its a rare thing to see a novelist so fully in control of such disparate elements. The voice is astonishing: wry, knowing, erudite, even metafictional when necessary, and the plot it relates is irresistible. This is high level world-building. So much so that it feels both wildly inventive but also like the kind of novel only an artist directly descending from immigrants to this country could birth, one that respectfully and skillfully transmutes the literary and historical past but always through the prism of our all-powerful American pop culture. The result is that truly rare object, a novel that helps us better sense that secret hum of art and love undergirding human existence. --Sergio de la Pava, award-winning author of A Naked Singularity and Lost Empress An improbable, star-crossed bond between Izzy--whos on a quest to become a modern-day Tony Montana--and Lolita--an orca held captive at the Miami Seaquarium--unleashes one of the most wildly original, hilarious, and devastating novels Ive ever had the privilege of reading. Say Hello to my Little Friend is a story about climate crisis and migration and grief and the mythologies we invent in order to survive; it is a love letter to the doomed beauty that is Miami. A place so compelling, so abundant with story, that it might take you a minute to notice all the water. I loved every line, every moment spent with this magnetic cast of characters. Jennine Cap Crucet has long been one of my very favorite writers and Say Hello to My Little Friend reads with the dazzling vision of an American classic. --Laura van den Berg, author of I Hold a Wolf by the Ears About the Author Jennine Cap Crucet is the author of four books, including the novel Make Your Home Among Strangers , which 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; the story collection How to Leave Hialeah , which won the Iowa Short Fiction Prize and the John Gardner Book Award; and the essay collection My Time Among the Whites: Notes from an Unfinished Education , which was long-listed for the PEN/Open Book Award. A former contributing opinion writer for The New York Times , shes a recipient of a PEN/O. Henry Prize and the Hillsdale Award for the Short Story, awarded by the Fellowship of Southern Writers. Her writing has appeared on PBS NewsHour , National Public Radio, and in publications such as The Atlantic , Cond Nast Traveler , and others . Shes worked as a professor of ethnic studies and of creative writing, as a college access counselor for the One Voice Scholars Program, and as a sketch comedienne (though not all at the same time). Born and raised in Miami to Cuban parents, she lives in North Carolina with her family.