City of Clowns

[cornerofmadness]

City of Clowns by Daniel Alarcón

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I'll be honest I picked this up because of the setting. I like to read books about other cultures and countries done by authors from those places. The contemporary setting did less for me. It reads a little like a memoir and opens with Chino, a Peruvian journalist, avoiding his father's funeral. Chino is a young man filled with rage. Starting life in the poor mountain mining communities, Chino came to Lima as a child and at one point admired his father.

Now, he's rightfully angry. Much of the time he was 'away working' his father was actually at his other wife's home with the multiple half siblings Chino didn't realize he had. He's angry that his father eventually left him and his mother for that family. He's angry at how his mother handled it (especially after his father's death) to the point of coming across very judgmental of Mom.

Much of the work his father and mother did was handyman and maid work for wealthy families. Much later we learn the reason for this is his father (mom didn't know) was casing the joints and he was capable of brutality.

Along with this personal tale is the story Chino is meant to be writing about clowns. I felt the story fell down a bit here. Were the clowns merely buskers? They also seemed to be part of the political unrest which is the backdrop for the whole story. Are they so poverty stricken this is all the clowns have? At one point Chino joins them, seems to like it.

Overall, I didn't connect with Chino much. I did think the dark heavy inked art served the dark story.



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