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Sunday, May 22, 2005
By Jean Blish Siers
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Born in Peru and reared in Birmingham, Ala., Daniel
Alarcon lets his fiction straddle the South American and North American
worlds. There is a naked honesty in his debut collection, "War
By Candlelight," as characters must decide -- sometimes at
a very early age -- who they are.
Many of these stories are set in Peru, and they offer
stark portrayals of life in poverty and revolution. The title story
jumps back and forth in time, creating in its pages the lives of
two friends who find themselves caught in revolutionary activities,
often against their wills. In the face of death they seek life,
with wives, with babies, and with hope that ultimately will be defeated.
In "Flood," a group of Peruvian teens see
their only future in the University, their name for the local prison,
"because it's where you went when you finished high school."
Alarcon draws a harsh picture. As a fight breaks out with fists
and rocks, the narrator says, "... we fell into the thick fight
of it, that inexplicable rush, that drug. ... It was a carnival."
I liked "City of Clowns," about a journalist
in Lima. His father has just died, leaving behind his first (and
legal) wife and his common-law wife and a second family. Amidst
the complex feelings of loss and betrayal, the young man is assigned
a story on the city's clowns, and finds himself drawn into their
secret, disguised world, where grief and happiness meet.
In "Absence," an artist leaves Lima for
a New York showing of his work, but has no intention of returning.
When his showing is a disappointment (to his hosts, not to the artist,
who had few expectations), he notes, "Americans always feel
bad. They wander the globe carrying this opulent burden. They take
digital photographs and buy folk art, feeling a dull disappointment
in themselves, and in the world. They bulldoze forests with tears
in their eyes."
Alarcon writes with strength and passion. He doesn't
try to reconcile two worlds, but instead holds a looking glass up
to each.
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