Daniel Alarcon's Lost City Radio
Alarcon has written a fairly compelling novel involving a woman named Norma, the host of a radio show that attempts to locate and reunite people after a war has devastated their country. Norma's own husband has been missing for ten years; when a young boy arrives at the radio station from a village near where her husband disappeared, will she finally discover his fate? The twists this story takes are pretty obvious, but nonetheless are satisfying. I have no issue with Alarcon's name being on the list of awesome young American writers that I mentioned in my last post (although like several other members of the list, Alarcon actually grew up in another country).
1 comment:
Oh, I totally forgot to grade it! Um, A-.
I agree that the definition of "American writer" is subjective, and I don't really know enough of Alarcon's background to make any guesses. I would think that a writer doesn't need to be born here, but does need to have spent at least some of his or her childhood here. That's totally me though. Also, the little bio in the back of the book mentions that he was raised in Peru, but doesn't say anything like "he now lives in New York [or wherever]" which made the whole thing especially odd.
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