Friday, December 26, 2014

Lost a few months. Harback, Wainaina, and Alarcón

Fall semester. Lost months. Can't remember what I've read. I see my copies of three recent ones lying around, so I'll attempt a few words about them, for my own record:

At Night We Walk in Circles by Daniel Alarcón
Excellent
Beautifully crafted, interestingly structured, masterful storytelling about a young actor in a three-person traveling theater troupe in a post-war Peru-like country. But the ending? What up with that?

The Art of Fielding by Chad Harbach
Decent.
Smoothly told, easy-down page-turner about a college baseball player. Compelling characters... though the women perhaps a bit less so. Well crafted.

One Day I Will Write About This Place by Binyavanga Wainaina
So-so
Lush, loose, rich language, but somehow--despite the turbulence of the time and place--this memoir of growing up in Kenya somehow kept me at a remove... it felt like nothing much was happening... even though it was. Maybe it was that the writing was so opulent that the forest got lost for the trees.