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A review by gabsalott13
In the Country: Stories by Mia Alvar
5.0
I first read this short story collection back in 2015, sometime in the summer before I started college. Ever since then, I’ve remembered [a:Mia Alvar|8583937|Mia Alvar|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1447444289p2/8583937.jpg]’s debut as one of my favorite books ever, though I couldn’t quite recall why. To be honest, my “fave” ranking stemmed from this rush of goosebumps and adrenaline and nostalgia for all the emotions I went through while reading it, more so than actual literary memories. It’s safe to say that three-ish years later, despite my otherwise questionable high school taste, this collection stands strong.
It’s funny to mention time, because Alvar makes it fly by so quickly, but smoothly—you will not know you are hundreds of pages into this book, except that you will feel like you’ve lived hundreds of years with these characters. In the stories, no time passes at all, while everything between characters changes in a single interaction. Breadwinners move across the globe, but are everyday fixtures in the lives of those they support back home. Her stories are broad in scope, but always sensitive to the otherwise forgotten characters, and hyper aware of their innermost fears. Not only does Alvar focus on the people who would be “supporting characters” in any other story (an exiled politician’s longsuffering wife instead of the man himself, or a young student writing vicariously through her older brother’s escapades in Manila and Saudi Arabia), but she shows us their life with detail other tales miss—their guilt, indulgence, and reluctant moments of joy.
I think I enjoy this collection not just because of how each story operates individually, but because of how successfully they build off one another. With the exception of some linked collections, I don’t usually pay much attention to which short story comes after another; most times, it feels like the authors don’t, either. From the beginning of In The Country, however, each story seems to be helping the other along. To understand why many Filipinos living in Bahrain cling to their class values (and despise those who don’t) in “Shadow Families,” we need to see the stringent adherence to these societal groups in “The Virgin of Monte Ramon,” set back in the country. We are introduced to the idea of “OFWs” from the very first story, and each new one connects the many dots of Filipinos who must labor abroad. To me, the most beautiful pairing here is between “Old Girl” and “In the Country,” the two stories most concerned with affairs of state. They both focus on the great domestic and emotional labor asked of women married to “men of the people,” and it is not quite a spoiler to say that the seemingly unremarkable Old Girl, a replica of former Philippine President Corazon Aquino, reappears as an important political figure by the time of “In the Country.”
This is another joy—Alvar infuses some of the key moments of (recent?) Filipino political history, without assigning you a list of vocabulary words and key terms to research before diving in. You can avoid Googling Ninoy Aquino’s assassination or the EDSA Revolution and still viscerally connect to characters’ on-the-ground, non-mythical experiences of these events. Alvar anchors her stories not in grave political stakes, but in the unreasonable idealism of these “great revolutionary men,” which often makes their domestic politics insufferable. Her gentle cynicism exposes the antics of some of the Philippines’ “beloved Catholic martyrs”, and the sober heroism of the masses behind them.
I would suggest reading these stories once to focus on the small names (or names not yet made “big”), and again while gathering the necessary historical and social context for this world. There are so many small moments to consider and reconsider, that you’ll certainly want to read it again, and get the full story Alvar is trying to tell us about life in (and around) her country.
It’s funny to mention time, because Alvar makes it fly by so quickly, but smoothly—you will not know you are hundreds of pages into this book, except that you will feel like you’ve lived hundreds of years with these characters. In the stories, no time passes at all, while everything between characters changes in a single interaction. Breadwinners move across the globe, but are everyday fixtures in the lives of those they support back home. Her stories are broad in scope, but always sensitive to the otherwise forgotten characters, and hyper aware of their innermost fears. Not only does Alvar focus on the people who would be “supporting characters” in any other story (an exiled politician’s longsuffering wife instead of the man himself, or a young student writing vicariously through her older brother’s escapades in Manila and Saudi Arabia), but she shows us their life with detail other tales miss—their guilt, indulgence, and reluctant moments of joy.
I think I enjoy this collection not just because of how each story operates individually, but because of how successfully they build off one another. With the exception of some linked collections, I don’t usually pay much attention to which short story comes after another; most times, it feels like the authors don’t, either. From the beginning of In The Country, however, each story seems to be helping the other along. To understand why many Filipinos living in Bahrain cling to their class values (and despise those who don’t) in “Shadow Families,” we need to see the stringent adherence to these societal groups in “The Virgin of Monte Ramon,” set back in the country. We are introduced to the idea of “OFWs” from the very first story, and each new one connects the many dots of Filipinos who must labor abroad. To me, the most beautiful pairing here is between “Old Girl” and “In the Country,” the two stories most concerned with affairs of state. They both focus on the great domestic and emotional labor asked of women married to “men of the people,” and it is not quite a spoiler to say that the seemingly unremarkable Old Girl, a replica of former Philippine President Corazon Aquino, reappears as an important political figure by the time of “In the Country.”
This is another joy—Alvar infuses some of the key moments of (recent?) Filipino political history, without assigning you a list of vocabulary words and key terms to research before diving in. You can avoid Googling Ninoy Aquino’s assassination or the EDSA Revolution and still viscerally connect to characters’ on-the-ground, non-mythical experiences of these events. Alvar anchors her stories not in grave political stakes, but in the unreasonable idealism of these “great revolutionary men,” which often makes their domestic politics insufferable. Her gentle cynicism exposes the antics of some of the Philippines’ “beloved Catholic martyrs”, and the sober heroism of the masses behind them.
I would suggest reading these stories once to focus on the small names (or names not yet made “big”), and again while gathering the necessary historical and social context for this world. There are so many small moments to consider and reconsider, that you’ll certainly want to read it again, and get the full story Alvar is trying to tell us about life in (and around) her country.