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Reviewed by Asher Syed for Readers' Favorite
Identical twins Norma and Ofelia Castillo have spent their lives moving through the world as a pair, until adulthood pulls them in different directions. When Ofelia begins changing her body, Norma chooses a college in Long Beach, creating a distance that extends beyond geography. There, Norma is sexually assaulted by a campus lifeguard during a fraternity dare and tells no one, not even Ofelia. Years pass as the sisters build separate lives and learn how little they now know about each other. Their uneasy contact begins to shift when Norma invites Ofelia to watch her compete in a cumbia contest. The visit brings them face to face with the history between them, while a connection from Norma’s college years unexpectedly moves closer to both sisters.
In Ofelia and Norma, Donna Miscolta delivers family-centered literary fiction examining twinhood through body image with perceptive psychological detail. Miscolta makes Norma relatable through the way pride sits beside vulnerability, giving her reactions to public scrutiny a recognizably human logic. That characterization is evident when a school wrestling promotion turns the sisters into a spectacle, and Norma understands exactly what the audience expects from them. Miscolta gives Ofelia a separate interior register through botanical observations that lend her voice its own cadence. Miscolta’s alternating viewpoints establish a deliberate pace as each sister emerges as an individual. The novel also considers how public judgment can enter self-perception, especially when women’s bodies are treated as communal property. Later, Norma recognizes herself in student Tina, and that encounter shows Miscolta turning lived experience into compassion. Readers who connected with Bennett's The Vanishing Half and Morrison's Sula will appreciate this affecting, original novel. Very highly recommended.
