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War by Candlelight
“[Alarcón’s] tales, set largely in the hardscrabble world of Lima, build with all the power of a Flannery O’Connor story: a gentle enough start, an innocent setting, and before long the reader is adrift in a drama that defies the imagination—with characters that live long after the book is closed.” — Washington Post Book World
In this exquisite story collection, Daniel Alarcón moves from Third World urban centers to the fault lines that divide nations and people to illuminate wars, both national and internal, waged in jungles, across the borders, in the streets of Lima, and in the intimacy of New York apartments. He tells of lives at the margins: an unrepentant terrorist remembers where it all began, a would-be emigrant contemplates the ramifications of leaving and never coming back, a reporter turns in his pad and pencil for the inglorious costume of a street clown. War by Candlelight is a devastating portrait of a world in flux from an extraordinary new voice in literary fiction, one you will not soon forget.
In this exquisite story collection, Daniel Alarcón moves from Third World urban centers to the fault lines that divide nations and people to illuminate wars, both national and internal, waged in jungles, across the borders, in the streets of Lima, and in the intimacy of New York apartments. He tells of lives at the margins: an unrepentant terrorist remembers where it all began, a would-be emigrant contemplates the ramifications of leaving and never coming back, a reporter turns in his pad and pencil for the inglorious costume of a street clown. War by Candlelight is a devastating portrait of a world in flux from an extraordinary new voice in literary fiction, one you will not soon forget.
189 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
About the author
Daniel Alarcón
38 books428 followersDaniel Alarcón’s fiction and nonfiction have been published in The New Yorker, Harper's, Virginia Quarterly Review, Salon, Eyeshot and elsewhere. He is Associate Editor of Etiqueta Negra, an award-winning monthly magazine based in his native Lima, Peru. His story collection, War by Candlelight, was a finalist for the 2006 PEN/Hemingway Foundation Award, and the British journal Granta recently named him one of the Best Young American Novelists. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including a Fulbright Scholarship (2001), a Whiting Award (2004), and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2007). He lives in Oakland, California, and his first novel Lost City Radio was published in February 2007.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 119 reviews
July 23, 2020
In War by Candlelight, Daniel Alarcon shines a flickering light on a piece of modern Peruvian history. On, and it’s 1989, with two fighters in the jungle, one about to die; off, then on again, and it is 1966 where the father of one of those fighters is proudly sending his son off to university; off, then on, and it is 1983 and Fernando, the doomed fighter, is returning from a tour in the insurrection and pestering his wife to have another child. Flick off then on and it is 1973 when the fighter’s father has just barely escaped with his life from Pinochet’s clutches. These flickering images reminded me of that quality of life that it most resembles, our tendency to see parts of our lives, different eras, in small images, clips, with the chronological support structure tucked away behind the reach of memory. This is Alarcon’s technique in the title story, by far the strongest.
Daniel Alarcon - from Likesuccess.com
There are nine stories here, and some offer a sense of life in Peru, Alarcon’s birthplace. (His family moved to Alabama when he was 3) Not the tourist Peru of Macchu Picchu, or well-appointed mansions, but a street-level view in which the inhabitants engage in gang wars, slaughter dogs as a form of twisted political statement, burglarize people they have worked for, refer to prison as “university” since that is where one goes after high school, join the resistance, train and fight in the jungle, pine for new life in a life-threatening environment. A father attempts to cope with the loss of his family in an earthquake-induced landslide. A young man wants to marry the mother of his child, but she keeps telling him no.
Other tales are set in New York City. A discovered Peruvian artist sells everything he has to come to New York to attend an exhibit of his work. A young couple struggles when she will not let her family know she is living with a man.
Some of the images are disturbing, and this will turn some readers off. But there is obvious talent at work here. Alarcon successfully communicates some pieces of Peruvian culture, a place few of us are likely to know. He makes that world feel real. If anything, I would have preferred him to have kept all nine stories in Peru instead of using New York City for several. I did not love all the tales, but Alarcon is a good writer, and there is much talent on display here.
=============================EXTRA STUFF
The author's personal, FB, and Twitter pages
A nice article about Alarcon in Smithsonian Magazine
Daniel Alarcon - from Likesuccess.com
There are nine stories here, and some offer a sense of life in Peru, Alarcon’s birthplace. (His family moved to Alabama when he was 3) Not the tourist Peru of Macchu Picchu, or well-appointed mansions, but a street-level view in which the inhabitants engage in gang wars, slaughter dogs as a form of twisted political statement, burglarize people they have worked for, refer to prison as “university” since that is where one goes after high school, join the resistance, train and fight in the jungle, pine for new life in a life-threatening environment. A father attempts to cope with the loss of his family in an earthquake-induced landslide. A young man wants to marry the mother of his child, but she keeps telling him no.
Other tales are set in New York City. A discovered Peruvian artist sells everything he has to come to New York to attend an exhibit of his work. A young couple struggles when she will not let her family know she is living with a man.
Some of the images are disturbing, and this will turn some readers off. But there is obvious talent at work here. Alarcon successfully communicates some pieces of Peruvian culture, a place few of us are likely to know. He makes that world feel real. If anything, I would have preferred him to have kept all nine stories in Peru instead of using New York City for several. I did not love all the tales, but Alarcon is a good writer, and there is much talent on display here.
=============================EXTRA STUFF
The author's personal, FB, and Twitter pages
A nice article about Alarcon in Smithsonian Magazine
July 10, 2012
much as with lost city radio, the novel that followed this debut collection of short stories, i find something lacking in daniel alarcón's writing. the nine stories that make up war by candlelight are interesting enough, many with compelling plots even, yet his style of prose, perhaps best characterized as passionless, sterile, or overly restrained, detracts greatly from his storytelling. his writing nearly seems clinical, as if too many writing workshops have eroded his natural voice. that alarcón is a talented writer makes this missing component of his fiction all the more frustrating. the vigor and consequence of what should otherwise be a disarming collection is diminished by the absence of vitality in his characters and sometimes even the stories themselves. this disparity is all the more pronounced given that his aptitude for writing is so apparent. were alarcón a lesser writer war by candlelight would be little more than a mediocre work, but given his gift for imaginative tales, this collection simply suffers from a deficiency of feeling. "lima, peru, july 28, 1979" and "a science for being alone" are the book's strongest efforts.
December 15, 2007
I picked up War by Candlelight as part of my new project: To find contemporary (possibly American?) authors whose work wouldn’t immediately turn me off with snarky postmodern pyrotechnics and faux quirkiness, with concepts and plotlines that outstrip the prose, with the constant I-Get-It-Do-You-Get-It? nudge-nudging that seems to be the currency in which so many contemporary writers traffic in. This is not, of course, to say that all self-aware, reflexive, fanciful writing is garbage—simply that I personally am rather tired of it and want some sort of reassurance that this isn’t the only thing going on in fiction right now.
This book turned out to be a really good counter to all of the above. Not only is it the first book of short stories that I have finished from cover to cover since Karen Russell’s delight of a collection (St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves) came out last year, but it consistently manages to approach its subjects and characters with a kind of critical empathy: Alarcon feels for his characters, but is never so caught up in their respective dramas that he falls back on sentimentality or cheap laughs.
Alarcon treats everyday drama (troubled relationships with family members and lovers) with the same gravity with which he approaches larger conflicts with grander implications (revolutionaries hiding in the Peruvian jungle, riots in a prison inhabited uniquely by ‘students’ and ‘terrorists’ which are subdued via firebombing, mudslides that bury whole villages). This is unusual and refreshing, a wide-angle perspective on human conflict that appreciates that all pain and drama is pivotal to those who are experiencing it, no matter what the stakes or scale.
The only real weakness in this collection is one that can be easily understood and pardoned. War by Candlelight is staged almost entirely in Peru (generally Lima), Alarcon vying for the position of national writer with a simultaneous earnestness and naiveté that bespeaks the conflict inherent in the immigrant experience. No opportunity to describe the hustle and claustrophobia or Lima “in all her glory” is passed by, an underlying affection for his third-world milieu that takes on the tone of a college student returning from a particularly eye-opening semester spent abroad, and occasionally becomes downright patronizing and simplistic. Alarcon did, after all, spend most of his formative years in Alabama and can’t be expected to completely shake the voice and outsider perspective of an Americano.
On the whole, however, War by Candlelight is a well-written, engaging read. Alarcon is a writer of experiences, not concepts, and a distinct voice among his peers.
This book turned out to be a really good counter to all of the above. Not only is it the first book of short stories that I have finished from cover to cover since Karen Russell’s delight of a collection (St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves) came out last year, but it consistently manages to approach its subjects and characters with a kind of critical empathy: Alarcon feels for his characters, but is never so caught up in their respective dramas that he falls back on sentimentality or cheap laughs.
Alarcon treats everyday drama (troubled relationships with family members and lovers) with the same gravity with which he approaches larger conflicts with grander implications (revolutionaries hiding in the Peruvian jungle, riots in a prison inhabited uniquely by ‘students’ and ‘terrorists’ which are subdued via firebombing, mudslides that bury whole villages). This is unusual and refreshing, a wide-angle perspective on human conflict that appreciates that all pain and drama is pivotal to those who are experiencing it, no matter what the stakes or scale.
The only real weakness in this collection is one that can be easily understood and pardoned. War by Candlelight is staged almost entirely in Peru (generally Lima), Alarcon vying for the position of national writer with a simultaneous earnestness and naiveté that bespeaks the conflict inherent in the immigrant experience. No opportunity to describe the hustle and claustrophobia or Lima “in all her glory” is passed by, an underlying affection for his third-world milieu that takes on the tone of a college student returning from a particularly eye-opening semester spent abroad, and occasionally becomes downright patronizing and simplistic. Alarcon did, after all, spend most of his formative years in Alabama and can’t be expected to completely shake the voice and outsider perspective of an Americano.
On the whole, however, War by Candlelight is a well-written, engaging read. Alarcon is a writer of experiences, not concepts, and a distinct voice among his peers.
October 29, 2008
The stories in this debut collection are extraordinary. Daniel Alarcón was born in Lima, raised in Alabama, spent time in Peru as a Fulbright scholar, and now lives in Oakland. Most of the stories in "War by Candlelight" are set in Peru; three take place in New York City. Whether writing about political instability in Lima or emotional turmoil in Manhattan, Alarcón writes with a kind of unobtrusive brilliance that is astonishing. I'd finish one of these stories, marvel at how awesome it was, only to find the next one even more brilliant.
"Third Avenue Suicide" (in which Reena, an Indian immigrant, keeps stalling on introducing her Peruvian boyfriend to her mother), "Lima. Peru. July 28" (a painter gets sucked into revolutionary violence), "A science for being alone" (Miguel learns that his former girl friend, the mother of his five-year old daughter, whom he has planned to propose to, intends to emigrate to the U.S.) were three of my favorites. All three are extraordinary, But they are eclipsed by the title story, and by "City of Clowns", probably the best short story I've read in the last five years.
It's not just the writing that is excellent. Whether it's a result of the insight that comes from the dual perspective of the emigrant, or a consequence of Alarcón's innate smartness, there is genuine wisdom in these wonderful, disturbing stories.
Get yourself a copy of this book. Then read it.
"Third Avenue Suicide" (in which Reena, an Indian immigrant, keeps stalling on introducing her Peruvian boyfriend to her mother), "Lima. Peru. July 28" (a painter gets sucked into revolutionary violence), "A science for being alone" (Miguel learns that his former girl friend, the mother of his five-year old daughter, whom he has planned to propose to, intends to emigrate to the U.S.) were three of my favorites. All three are extraordinary, But they are eclipsed by the title story, and by "City of Clowns", probably the best short story I've read in the last five years.
It's not just the writing that is excellent. Whether it's a result of the insight that comes from the dual perspective of the emigrant, or a consequence of Alarcón's innate smartness, there is genuine wisdom in these wonderful, disturbing stories.
Get yourself a copy of this book. Then read it.
February 7, 2008
I will admit my not-so-secret crush on Daniel Alarcón. His "City of Clowns" still haunts me, while "Third Avenue Suicide" brings back so much pain and sadness... War by Candlelight remains a close, meaningful favorite.
February 20, 2014
Daniel Alarcon, author of this book, was one of the 2010 The New Yorker's 20 under 40 authors list. I have been sampling the works of these authors since the list was published. This year I am making an effort to read at least one book by each of them. War By Candlelight is my first completion of the year. I enjoyed this book of short stories very much.
The nine stories are set in either Lima, Peru or NY, NY. Many of those in Peru have a war focus that has me looking at the history of Peru. I have visited the county. The povety is very real and living conditions for many very poor (no water or inside facilities and entire families in one room, with the guinea pigs in one corner). The stories set in Peru bring the country to life. Those set in NYC tell in part of the immigrant experience.
I thought these stories got to the heart of the character telling the story. I could feel how these characters were struggled to make sense of their feelings and their actions. These are stories I will read again.
The nine stories are set in either Lima, Peru or NY, NY. Many of those in Peru have a war focus that has me looking at the history of Peru. I have visited the county. The povety is very real and living conditions for many very poor (no water or inside facilities and entire families in one room, with the guinea pigs in one corner). The stories set in Peru bring the country to life. Those set in NYC tell in part of the immigrant experience.
I thought these stories got to the heart of the character telling the story. I could feel how these characters were struggled to make sense of their feelings and their actions. These are stories I will read again.
May 8, 2019
Alarcón is a talented writer. But there is something just a touch off here. A bourgeois son of two Peruvian (meaning coastal) physicians, who was raised in Alabama and studied anthropology at Columbia, he has chosen to write about much rougher characters in Harlem and in the war torn jungles of Peru. He writes very well, but the artifice does show through.
May 19, 2022
Leer a Daniel Alarcón es como escuchar una voz familiar que narra historias a susurros detrás de una pared. La mirada profunda de su primer trabajo ya nos presenta al Daniel Alarcón que conoceremos en el proyecto de podcast Radio Ambulante (ahora Radio Ambulante Studios) una voz que encuentra historias que narrar en los rincones de Latinoamérica y en los cachitos de Latinoamérica que están regados casa por casa en territorio gringo. El placer del encuentro con esas historias se enfrenta a las complejas emociones negativas que pueden estar asociadas siempre dejándonos que pensar entre la ficción y la realidad que habitamos que no se aleja tanto de lo que Daniel Alarcón nos cuenta.
May 7, 2012
In the best collection of short stories I’ve read in years, Daniel Alarcón has purchased himself a place among the leading young American authors. His well-reviewed new novel Lost City Radio may erase the word “young” from that phrase, though. I haven’t read it yet. I think the guy’s got it all and that we’re in for years of delicious reading.
Alarcon’s background is unique in that it is so unremarkable for a guy who writes about such exotic locations and subjects Yes, he was born in Lima (Peru, not Ohio), but he was raised in Birmingham (Alabama, not England.) His parents are both physicians, and he traveled an establishment educational process including Columbia University and an Iowa Writers’ Program masters. You can find insights into his thinking manner in an interview with Latina. Click here to check that out. But to the book.
From some of the stories, you’d think Alarcón was not a middle class university American, but a South American street kid cum revolutionary who was somehow smuggled into this country and learned his craft in night school after a full day of sweeping hallways in a middle school somewhere. Not all the stories are set in Peru, but those that are have the flavor of truth. Whether they would ring true to a Peruvian urchin, I can’t say, but there’s a solid reality here that seems authentic to this gringo.
Whether the characters are loose on the streets or fighting in the jungle, we’re right there, and we know why they are where they are. Alarcón makes us witness to some gruesome events, but he doesn’t judge his people. He just understands them and wants us to understand them as well. Whether the characters are directly part of the Peruvian civil wars or not, they’re all affected, all feeling the conflict’s reverberations all the time. In this sense, it’s reminiscent of both Iraq and Vietnam, though the Peruvian edition was and is being fought on Peruvian soil. Alarcón treats the personal side of all this. There are no political speeches or big rallies or posturing. There are just people trying to live out their lives and sometimes their convictions in the middle of forces they can’t seem to control whether they try or not.
But the book is not all war either. Not by a long shot. My favorite story, for example, “City of Clowns,” is a funny and wrenching identity tale of a man trying to make peace with the death of his wayward father. “Third Avenue Suicide” is set in New York and involves a tortured interracial relationship complicated by the onset of the woman’s debilitating illness.
Alarcón’s prose is simple and clear. Take the beginning of “Third Avenue Suicide.”
They’d been living in the apartment for ten days when David was first asked to disappear. This was the arrangement they’d agreed upon, and he would do so without complaint.
Two uncomplicated sentences that state simple facts, raise a myriad of questions, and pull the reader right into the situation. He evokes scenes with simple details:
A breeze carried some candy wrappers toward the park at the top of the hill. Some older men stood on the corner, thumbing through a newspaper they’d laid out on the hood of a parked car.
He can get poetic from time to time, but lyricism is not his general mode. in the same story, the apartment that appears in the first sentence becomes almost a character. Reena and David had rented the apartment on a sunny day when it appeared cheery. However
It fooled them....Not once [did it approach] the bright golden light of the first day. “Indifferent to light” was how Reena described the apartment.
This darkness proves emblematic of the relationship and its circumstances. So Alarcón is a painter who uses simple line and form, not too much color or texture, but whose final product is rich, evocative, memorable. As memorable as some of his superb titles. “A Science for Being Alone.” “A Strong Dead Man.”
Read this book.
Alarcon’s background is unique in that it is so unremarkable for a guy who writes about such exotic locations and subjects Yes, he was born in Lima (Peru, not Ohio), but he was raised in Birmingham (Alabama, not England.) His parents are both physicians, and he traveled an establishment educational process including Columbia University and an Iowa Writers’ Program masters. You can find insights into his thinking manner in an interview with Latina. Click here to check that out. But to the book.
From some of the stories, you’d think Alarcón was not a middle class university American, but a South American street kid cum revolutionary who was somehow smuggled into this country and learned his craft in night school after a full day of sweeping hallways in a middle school somewhere. Not all the stories are set in Peru, but those that are have the flavor of truth. Whether they would ring true to a Peruvian urchin, I can’t say, but there’s a solid reality here that seems authentic to this gringo.
Whether the characters are loose on the streets or fighting in the jungle, we’re right there, and we know why they are where they are. Alarcón makes us witness to some gruesome events, but he doesn’t judge his people. He just understands them and wants us to understand them as well. Whether the characters are directly part of the Peruvian civil wars or not, they’re all affected, all feeling the conflict’s reverberations all the time. In this sense, it’s reminiscent of both Iraq and Vietnam, though the Peruvian edition was and is being fought on Peruvian soil. Alarcón treats the personal side of all this. There are no political speeches or big rallies or posturing. There are just people trying to live out their lives and sometimes their convictions in the middle of forces they can’t seem to control whether they try or not.
But the book is not all war either. Not by a long shot. My favorite story, for example, “City of Clowns,” is a funny and wrenching identity tale of a man trying to make peace with the death of his wayward father. “Third Avenue Suicide” is set in New York and involves a tortured interracial relationship complicated by the onset of the woman’s debilitating illness.
Alarcón’s prose is simple and clear. Take the beginning of “Third Avenue Suicide.”
They’d been living in the apartment for ten days when David was first asked to disappear. This was the arrangement they’d agreed upon, and he would do so without complaint.
Two uncomplicated sentences that state simple facts, raise a myriad of questions, and pull the reader right into the situation. He evokes scenes with simple details:
A breeze carried some candy wrappers toward the park at the top of the hill. Some older men stood on the corner, thumbing through a newspaper they’d laid out on the hood of a parked car.
He can get poetic from time to time, but lyricism is not his general mode. in the same story, the apartment that appears in the first sentence becomes almost a character. Reena and David had rented the apartment on a sunny day when it appeared cheery. However
It fooled them....Not once [did it approach] the bright golden light of the first day. “Indifferent to light” was how Reena described the apartment.
This darkness proves emblematic of the relationship and its circumstances. So Alarcón is a painter who uses simple line and form, not too much color or texture, but whose final product is rich, evocative, memorable. As memorable as some of his superb titles. “A Science for Being Alone.” “A Strong Dead Man.”
Read this book.
July 29, 2014
Daniel Alarcón is a young Peruvian-American author whose short stories in War by Candlelight straddle both worlds, Peru and Los Uniteds. I am always somewhat abashed when I pick up a book at the library not expecting much and find I have made a discovery. People don't read short stories as much any more. I do: I've even read a new Haruki Murakami in the new Yorker during lunchtime. I suspect that, like Murakami, Alarcón has the stuff to write good novels as well.
For one thing, he has a turn of phrase that shows depths to his thinking. In "A Strong Dead Man," the teenager Rafael muses on his father's stroke:
Remember this name: Daniel Alarcón. I think he will become a name to be reckoned with. And I plan to follow his career closely.
For one thing, he has a turn of phrase that shows depths to his thinking. In "A Strong Dead Man," the teenager Rafael muses on his father's stroke:
Rafael had begun to understand that life bends you, forms you, creates the spaces you fill without hope or interest in the particulars of your plans. He had none. His mother got a sleeping pill after she cried and cried, her eyes and face nearly bursting with red, all tears and sweat, but Rafael was quiet and said nothing and so he got nothing and was not spoken to. This is it, he thought. Life is bending me.In "A Science for Being Alone," the hero, Miguel, desperately wants to marry the mother of his daughter, but she keeps putting him off.
In this city [Lima], there is nothing more useless than imagining a life. Tomorrow is as unknowable as next year, and there is nothing solid to grab hold of. There is no work. There is nothing I could have promised her in that moment that wouldn't have been built on imagination. Or worse, on luck.Of the stories in this volume, I particularly liked "City of Clowns," "War by Candlelight," and "A Science for Being Alone." More remarkably, there were no stories that I didn't like.
Remember this name: Daniel Alarcón. I think he will become a name to be reckoned with. And I plan to follow his career closely.
June 12, 2020
This part will haunt me forever:
"Leaving is no problem. It's exciting actually; in fact, it's drug. It's the staying gone that will kill you. This is the handed-down wisdom of the immigrant. You hear it from the people who wander home, after a decade away. You hear about the euphoria that passes quickly; the new things that lose their newness and, soon after, their capacity to amuse you. Language is bewildering. You tire of exploring. Then the list of things you miss multiplies beyond reason, nostalgia clouding everything: in memory, your country is clean and uncorrupt, the streets are safe, the people universally warm, and the food consistently delicious. The sacred details of your former life appear and reappear in strange iterations, in a hundred waking dreams. Your pockets fill with money, but the heart feels sick and empty."
"Leaving is no problem. It's exciting actually; in fact, it's drug. It's the staying gone that will kill you. This is the handed-down wisdom of the immigrant. You hear it from the people who wander home, after a decade away. You hear about the euphoria that passes quickly; the new things that lose their newness and, soon after, their capacity to amuse you. Language is bewildering. You tire of exploring. Then the list of things you miss multiplies beyond reason, nostalgia clouding everything: in memory, your country is clean and uncorrupt, the streets are safe, the people universally warm, and the food consistently delicious. The sacred details of your former life appear and reappear in strange iterations, in a hundred waking dreams. Your pockets fill with money, but the heart feels sick and empty."
Read
January 3, 2014“I have the same attitude toward a plot of the usual type as a dentist to teeth.” - Viktor Shklovsky. Daniel Alarcón opened the class he taught at Cal that I was lucky enough to be a part of with that quote. It's curious then that Alarcón's first book generally eschews the kind of peculiarity that comes to (my) mind in thinking about what Shklovsky means by approaching a plot of the usual type like a dentist. That's not to say his plots are structured in an overly conventional way - there are a fair number of anti-climaxes here, though they come off as somehow more ordinary than the kind you might find in say, Roberto Bolaño's work. Yet Alarcón's skill comes in how he so ably weaves between grim portraits of war on one page and the vibrant color of the streets on another. That color is what Twitchfilm's Ben Umstead calls 'everyday strangeness' - clowns, street musicians wielding odd instruments, dances with life-size dolls, and words that you just know make sense in a character's head even if it perplexes those around them when it comes out of their mouths.
January 3, 2015
A phenomenal collection of short stories. Each are simple in plot but rich in imagery and emotion. One of my favorite lines is: "It came upon him all at once, a summer storm brewed from a cloudless sky, and rendered him-- in a quick and cold fashion-- a ghost, a negative image, weak and formless, a fourth cup from a single bag of tea". Alarcón shifts his settings between Peru and the United Sates in his tales and manages to make each feel the pain and beauty of home. Definite reccomendation!
February 18, 2020
This book is absolutely incredible. It's structured as separate short stories, but the thread carried through it all is the Peruvian experience in the 70s and 80s - even if that experience is in America.
Immigration, war, terror, communism, love, poverty, family - the author describes everything in such a delicate, detailed, rich way that leaves you with a tinge of despair. I would highly recommend this book to anyone and everyone.
Immigration, war, terror, communism, love, poverty, family - the author describes everything in such a delicate, detailed, rich way that leaves you with a tinge of despair. I would highly recommend this book to anyone and everyone.
September 24, 2007
Loved this book. Lasting images, compelling conflicts, lifetimes summed up in a few pages.
August 25, 2019
Short stories always leave me wanting to know
More and this is no different, you just start getting into a story and then it ends without really an ending! also didn’t really feel i got to know much about Peru. I feel that I missed something with this book and probably didn’t fully read below the surface to fully appreciate it.
The flood - location unknown - about two gangs who fight each other, one member ends up in prison and never leaves as the other gang sets prison on fire.
City of clowns - Lima and pasco - narrator’s dad dies, his dad also had a second wife and children. Story about how he feels towards his mum as she makes friends with dad’s second wife. Also tells of his relationship with his dad and his business g job come thief. Narrator dresses up as clown for his reporter job so story also talks about treatment of clowns.
Third avenue suicide - New York - Peruvian David falls in love with American Indian Renna, her mum wants her to marry an Indian man. David’s and ten A’s relationship is secret to the extent that he has to leave their apartment everytime her mum visits which is often as renna gets ill. Story ends with David being asked to leave as her mum is coming around.
Lima Peru July 28 1979 - Lima and Arequipa - Independence Day. Need black dogs. Narrator was going to be a painter but left uni, so didn’t do that, instead tells of killing dogs and painting them being caught and building a rapport with police office. Some bonding with his blind father.
Absence - New York - wali comes to New York from Peru after an invite from his friend. Uses all his money and leaves family behind. He tries to sell his paintings. Meets someone called Ellen (same name as ex wife) who seems nice, then he looks into space and nothing. Not sure maybe this means he realises that everything he wanted was in Peru and in New York he has nothing
The visitor - location unknown - man and his three children setup new home in a cemetery which his wife and fourth child are buried. Collectaid. Visitor comes and tells of tens of thousand deaths elsewhere
War by candlelight - lima, peru jungle, Arequipa, two old friends part of ?communist party in the jungle reminiscing about their lives, all very chronologically muddled. Learn about war and rich/poor
A science for being alone - unknown location - couple have child when they aren’t married, he proposes each year in child’s birthday, she says no. He becomes poor do to loosing job at bank, she loves an American.
A strong dead man - location unknown, rafael’s dad is dying. Rafa and cousin talk about dead men falling from sky whilst watching soccer, Rafa dad dies.
More and this is no different, you just start getting into a story and then it ends without really an ending! also didn’t really feel i got to know much about Peru. I feel that I missed something with this book and probably didn’t fully read below the surface to fully appreciate it.
The flood - location unknown - about two gangs who fight each other, one member ends up in prison and never leaves as the other gang sets prison on fire.
City of clowns - Lima and pasco - narrator’s dad dies, his dad also had a second wife and children. Story about how he feels towards his mum as she makes friends with dad’s second wife. Also tells of his relationship with his dad and his business g job come thief. Narrator dresses up as clown for his reporter job so story also talks about treatment of clowns.
Third avenue suicide - New York - Peruvian David falls in love with American Indian Renna, her mum wants her to marry an Indian man. David’s and ten A’s relationship is secret to the extent that he has to leave their apartment everytime her mum visits which is often as renna gets ill. Story ends with David being asked to leave as her mum is coming around.
Lima Peru July 28 1979 - Lima and Arequipa - Independence Day. Need black dogs. Narrator was going to be a painter but left uni, so didn’t do that, instead tells of killing dogs and painting them being caught and building a rapport with police office. Some bonding with his blind father.
Absence - New York - wali comes to New York from Peru after an invite from his friend. Uses all his money and leaves family behind. He tries to sell his paintings. Meets someone called Ellen (same name as ex wife) who seems nice, then he looks into space and nothing. Not sure maybe this means he realises that everything he wanted was in Peru and in New York he has nothing
The visitor - location unknown - man and his three children setup new home in a cemetery which his wife and fourth child are buried. Collectaid. Visitor comes and tells of tens of thousand deaths elsewhere
War by candlelight - lima, peru jungle, Arequipa, two old friends part of ?communist party in the jungle reminiscing about their lives, all very chronologically muddled. Learn about war and rich/poor
A science for being alone - unknown location - couple have child when they aren’t married, he proposes each year in child’s birthday, she says no. He becomes poor do to loosing job at bank, she loves an American.
A strong dead man - location unknown, rafael’s dad is dying. Rafa and cousin talk about dead men falling from sky whilst watching soccer, Rafa dad dies.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 23, 2019
I read this as part of the Shelterbox book club, Shelterbox is a UK charity that raises funds for disaster relief. This is a collection of shorts based in Peru and the US.
Alarcón knows how to convey a scene sharply and briskly. The stories are varied. I particularly enjoyed the clown story, an interésting perspective. Most of the stories are brutal and violent, and I found the comment” the grandparents withhold their love till the child survives two winters” ineffably sad, but entirely believable.
As a collection, like many similar ones of shorts, it didn’t really hang together too well for me. Worth reading to better understand the impact of revolutionary violence and immigrant angst. Life can be more positive than this!
Alarcón knows how to convey a scene sharply and briskly. The stories are varied. I particularly enjoyed the clown story, an interésting perspective. Most of the stories are brutal and violent, and I found the comment” the grandparents withhold their love till the child survives two winters” ineffably sad, but entirely believable.
As a collection, like many similar ones of shorts, it didn’t really hang together too well for me. Worth reading to better understand the impact of revolutionary violence and immigrant angst. Life can be more positive than this!
May 22, 2021
I was surprised by how well Alarcon was able to capture the idiosyncrasies of Peruvian society. From the inescapable head-shaving of college freshmen to the immediate stereotypes conjured by acknowledging what part of Lima one comes from. In these short stories he is also able to tell so much of recent Peruvian history, from the exodus from the rural Andes to the ever-growing Lima, to the fight of idealists that not only turned deadly but turned those idealists against themselves, and, finally, to the ever growing number of Peruvians for whom leaving Peru is the only path that makes sense to them. Definitely a book I’d recommend to anyone curious about taking a peek into the Peru of the turn of the millennium.
July 4, 2018
I bought this book before our trip to Peru and I read most of it in lodgings in Cusco, Puerto Maldonado, Arequipa and, finally, Lima. I knew most of the stories were based in Lima, where we would end our trip. The stories were small slices of life that involved humble characters trying to make their way in life. Early stories involved criminals and later ones involved people in relationships of different sorts, trying to get by. I didn't really connect with the characters much. I appreciated the locales that were mentioned, as I'd recently visited them. Overall, underwhelmed with the stories themselves, though.
November 13, 2018
These short stories are mostly set in Peru, taking place over the last several decades, in times of war and poverty and inequality. Daniel Alarcón finds many different angles to explore in each new story, but they all share themes of struggling. Many of his characters struggle financially and emotionally, but the most harrowing struggle with whether their lives have any purpose. These are difficult stories to read, but helpful to understanding some of what contemporary Peruvians may have faced in their lifetimes.
October 5, 2019
Good insight in to life in Peru. But I struggled with the book, as I’m not a fan of short stories. I don’t feel there’s enough time to get involved with the characters. I would have preferred one longer, more involved story, or maybe some kind of connection between the stories to make it in one? Some felt like they were over before they’d begun, like an idea was forming and then disappeared, made the stories forgetful.
October 22, 2019
The author is clearly talented and these short stories paint a vivid picture of life in Peru. Unfortunately they all seem to fizzle out, not reaching any conclusion, which makes them an unsatisfactory read.
November 13, 2019
Not a bad book, and gives a plethora of views in which a war, a conflict is a ghost in the past, or a central mover in the present. He writes in many styles and captures in most. I just was not moved, but would recommend.
February 8, 2020
He writes about all the possibilities of loss and love. The books gives an interesting window on Peru, the Peruvian diaspora, and just plain old being a twenty something. I really want to read more of his work as he’s grown older.
February 23, 2020
This was a really interesting, and at times moving, collection of short stories, many set throughout the turbulent history of Lima, Peru. Definitely worth a read to give a bit of perspective on the world today.
Want to read
August 11, 2021#7
From the kitchen, another aunt appeared with a plate of white rice and habichuelas. “Eat, Mario,” she said. Steam rose from the warm plate, but Mario shook his head. Aida pulled away, wiped her eyes with a pink paper napkin.
From the kitchen, another aunt appeared with a plate of white rice and habichuelas. “Eat, Mario,” she said. Steam rose from the warm plate, but Mario shook his head. Aida pulled away, wiped her eyes with a pink paper napkin.
June 28, 2022
This is a compelling, gritty and poignant group of stories - there is both sadness and deep humanity in all of them
I read these on a trip to Peru and felt like I gained both insight and curiosity into the country. I highly recommend !
I read these on a trip to Peru and felt like I gained both insight and curiosity into the country. I highly recommend !
January 2, 2019
A few stories left an impression on me... a few I could have taken or left. Overall, a solid collection.
January 11, 2021
Thought provoking collection. Different view of the world.
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