Physical Education

On a late August evening, Catalina leaves her best friend’s house after a shocking incident and decides to get home by hitchhiking. Although she’s afraid to get into a car with a stranger, breaking the curfew set by her parents is even scarier. At the heart of Rosario Villajos’s novel is the coming-of-age story of a girl whose body changes—and these changes bring only suffering—set in a small Spanish town in the early nineties. Fighting in a world of double standards for the right to control her own body, Catalina wants freedom and searches for her true self. This story raises an important question: at what moment, trying to meet other people’s expectations, do you lose yourself?