Title: At Night We Walk in Circles Author: Daniel Alarcón
Published: October 31, 2013
Genre(s): Literary Fiction
Page Count: 384
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:Nelson’s life is not turning out the way he hoped. His girlfriend is sleeping with another man, his brother has left their South American country and moved to the United States, leaving Nelson to care for their widowed mother, and his acting career can’t seem to get off the ground. That is, until he lands a starring role in a touring revival of The Idiot President, a legendary play by Nelson’s hero, Henry Nunez, leader of the storied guerrilla theater troupe Diciembre. And that’s when the real trouble begins.
The tour takes Nelson out of the shelter of the city and across a landscape he’s never seen, which still bears the scars of the civil war. With each performance, Nelson grows closer to his fellow actors, becoming hopelessly entangled in their complicated lives, until, during one memorable performance, a long-buried betrayal surfaces to force the troupe into chaos.
At first, I felt that this was a book very similar to The Shadow of the Wind, but after finishing, I’m quite certain that At Night We Walk in Circles is its own thing entirely. Daniel Alarcón’s storytelling and writing are both amazing, and the end result is a book that’s just…phenomenal, I guess is what I can call it. This is a very, very good book. Very good.
This is a story about a young actor named Nelson, but at the same time, its about quote a lot more. Nelson’s downfall unravels slowly at first, then with building momentum, and several other aspects are involved in his fate. Alarcón mixes a mystery-like atmosphere with a gloomy glimpse at failed romance and sets it within a seemingly ludicrous, highly-political South American country. At Night We Walk in Circles isn’t just the story of an unfortunate young man; it would do the book quite a disservice to suggest so.
I think the most skillful (or memorable, perhaps) part of this book is the way the narrator’s presence is woven into the plot. At first, the book appears to be written in third person from Nelson’s perspective, but then a mysterious, unnamed “I” emerges. It is this man who’s telling us Nelson’s story, not Nelson himself. Further along, the narrator moves from being an outside observer to a sideline player, then shifts to a more central role. The final scene, between Nelson and the narrator, is both satisfying and delightfully vague. This is the kind of book that, once finished, makes you stop and re-examine the story, and wonder about things. Honestly, it’s one of my favorite types of endings.
Alarcón’s prose is excellent as well. Because the narrator is performing an investigation into Nelson’s life, At Night We Walk in Circles is something like a bare-bones, factual report on the surface, but it isn’t. Even if the narrator doesn’t know Nelson, the reader is able to watch unfolding events and discern emotion from the text. I didn’t feel distant from the story or disconnected in any way.
In the final paragraphs of the book, Nelson asks the narrator, “Do you understand?” and the response is, “I do.” Perhaps I can’t say that I truly understand At Night We Walk in Circles in the way Nelson does—perhaps in the way only Nelson truly can. I can say, however, that I enjoyed this book very much, and appreciated the skill with which it was written, and the talent that went behind so subtle and memorable a story.
