‘Alvar’s rich debut provides a deep and textured look at Filipino culture at home and abroad from an array of vastly diverse vantage points…Through careful, delicate prose, Alvar reveals her characters’ pasts and desires, which range from saintly to shameful in this deeply religious culture…Alvar’s characters are engaging and memorable, and their homes swell with visceral smells and sounds as she places us gently, firmly, into their imperfect lives.’ – Entertainment Weekly
‘[An] accomplished debut of longing and redemption. In lush, sinuous sentences, Alvar probes the enduring stain of race, colonialism, and especially class, giving voice to all strata of Philippine society.’ – O, The Oprah Magazine
‘A stunning debut – without ever getting overly sentimental, page after page of In the Country is laced with... revelatory, unflinching truth… Mia Alvar comes out swinging for the fences in her powerful first story collection... and doesn’t ever let up.’ – San Francisco Chronicle
‘Summer’s standout debut is Mia Alvar’s peripatetic story collection, In the Country, which captures a global village of voices—a blue-eyed fashion model in Manila; a nanny in gilded Bahrain—with a ventriloquist’s ease.’
– Vogue.com, “Summer’s Best Beach Reads”
‘Smart and compelling.’ – Roxanne Gay, B&N Review
‘A writer with enchanting powers.’ – New York Times Book Review
‘With arresting imagery and characters that are intriguing beneath their seeming ordinariness, these are powerful tales that evoke a sense of place, while exploring identity and displacement’. – The Lady
‘Compulsively readable…thanks to Alvar's expansiveness and her gift for grounded, human-scale metaphors…Each of In the Country's nine stories about the Filipino diaspora has the satisfying heft of a little novel. In precise and patient prose, Alvar reveals the complex patterns of labour migration that structure and define her characters' most intimate relationships.’ – Chicago Tribune
‘Emotionally ambitious…Alvar hits the ground running…What will make readers want to remain in the tired and sad company of Alvar's workers and wanderers is her own gorgeous writing style. Each one of the nine stories in this collection riffs on the theme of exile; yet, every main character's situation is distinct, morally messy in a different way, and unpredictable. Alvar is the kind of writer whose imagination seems inexhaustible, and who stirs up an answering desire in her readers for more and more stories…Alvar is reportedly working on a novel…which is great news, because as a reader and a new fan, I want more and more and more.’ – Maureen Corrigan, “Fresh Air,” NPR
‘In the Country consists of nine stories, all told from the perspectives of men and women in the Filipino diaspora. Emigration and escape from a place, a secret, or reality itself is a common theme…Raveling around the world, what Alvar’s stories have in common is the boldness and sincerity of heart that lie in the center of all of them.’ – Nylon, “Summer Reading Guide”
‘Haunting and powerful…Extraordinarily adept and insightful…[Alvar] moves gracefully among Philippine cultural iconography and Tagalog, Bahraini class structure, American anachronisms, shifting gender and sexuality, and political histories…The title story, ‘In the Country,’ and the longish ‘Old Girl’ stand out as evidence of Alvar's sensitive gaze, literary talent and polycultural dexterity…Alvar is gifted; of that there is no doubt. And she has important things to say. She knows how to make the reader pause, and think deeply, feel. And hunger, as I am already, for more.’ – The Plain Dealer
‘Alvar’s debut story collection is so well-drawn and plot-rich that you almost wish it were a novel. But then Alvar wouldn’t have been able to cram in so many disparate voices and painful ironies: a New York pharmacist smuggling drugs on flights back home to palliate his dying father; a set of housewives in Bahrain who throw parties for their poorer landspeople; an office cleaner in the World Trade Centre in the summer of 2001.’ – New York Magazine, “7 Books You Need to Read This June”
