04 January 2014

At Night We Walk In Circles ~ Daniel Alarcon

** OK **

Tournament of Books : 2014

And by day we talk in circles
Slow getting nowhere.

The narrative was drowning in words, coming up for air only to gulp more words. There was more than a little self indulgence ... oooh look ... my navel!  ... a shame, as there were some vibrant pieces of writing.  It just laboured too much as a novel.

The main character, who joins a travelling theatre company taking a politically charged play on tour, lets life lead him by the nose.  Like a tsunami, it all washed over him and sweeps him away in its dirty maelstrom.  For me the trouble was that, by the end, I sighed for him in his disastrous predicament, but that was about as much empathy as I could muster.  He was too much "merely a player" in his own destiny.

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts ...