In the Country: Stories

Very good book! We’ll written!

one of the most exquisite colection of short stories. which is very difficult thing to achieve.this nine stories are about Filliponos/Fillipinas, the country's history, its people.

Usually I end up forgetting short stories much more quickly than I do novels. I will remember that a given book of short stories was special, or good, or only so-so, but typically I retain little about the individual stories themselves for longer than a few months. I doubt that will be the case with IN THE COUNTRY. It is a powerful collection of nine stories (or, perhaps, eight stories and one novella), and I suspect that I will remember four or five of them years from now.The "country" of the title is the Philippines, and all of the stories concern Filipinos, either in their native land or abroad -- Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, or America -- or shuttling back and forth between home and abroad. The principal characters, with one or two exceptions, do not have an easy life or a particularly happy one. They tell themselves stories to make reality a little more bearable . . . until new developments necessitate changes in those stories. By and large, women have a much harder row to hoe than do men, and for the most part they shoulder their burdens and sorrows stoically. Several of the stories take place in the toxic milieu brought about by the corrupt and repressive regime of Ferdinand Marcos (although he is not named, as if to do so were taboo).Here are thumbnail outlines of my four favorite stories: A Filipino ex-pat (or balikbayan), now working as a pharmacist in a New York City hospital, returns to Manila for his father's final days and smuggles in a new pain-relief drug, not out of love for his father but rather to make his mother's role of caretaker and nurse easier. Sally Riva, an ex-pat in Bahrain, works with "special needs" children; she takes on Aroush, a severely impaired five-year-old girl and daughter of a rich Lebanese woman who cannot admit to the reality of Aroush's disability within her own circle of high Arab society. For nineteen years Esmerelda worked as a maid in New York City, much of that time as an illegal immigrant; then she got a regular and (for her) relatively cushy job cleaning offices in one of the World Trade Center towers, where she developed a close friendship with a decent, sympathetic older man whose wife was dying, until (of course) 9/11 intervened. "Old girl" is what a Filipino politician and former senator forced into exile calls his wife, who manages the transplanted family of eight in Boston and integrates them into "Manilachusetts" while he teaches at Harvard and MIT and gallivants off on various quixotic missions, such as running the Boston Marathon at age 51 and after triple bypass surgery.These are humane stories that empathize with the plight of the underdog, who usually is a woman. They no doubt are more memorable, at least for me, because they pertain to the Philippines, which is new and unfamiliar to me as the subject of serious fiction. Author Mia Alvar -- born in Manila and raised in Bahrain and New York City -- knows her subject. I don't know how old she is (this is her first book), but she writes with the wisdom and historical knowledge of someone older than she surely is. There are a few rough edges here and there, but overall IN THE COUNTRY is a wonderful book.

9 short stories (20-30 pages each) set during different time periods and locations. They loosely tie together (more so at the end) to tell about the Filipino diaspora and the politics and economic policies that impact the Philippines today. As someone who doesn't know much about the Philippines I found this informative and engaging. Each story left me wanting more, but each one seemed better than the last.

Nine short stories which I enjoyed. Well written and progressed nicely.