At Night We Walk in Circles: A Novel

So full of rich insights and observations about life and human beings. I wanted so much to add this to my "Top 10" list. However, the author disappointed greatly by not delivering on all the suspense built up in hundreds of pages. It was clear that it would not end well for the protagonist, but the ending was underwhelming. It almost feels like I was tricked into imagining a more dramatic ending that was never delivered.The discourse style, however, is brilliant. There are so many voices. The many voices require the reader to consider so many perspectives about the plot and the characters. The unreliability of memory and other persons' perspectives is ever present. The main narrator interviews those involved in the story, both major and minor. Pieces of interviews are sprinkled into the arc of the story at the appropriate time. Like a good suspense story, certain important facts are withheld until needed.Alarcon has avoided "The Danger of a Single Story" that Chimananda Ngoze Adichie so eloquently describes in her TED Talk of the same name. We hear so many narrators that we are allowed to develop our own perspective based on the information provided by the various "reporters."The author plays freely with time without the reader becoming confused. I listened to this book and was always on the edge of my seat and constantly working at trying to fit in the timeframe of each piece of narrative; almost like working a well-crafted puzzle. I enjoyed the book so much that I am listening to it a second time now that I know how it ends.I am still wrestling with my hard-nosed removal of that final star in the rating. If I just ignore the flaw the ending introduces, I would recommend this whole-heartedly to everyone and add it to my Top 10 List. Perhaps I will come back and bump my rating up to 5 and put it on my list after all.

Daniel Alarcon left Peru as a young child and settled with his family in Birmingham, Alabama. He experienced Peru's war years while on summer vacations and through family stories. Like others who experienced the war, it left a deep impression on him. In one form or another, this experience of war informs Alarcon's first three novels."At Night We Walk in Circles" follows the well worn structure of the travel narrative. Three friends/actors leave the capitol city to travel up into the mountains to recreate a legendary theatrical tour from the war years. At its core, this narrative is a trip back into time and memory in an attempt to deal with a war time trauma. Alarcon is a gifted writer and it was a pleasure to follow him on this journey. But I must confess, the point of the journey alluded me. "At Night We Walk in Circles" is a good novel but not as strong as the first two.

This story takes place in Lima, Peru, during the bloody regime change in the 1980's. The fighting in the city shut down the production of a successful three-man play, unfortunately titled "The Idiot President." The playwright and lead actor was imprisoned the during the turmoil and after his release taught school for a few years. Dissatisfied with their lives, he and a former fellow actor decide to revive "The Idiot President" by taking it to the countryside. They audition young actors for the now deceased third character and choose a spirited a young man who stands out from the rest. Nelson Nunez has recently missed a chance to immigrate to the United States and has broken up with a woman he loves. Scarred from their unsettled backgrounds, the three set off.Early on, the narrator appears to be omniscient, but later reveals himself as a journalist who has crossed paths with the troupe and becomes involved in telling Nelson's story. As as the troupe performs in scattered villages for food and shelter, a secret pops out in a stressful moment, and the unfolding story turns desperate and dangerous.

Literature arising out of South America is like no other. There is a hallucinatory quality which crosses borders, blending the magic realism of gabriel garcia marquez with politically charged horrors. In this book, as in works such as Death and the Maiden and Bel Canto, the country is unnamed since the political uprisings share similarities. This novel focuses on Nelson, a young actor seemingly unable to get his career in gear, and the nameless narrator who finds himself presenting Nelson's story for an article he's writing. Original in structure, the plot meanders with more intrigue than usual. For the most part, I enjoyed how the skeins of plot unravelled, and recommend it highly despite the ambiguity of the final product.

There were some fantastic passages in this novel, but unfortunately, they were buried in the shaggy dog type story about the life of our protagonist and the playwright who inspired them. Alas, too much story, foreshadowing of events that didn't need that much foreshadowing. Nelson's girlfriend just didn't merit that much obsession/interest. By the end, I basically flipped through pages to find out what happened and even then, I wasn't that interested. It's a shame as the first few chapters drew me in, but the story as a whole didn't hold up. Way too long, almost self indulgent writing that tired me out. Some great kernels, but at the end of the day, some were left unpopped in the microwave.

This novel follows a theater troupe trying to recapture the glory days of their youth joined by newcomer Nelson. The novel does fold out like a mystery in that we can tell something bad will happen to Nelson while the novel breaks from the troupe to interviews with other characters close to Nelson to describe what was going around during this tour. An excellent read.

This was a good book. But it took toooooooo long to get really started. I think in "Part 1" of the book, the author could have been trimmed by about 100 pages. Dragged on a bit much.However, once it got started it was great. The ending seemed a bit rushed, but good.

Very interesting narrative structure. Kept me hooked throughout.

The narrator of the book says he does, however, a reviewer wrote, "honest readers may have a different response." This is an unconventional book, a novel written at times as a journalistic research piece, yet not conforming entirely to that genre either. Trying to "get" what is said, happens or matters, is hardly the point. There are characters, believable, compelling, yet not necessarily likable. There is a story, or stories, which we follow with interest, yet fail to captivate. In the end, what we have is a well-written book, by an interesting, albeit possibly over-praised author, which I somehow find hard to recommend unreservedly. Could it be that I am an honest reader?

This book describes a great plot of the life of urban artists in a complex political environment. I like the main characters and their complexity view of life in the middle of a difficult economic environment, but this drama couldn't happen anywhere in the earth. I was looking for more insight about the intricate life of the people in Peru during the time of the “Shining Path” (this is not clear in the book), but the author didn't create the surrounding situation very well to understand the characters under this difficult period of time in this country.

彼の作品の世界観、予想しない展開。