[Alvar's] book, as Walt Whitman might say, contains multitudes — not just because of its varied settings, from the Philippines to the U.S. to Bahrain, but because every character is different, and portrayed with love and a rare kind of understanding ... Alvar finds beauty in the unlikeliest of places, and that's what makes In the Country such an inspired, remarkable book. Her characters, even the lucky ones, are never far from affliction, and never really close to home, even when they've lived in the same place their whole lives. Alvar finds triumph in the torment and deliverance in the agony.
As in a good Tagalog movie, twists abound in Mia Alvar’s debut collection. But Alvar’s finely wrought shocks, delivered in exacting prose, reverberate without easy resolution ... Alvar’s incursion into Filipino politics recalls Jessica Hagedorn’s novel Dogeaters, and Miguel Syjuco’s Ilustrado. But stylistically, Alvar’s elegant examination of the political wife is reminiscent of the long-suffering spouses and familial enablers of political men in Nadine Gordimer’s fiction ... After the earlier stories’ gripping tension, the muted pace of the novella 'In the Country,' told through date-stamped vignettes, is initially jarring, then thoroughly heartbreaking.
Debut story collections don’t come much better than this. In the eight complex tales and one ambitious novella of In the Country, Filipina-American author Mia Alvar proves herself a tough, sophisticated writer with a canny empathy for the quandaries that confront her intricately layered characters.
Each of In the Country's nine stories about the Filipino diaspora has the satisfying heft of a little novel. In precise and patient prose, Alvar reveals the complex patterns of labor migration that structure and define her characters' most intimate relationships ... In the Country remains compulsively readable and even uplifting, thanks to Alvar's expansiveness and her gift for grounded, human-scale metaphors.
...what will make readers want to remain in the tired and sad company of Alvar's workers and wanderers is her own gorgeous writing style. Each one of the nine stories in this collection riffs on the theme of exile; yet, every main character's situation is distinct, morally messy in a different way, and unpredictable. Alvar is the kind of writer whose imagination seems inexhaustible, and who stirs up an answering desire in her readers for more and more stories.
Mia Alvar comes out swinging for the fences in her powerful first story collection about the Filipino diaspora — often exiled even at home — and doesn’t ever let up ... A stunning debut — without ever getting overly sentimental, page after page of In the Country is laced with such revelatory, unflinching truth.
Filipino families populate Mia Alvar’s remarkable debut collection, with class and motherhood as its central themes. Each of these nine stories is superb.
[Alvar] doesn't always succeed – when she stumbles, it is because she too fervently labors to lead the reader to conclusions, as in several stories here. But when she succeeds, she is extraordinarily adept and insightful ... Alvar is gifted; of that there is no doubt. And she has important things to say. She knows how to make the reader pause, and think deeply, feel. And hunger, as I am already, for more.
Through careful, delicate prose, Alvar reveals her characters’ pasts and desires, which range from saintly to shameful in this deeply religious culture. At times, her tales can veer into overwrought creative-writing exercises, as when a handicapped boy whom classmates compare to a mythical vampire finds a friend in a slum-dwelling girl with uncontrollable menses. But Alvar’s characters are engaging and memorable, and their homes swell with visceral smells and sounds as she places us gently, firmly, into their imperfect lives.
...[an] accomplished debut of longing and redemption. In lush, sinuous sentences, Alvar probes the enduring stain of race, colonialism and especially class, giving voice to all strata of Philippine society.
In these nine stories, all of them so smoothly and successfully realized that it seems incredible that this volume is her fiction debut, many of Alvar's characters seek their fortunes far from home, although echoes of that home sound throughout their immigrant lives ... It's a range that would be the envy of authors with 10 books under their belts, and all the stories are shot through with vivid glimpses of street life in Manila.
One of Alvar’s greatest strengths as a writer is the sense of completeness she brings to her short fiction. We know everything we need to know about the world she creates in each story. Because these are long stories, Alvar never minimizes her characters or their experiences. The writing throughout the collection is meticulous and beautiful. Without a doubt, these are excellent stories ... The book, however, is not as affecting emotionally as it is intellectually. We are presented with a range of characters who are displaced and disconnected, who have unfulfilled yearnings, who have suffered immeasurable loss, and yet, I did not feel for most of these characters as deeply as I wanted. At times, the stories felt too long, like we were being told things we did not need to know. When the stories meandered, their impact diminished greatly.
While Alvar writes in subtle, descriptive language about Filipino characters, their jobs, and the places they live, she’s setting the reader up for jarring plot twists and shattering surprises that leave us questioning everything she’s previously written about her characters. These are rich, meaty, fulfilling stories in which everyone’s hiding something—from extramarital affairs to murder ... Alvar wields her fiction as a tool to give voice to those who have witnessed and suffered at the hands of fate and human cruelty. Through male and female voices, models and nurses, past and present, Alvar speaks on behalf of a Filipino community, dispersed throughout the world. In doing so, Alvar brings to light the individual experience, giving a human face to struggles large and small. Despite the darkness, Alvar’s prose satisfies. It’s the author’s narrative ability—her power to surprise and weave thoughtful, intricate stories—that keeps you reading. Her writing both memorializes and celebrates the lives of anyone who has ever suffered—that is to say, of us all.
Each of the nine stories arises from Filipino experiences, both in the country and of the diaspora, and Alvar interweaves them into a cobwebby ecosystem ... Though slightly uneven, Alvar’s In the Country frankly and evocatively limns the torment of internal conflict, as her characters seek a seemingly impossible compromise between themselves and the world they live in.
