At Night We Walk in Circles

Already looking forward to his next novel - the book fulfills the 'prodigious talent' blurbs on the back. At its simplest, for anybody who's ever been involved in putting on a play, the first two-thirds will be one of the best books about 'community theatre' you'll ever read. At its most complex, it spans politics, post-revolutionary culture, coming-of-age, travelogue, violence, and more. Why 3-and-a-half stars? Just didn't feel as if the energy carried all the way through to the end - given how much I enjoyed the first part, a really difficult task, but it sometimes felt like some easy-way-out choices were being made after the 'return to the city' from the travelling play. That said, I assume someone this good will only get better - I'll jump on the next book when it comes out.

Slow, kept waiting for it, never happened, wasted my time, stupid ending

Note: I received an advanced reading copy from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. My first impression is that At Night We Walk in Circles is the type of multilayered book that an English major could painstakingly dissect and then gleefully churn out pages and pages exploring literary device use and the underlying purpose and meaning of every story element. I will admit that I am a former English major, but, currently in the midst of writing research papers for grad school, I don’t have the energy to be writing the lengthy literary analysis this book deserves and will be basing this review/rating on the novel’s entertainment value.The novel is about the life of Nelson, an aspiring actor and playwright, who lands a role in a touring theater troupe lead by his role model. Not an exciting premise by itself, but there were a few things that kept me reading: The narrator is unknown (until the last quarter of the novel), and pieced together the events that lead to Nelson’s fate through interviews with his friends and family and from his abandoned journals. I was motivated to keep reading to find out who the narrator was and what had inspired them to investigate and retell Nelson’s story. By the end, something significant and worthy of story-telling does indeed happen to Nelson, and, throughout the novel, the narrator drops hints that this something was not a good thing, maintaining a sense of apprehension that kept me turning the pages. The touring theater plotline takes an unexpected and unfortunate turn, which sets in motion the events that lead to Nelson’s ironic and surreal downfall.Overall, Nelson and the supporting characters were well fleshed out and interesting to follow. I found that I grew to care about Nelson enough that I felt pretty bad about what happens to him, and I continued to ponder over his life and fate even after I was done reading. The author’s (Daniel Alarcon) writing is richly detailed and flows smoothly. While not urgently paced, the novel does have a relaxed momentum and was an enjoyable, engrossing read that I finished in a few sittings.

Alarcon reminds me of Roberto Bolano - the third-person narration in this book adds to this impression. The everyday somehow becomes transformed into a sort of mythology. Characters get caught up in a story that defeats them, punishes them. A classic example of the theme I call "life as a prison."

Could not take the boredom any longer.Too much pointless pontificating and no plot development. Disjointed narration from whoever is framing the story. Just didn't care. Returned to audible.com. Only the second book I've ever returned.

Another one from the Tournament of Books 2014 that just wrapped up. This is a book I can only describe as sludgey. It seemed like I was trudging through it through most of the tournament, reading a few pages here and there. It couldn't keep my attention. I wanted to like it. The main character is trying to figure out the life of the leader of his theater group, and his life slowly starts to mirror his. Even without an interest in theater, a theater group's trip through South America should have had much more. Not much happens... everything is left to the background. More than this had to happen. The most amusing part for me was a fridge turned into a clothes closet since it was so cold all the time that the food didn't need to go in the fridge. Information about the main character is gradually unraveled but you're left with a feeling of "That's it?" The idea of a prison without cells or else cells that are never really locked is simply frightening though.

This book, as several other readers have mentioned, is difficult to assess. Nelson is eminently likeable, and the plot during the first half of the book is compelling, but it begins to drag after a while. The book is, in some ways, two books. The first half of the book and the second half are radically different in tone. I think this occurs mainly because the reader's expectations of Nelson dissipate somewhere during the middle part of the book. I give this book three and a half stars.I very much wanted to like this novel more.

This was one the best books I've read this year. It started at a little slow but built up quite nicely. By the middle of the book I felt genuinely interested in all the characters and the story as well. Alarcon does a wonderful job describing the life of those in the remote areas of the country and how they both vastly contrast and yet are so very similar to persons lives in the city. He does it with beautiful prose as well. As for the main characters, I felt like I had finally pinned Nelson down, but all throughout the story he tells you that he just hard person to figure out. In the end that holds true. The final scene is a memorable one.

A nicely unfolding, readable tale about a ____ who ____ intrigued by an ____ and ____ those that ____ ____. That the ____ fellow is an _____ is significant ____ the ____-____ that underlies the story. It’s a ____ read.

"...the play is different every time."First -- thanks to LT early reviewers and to the publisher for my copy. Some time ago I read this author's Lost City Radio, and loved it. Absolutely. Now he's back with At Night We Walk in Circles, and I loved this one even more. The blurb describing what's on the inside doesn't even come close to describing what actually happens in this character-based novel, which I would say focuses largely on identity, how past events come to be re-imagined, and the effects of blurring the line between reality and artificiality. Without going into plot so much, the main thread of this story focuses on a journalist narrator who is trying to "decipher the mystery" around a "brief encounter" between himself and the main character Nelson, by interviewing "his confidantes, his lovers, his classmates, people who'd seen fit to trust me, as if by sharing their various recollections, we could together accomplish something on his behalf. Re-create him. Reanimate him. Bring him back into the world." Using these interviews and words from Nelson's journals, he tries to piece together the chain of events that started with Nelson going on a tour for a play with two other actors, because he feels some kind of bond with Nelson. The thing is though, that each person he interviews knows Nelson from a different vantage point, from different situations in which Nelson has played different parts, so that eventually we find that there are a number of different Nelsons. How then is it possible to know the true Nelson? Is it possible at all? Even he is aware of himself as an actor -- at the last drink he had with his brother he came to the realization that everyone, including himself, is always acting. When all is said and done, and as you come to the end of the story, you start to wonder if even Nelson really knows who he is any longer. What I find striking about this book is that it is built around actors, their roles, performances, scripts and improvisations -- all tools used to create illusion; all connected to some form of imprisonment. Re the title: As Henry asks earlier, when he talks to the narrator about walking in circles while in prison, "how do you set a play in a world that denies your characters any agency?" I'm not exactly sure, but I think this statement may provide some clue. At Night We Walk in Circles is definitely not easygoing as far as the reading. This book could be the easily be included in a literary or history course, one that spends most of the semester analyzing it. All the same, I love this writer's work and this one I can only describe as hypnotic and haunting, mixed with a touch of very dark humor at times. Highly recommended -- take it very slow, though. It's not a book you want to rush through.

I just finished reading At Night We Walk In Circles. It was written by Daniel Alarcon. It's about a man who goes to uncover a story about an actor that he idolizes in a way. This actor had everything he wanted in life, or so it would seem. The only thing he didn't have was the woman he loved. In trying to win her back, something happens that ultimately leads to his downfall. I really enjoyed this book. I highly recommend it to anybody who likes to read books of this particular genre. I especially loved how the author chose to write about everybody's background stories and not just the main characters. I feel like it gave more understanding to the overall story. It made one understand how everything coincided with each other and fit. It made it understandable why the characters were in the book at all. I'm glad I had the opportunity to read this book. It was truly amazing and moving.

At Night We Walk in CirclesBy Daniel AlarconPerhaps a bit of historical perspective would be in order. For nearly three decades (1960's, 1970's, and 1980's) guerilla warfare was rampant in Latin America. The strategies for these movements were to destabilize governments and provoke a counter- reaction by the military. In general that strategy was successful; however in the process numerous atrocities were committed on both sides.In the midst of this conflict, in Daniel Alarcon's fictional South American nation, a theatrical company, called Dicembre was formed. It was theater for the people and "a time when theater was improvised in response to terrifying headlines, when a line of dialogue delivered with a chilling sense of dread did not even require acting." It was revolutionary theater.Fast forward twenty years and times have changed dramatically. The story of At Night We Walk in Circles has entered the 21st century and the aftermath of war. "No one cared about human rights anymore, not at home or abroad. They cared about growth." Dicembre's lead actor and playwright Henry Nunez and his friend, and fellow actor, Patalarga, plan a revival of Henry's most famous play to coincide with the fifteenth anniversary of its debut. The play is titled The Idiot President. Both men are now in their 40's and Henry is divorced and his age is showing. "These late middle years offended his vanity. He was looking forward to being old, when he would no longer be tormented by memories of youth." Perhaps one last hurrah might be attained performing for the people out in the provinces.Originally, back in 1986, Patalarga's wife Diana, was the third actor in the troupe, but she is not up for gallivanting about the provinces for weeks on end acting in this dated, farcical play. Instead she wants to have a baby. A young conservatory theater student named Nelson is hired on to play Diana's role of the president's son. The play consists of the president (Henry) and his son (Nelson) and the servant (Patalarga). The premise of the play is that every citizen of the country is afforded the privilege of attending to the president for one day. And at the end of that day the servant is sacrificed, his life is taken. Nelson is somewhat unmoored. It was long assumed that he would join his older brother, Francisco, in the United States. But Nelson's father died unexpectedly and he is now responsible for his widowed mother. And most significantly he is having an affair with his former girlfriend who is currently living with another man. Nelson cannot decide if he truly loves her. So Nelson thinks why not work on my craft under the tutelage of the celebrated, egomaniacal, revolutionary playwright, Henry Nunez. It would also give him the opportunity to sort his life out because "in the provinces time, we all knew, was a very relative concept. Such is the languorous nature of small town life. Thought slows, the need for conversation vanishes. You are prone to introspection. . ."Not yet mentioned, though significant, is the novel's structure. All of this information is being slowly revealed by an unnamed narrator who cryptically alludes to Nelson's eventual, and possibly, dire fate. I don't believe you would call him an "unreliable narrator", yet we ultimately discover his connection to the characters and the story and this helps to explain away occasional gaps and speculation as the novel has unfolded.While Dicembre puts on performances out in the countryside Alarcon shines with his vivid descriptions of the South American provinces and its compelling characters. It is also during these series of performances that aspects of Henry's and Nelson's lives emerge as somewhat of a soap opera. The true love of Henry's life was not the ex-wife who bore him a treasured daughter. It was his cellmate, Rogelio, from the notorious Collectors Prison where Henry was incarcerated for terrorist activities. Rogelio dies, along with 343 other inmates when the prison was assaulted by the army. It also comes to light that Nelson does, in fact, truly love his girlfriend Ixta and wants her back. He acknowledges this fact, before he finds out that she is pregnant.The troupe, quite coincidentally, finds its way to the home town of Henry's deceased lover Rogelio. It is at this point that the novel amps up to a frantic pace. There is a theatrical ruse, an unanticipated death and a murder. What ultimately happens to Nelson I will leave for you to discover. I will give you this one hint which is hidden deep within the text, "That's what I wanted. To enter the world of the play, and escape my life."I have read all of Daniel Alarcon's books, but I believe At Night We Walk in Circles to be his finest effort to date. I love his descriptions, whether atmospheric "Night had brought with it a blanket of wet, heavy fog, and the streetlights above flowered in hazy yellow bursts." Or, observational "Midday streets are very different from early morning streets--different in character, different in sound. There are more people, but they're less harried somehow; they're the late risers, the men and women escaping from work, not racing toward it." And the interesting aspects of South American life revealed. I loved the fact, I assume it is a fact, that bus company officials video tape passengers prior to treacherous mountain trips. If there is an accident, resulting in death, these video tapes are sent to the deceased 's family. If no accident occurs, then those tapes are merely taped over. Another, interesting item is that prison cells, in certain South American countries, have to be purchased. If you don't have funds to purchase a cell while you are in prison you are condemned to roam the grounds with no shelter.There is so much in this book to intellectually consider, aside from the entertaining storyline. There are a myriad of important concepts sprinkled throughout the novel. Not the least of which is personal identity and one's varied roles in life. One could even go deeper and explore Latin palindromes or mirror metaphors. But ultimately there is the novel's "crowning jewel" which is the surrealistic, indeterminate conclusion. I defy anyone, be it Harold Bloom or Michael Silverblatt not to re-read the final page.

At Night We Walk In Circles is about a young man named Nelson whose life is falling apart before him. His girlfriend is sleeping with another man, his brother has moved away, his widowed mother is a burden on him and his dream of becoming an actor if fading farther and father away. Then Nelson scores a title role in a touring revival of The Idiot President. And that's when everything goes to crap for Nelson.The story is told through a young man obsessed with Nelson's story, who could be closer to the story than you think. The writing was clean and sharp, I like this story that has seemed to stick with me, so I will defiantly keep this amazing writer on my mind.

At Night We Walk in Circles by Daniel Alarcón is a literary masterpiece which will not only keep the reader engaged, but will give the reader pause to stop and think. Alarcón’s novel is rather fast paced and brilliantly choreographed. The synopsis of the book does it little justice and will not serve for me to give much further detail, for as the title suggests, the reader just may find themselves walking in circles as the story progresses. At the core of the novel is a troupe’s revival of a play, The Idiot President, which the three troupe members come together to perform once again, after the civil war has ended, and find themselves traveling around this unnamed South American country. Without giving away much, the narrator, while investigating Nelson, becomes obsessed with his story, meanwhile Nelson himself is found to worship Henry, the troupe director, and that is merely the tip of a very large and multilayered iceberg. Alarcón has crafted a beautifully written, at times confusing, philosophical look at life and I would not hesitate to recommend At Night We Walk in Circles, especially to book discussion groups.

Set in an unnamed Latin American country emerging from the trauma of a long-fought civil war, Daniel Alacron’s At Night We Walk in Circles follows Nelson, a young aspiring actor who seeks out his hero Henry, a playwright and director of the group Diciembre, whose satiric play “The Idiot President” had landed him in prison for a year. Now, in calmer days, he has agreed to plans made to revive the play and take it on the road to back country villages, performing on whatever stage or open field was available. Nelson has left his life behind to join Henry on this tour. The ravages of war and its aftermath are still everpresent: drugs, violence and extreme poverty. Our unnamed narrator take us through Nelson’s rite of passage during the tour where love and understanding become entangled and painfully sad at what becomes the final performance.

Daniel Alarcon’s new novel At Night We Walk in Circles is difficult to pin down. The characters and setting seem to move in circles and at each pass, things change. This is best reflected in Nelson, a young actor looking to break into the theatre world. As his story unfolds, we see how he can change his story in order to portray himself a certain way. It becomes so bewildering that a chance encounter leads the narrator to tell his story. Even at the end, he doesn’t know which way is up, and neither will the reader. Nelson is born amidst the wreckage of an unmentioned Latin-American Country. His brother Francisco was lucky enough to be born in the United States before his parents lost their visa. While it provides Francisco escape from strife, it molds Nelson into an enigma. He uses his brother to create status for himself (next year he will go to the United States) as well as sympathy (the neglected brother). Naturally, Nelson gravitates towards acting while working through school. Once finished he is able to join the Deciembre Theatre group; a political theatre group formed during the strife. The driving force behind Deciembre, Henry Nunez, is arrested after two plays and is accused of terrorism. He is freed soon after but the experience changes him leaving both scars and longing. It’s these past events that affect the future. When Henry wants to go on the road again 20 years later to re-create the play’s run, Nelson is cast in a lead part. The story concludes with the past’s collision with the present. Alarcon’s novel is a highly engaging detailed narrative that reads like a thriller at times. The story is retold by the narrator through interviews with those who knew Nelson. At times two separate conversations are happening in the same sentence cleverly weaved together. Each character is also carefully defined not only by the narrator, but by those he has interviewed providing subtle character traits that become critical later on in the story. Near the end of the story the narrator’s perspective starts to wear away; whereas before the mysterious omniscient storyteller was in command of the story, he begins to lose the thread. It’s hard to wonder whether it is the narrator or the author at this juncture. The beginning always seemed to hint at something fantastic both in who is telling the story and Nelson’s story itself, but both seem to fade away with no clear point. I think that was Alarcon’s intention but it feels overtly manipulative and makes the story feel flat. I think that was his intention, but it was hard to discern if this was an overly ambitious technique or lazy writing. It made the book fall flat at the end.

This is one of those books that makes me feel ignorant, like everyone else who reads it “gets” it and I just don't. It has received quite a bit of acclaim, and it's not like I don't like that vague genre of “literary fiction.” I don't need an especially strong plot when there is great character development and beautiful writing. I read lots of popular fiction, too, and don't need a lot of wondrous navel-gazing when there is an exciting storyline.This one – well, I kept expecting to like it, wanting to like it. At the end, I just thought, “ho hum,” and went to bed.The story is told in first-person, but the reader is not aware of that for quite some time, and isn't aware of who this first person is until almost the end of the book.Something happens to Nelson, and it's not going to be good. We're told that over and over and over. We get it. Let's move on.Sure, there is insight into the human soul, but nothing especially interesting, and certainly nothing new. The characters – well, I just didn't feel them, or feel for them. There was no connection, that feeling that you care about people even when you know you are reading fiction.So perhaps people more sensitive than I will love this book, as quite a few reviewers have, but for me, I was bored. I was given a copy of this book for review.

Daniel Alarcón's At Night We Walk in Circles is being marketed as "breathless" and "suspenseful" (it was recently recommended to me in an Amazon e-mail under the category Mystery/Suspense), which will set most readers up for a disappointment. If you've ever read, say, Chronicle of a Death Foretold or Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez, well, so has Daniel Alarcón, and the structure, the tone, the narrative voice, the pacing, the characters, the situations will remind you of those books. If you loved those novels, read no more of this review, and go find a copy of At Night We Walk in Circles.

The setting is an unnamed South American country much like Alarcón's native Peru, where in the 1980's, during a time of suspicion, unrest, civil war and government paranoia, the guerrilla theater troupe Diciembre (their slogan: Theater for the People!) found itself harassed and targeted by the authorities. Their leader, Henry Nuñez, was arrested and thrown into the prison known as Collectors after a performance of their political play, The Idiot President. The main action of At Night We Walk in Circles takes place in 2001 and after, when the main character, a young actor named Nelson, finds himself on tour with the reconstituted Deciembre--Henry and his acting partner, Patalarga--throughout the provinces, tiny villages scattered in the Andes.

There is an interesting story in this book--the story of Henry Nuñez's time in Collectors, nearly 15 years before the novel begins, and his relationship there with another prisoner, Rogelio. When Nelson asked Henry why he hadn't written about those experiences, I found myself asking the same question of Alarcón. Compared to the bloodless, pliable Nelson and his relationships with his mother, girlfriend, and brother, Rogelio and Henry's prison love affair seemed infinitely more interesting. (The title of the novel, which Ana Menéndez's review in the New York Times says "seems to be a nod to [Guy] Debord’s 1978 film 'In Girum Imus Nocte et Consumimur Igni,' a Latin palindrome that can be roughly translated as 'At night we enter the circle and are consumed by fire,'" is referred to in the text only once, when Henry describes the nightly Collectors ritual when friends paired off and walked in circles around the prison yard.)

By comparison, the unspooling of Nelson's story, the tragedy of which is heavily foreshadowed a la the aforementioned García Márquez, for all its significance in terms of identity and fate, lands in the end without much force.

A staple device of some of the best literary fiction I have read is the use of an Unreliable Narrator, whereby the story is told by someone with a significantly compromised point of view (e.g., Lolita, The Catcher in the Rye, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest). In At Night We Walk in Circles, author Daniel Alarcón employs a comparably intriguing ploy: a narrator whose identity and importance to the plot is not revealed until very late in the novel. Indeed, in this case, some crucial details about the relationship between the storyteller and the main protagonist are saved until the last few pages of the tale, which leaves the reader in a position of not really knowing how much of the preceding narrative is to be believed.Whether reliable or not, though, what a story it proves to be. Nelson, a young actor in an unnamed South American country (most likely Peru), has very little going on in life: his family relations are strained, the girlfriend he left but now realizes he loves has moved on with another man, and his professional career is going nowhere. When the chance arises to join a touring company that is reviving a controversial play popular during the revolution that took place 15 years before, he jumps at the opportunity. Along with Henry, the play’s author who spent time in prison for terrorism, and Patalarga, another founding member of the legendary Diciembre theater troupe, Nelson embarks on a trip that takes them to performances in a succession of small Andean villages. Although the tour is a success artistically, all three actors find that their personal lives begin to unravel during the journey. For Nelson, in fact, the surprising events that transpire in one of these towns will alter his life forever.I enjoyed reading this book—the title of which echoes Henry’s observation that he saw men in prison walking in circles to create a sense of escape—quite a bit, although it was not without its flaws. Above all else, Alarcón has crafted an original and highly readable story that is propelled by its own momentum as it builds to an unexpected conclusion. Also, while not exactly qualifying as historical fiction, the novel does a superb job of capturing the feelings and emotions of a turbulent time in the country’s recent past. On the other hand, I found the author’s character development to be rather weak and sometimes distracting; in fact, the dearth of physical descriptions in the novel made it difficult to envision what many of the protagonists even looked like. On balance, At Night We Walk in Circles is a very solid effort by a talented young writer and one that I can recommend without hesitation.

While I was reading At Night We Walk In Circles, I caught my ten year old staring at the book cover. “What?” I asked. “That's a weird title,” he said. “Why is it weird?” I asked. He said he didn't know, that it just was. I brushed it off. The next day, while I was reading, my wife interrupted me: “At Night We Walk In Circles—that's an odd title.” “What's so odd about it?” I demanded. She had no answer, but then turned the unanswerable question around on me. “What's the relevance of the title?” she asked. I responded I didn't know yet, but that I was sure I would by the end of the book.Well, I reached the end; and truthfully, I have no idea what the title means. Likely I'm missing something obvious, but it doesn't matter. I wasn't as bugged by the title as they were.At Night We Walk In Circles is a wonderfully written story that took me down roads I hadn't expected. As the blurb says, this is a novel about Nelson, a young actor, who lands a role in the revival of the controversial play, The Idiot President. The summary promises suspense and antics, but really, what can you expect from a book about a play? But Alarcón has here written a novel that really entertains. The story is fresh. The language is crisp. At no point during the story did I find myself losing interest.For much of the novel, I thought I was looking at a truly groundbreaking novel, a prize winner that brought to mind other contemporary novels such as Middlesex and The Orphan Master's Son. It comes close, but there are a couple elements that keep me from thinking this book will reach those heights. First, the story is plot and language focused. That's great, and it really moved the book, but I never got a great sense of who these characters were. Second, and perhaps more significant, was the narrative voice. It worked as well, but I couldn't help but wonder if the narrative choice could've been done differently. As our narrator becomes more prominent toward the end of the novel, I found my affection for the novel greatly diminishing. It was an interesting choice, possibly the right one, but it added some disconnect for me as a reader.Do I recommend you read it? Absolutely, if for no other reason than you can share your ideas about the significance of the title. My family waits with bated breath.