It's a rare book that can transport the reader so wondrously between such disparate places--a Manhattan office tower and a Manila shack, an American bedroom and a Bahrain dinner party. Mia Alvar's debut story collection, In the Country, boasts such magic in a wholly immersive chronicle of immigrant and émigré experiences from Southeast Asia to upper-crust Boston. In these captivating, tightly hewn pieces, which occasionally share references with one another, Alvar carves herself a niche as a talented and exciting new voice in American literature.
It's difficult to place a finger on In the Country's alchemy, where each story's charm is equal parts rich surface details--the textures and colors of a Manila slum, the scents wafting from a Filipino dinner party in Bahrain--and the strong emotional undercurrents that propel each character. As interior lives go, the figures in each of Alvar's stories could easily drive an entire novel: the wayward American model in "Legends of the White Lady," the heartbreakingly stoic immigrant who cleans Manhattan office buildings in "Esmeralda."
Alvar builds these stories detail by detail, so deftly that a reader finds herself in foreign, fully realized places without knowing just how she arrived. The nature of enchantment is that the viewer can't discern the sleight of hand, only the astonishing result. By this metric, Mia Alvar is a new sort of literary wizard. --Linnie Greene, freelance writer