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Victim

A Novel

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
FINALIST FOR THE GOTHAM BOOK PRIZE • AN NPR, BBC, AND DEBUTIFUL BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR • There’s a fine line between bending the truth and telling bold-faced lies, and Javier Perez is willing to cross it. Victim is a fearless satire about a hustler from the Bronx who sees through the veneer of diversity initiatives and decides to cash in on the odd currency of identity.
"A crowning achievement." —New York Times Book Review  "You will burn through Victim and find your hands scalded when you are done…Pitch perfect." —Xochitl Gonzalez, New York Times bestselling author of Olga Dies Dreaming

Javier Perez is a hustler from a family of hustlers. He learns from an early age how to play the game to his own advantage, how his background—murdered drug dealer dad, single cash-strapped mom, best friend serving time for gang activity—can be a key to doors he didn’t even know existed. This kind of story, molded in the right way, is just what college admissions committees are looking for, and a full academic scholarship to a prestigious university brings Javi one step closer to his dream of becoming a famous writer.
As a college student, Javi embellishes his life story until there’s not even a kernel of truth left. The only real connection to his past is the occasional letter he trades with his childhood best friend, Gio, who doesn’t seem to care about Javi’s newfound awareness of white privilege or the school-to-prison pipeline. Soon after Javi graduates, a viral essay transforms him from a writer on the rise to a journalist at a legendary magazine where the editors applaud his “unique perspective.” But Gio more than anyone knows who Javi really is, and sees through his game. Once Gio’s released from prison and Javi offers to cut him in on the deal, will he play along with Javi’s charade, or will it all come crumbling down?
A satirical sendup of tear-jerking trauma plots with a tender portrait of friendship at its core, Victim asks what real diversity looks like and how far one man is willing to go to make his story hit the right notes.
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    • Publisher's Weekly

      January 29, 2024
      Part blistering satire, part earnest bildungsroman, Boryga’s canny debut follows an aspiring Puerto Rican writer from the Bronx. While Javi focuses on high school, his best friend Gio joins a gang and is sent to prison on a drug trafficking conviction. Javi’s guidance counselor encourages him, with exploitative zeal, to “look for pity” from college admissions boards by writing an essay about his identity and his father’s murder when he was young. After he’s accepted by a prestigious university in Upstate New York, Javi learns he can leverage the roll of victim to stand out from his peers. Thinking of himself as a hustler like his drug dealer father, he writes essays for the school paper in which he capitalizes on outrage over social justice issues by embellishing his experiences (one such article presents a benign encounter with a campus police officer as an abusive instance of racial profiling). After graduation, Javi pursues a freelance writing career, and a similarly disingenuous piece ends up going viral. It’s only when he reunites with a recently released Gio, who suggests his work doesn’t ring true, that Javi begins to look in the mirror. Throughout, Boryga plays his dynamic central duo against each other to striking effect. This foray into the uses and misuses of victimhood bears fruit. Agent: Danielle Bukowski, Sterling Lord Literistic.

    • Booklist

      February 1, 2024
      In the vein of satires such as Percival Everett's glorious Erasure (2001, adapted into the film American Fiction), Paul Beatty's The Sellout (2016), and Mithu Sanyal's Identitti (2022), Boryga's debut novel is told by Javier Perez as he looks back on his life, speaking to a mysterious audience who knows how this all will end. Javier, of Puerto Rican heritage and from the Bronx, witnesses shocking violence when he's around his drug-dealer father. In contrast, with his hard-working mother's support, he does well at school. Javier longs for literary fame and learns to hustle his identity, developing a persona that conforms to stereotypes about people of color. His conceits bring him success--a scholarship to an elite college, a writing gig at a prestigious magazine, and a fawning Twitter following. Javier's lies may be objectionable, but the people who swallow them or shape them to fit click-worthy headlines are perhaps even more loathsome. Superbly written, this is a darkly funny, searing expos� of the contemporary appetite for trauma narratives and the ill-informed responses of many institutions to issues of racial justice.

      COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

    • Kirkus

      Starred review from January 15, 2024
      Recognizing what a "powerful grift" playing the victim can be, young Nuyorican Javier Perez becomes an in-demand writer, but with troubling consequences. When he was 12, Javi watched his estranged father, a drug dealer, get shot to death in Puerto Rico. Back home in the Bronx, the boy was no longer your average poor kid, but "one of those tragic kids" who got special treatment at school. Coached by a guidance counselor on how to get a free ride at a diversity-prioritizing upstate college desperate for students like him, he fudges details about his life in his admissions essay. As a columnist for the school paper and then as a "new" voice for The Rag, a long-standing New York publication of note, Javi masters the art of taking "artistic liberties" in telling stories about racism, police harassment, poverty, and other subjects that "touch on the pulse of our culture." He is only momentarily shaken after his girlfriend dumps him for his outlandish dishonesty, convincing himself he's getting at the "core truth" of his subjects. They include his far more authentic, long-lost friend Gio, who spent 10 years in prison for dealing. All this has the makings of a timely novel, but in his first work of fiction, Boryga is relentlessly superficial in his depiction of Javi, whose supposed talent is never on display (excerpts from his essays are unimpressive). Lacking in convincing moments--Javi's inevitable comeuppance is dropped late like a cement shoe--the novel has both an unreliable narrator and an unreliable author. A buzzworthy topic given a shallow treatment.

      COPYRIGHT(2024) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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