Review by Booklist Review
The life of Chino, a young journalist, is upended after the death of his father, a professional thief who had abandoned him and his mother for another family when Chino was just a boy. Unable to resolve the complex, competing emotions he feels toward both parents, Chino becomes obsessed with an article he is writing about Lima's street clowns. Equal parts performer and beggar, the clowns provide a half-life into which Chino can disappear. In a borrowed costume, he roams the city anonymously, amplifying his lack of connection with the people around him. This graphic-novel adaptation strips the original short story to its essential elements but loses none of the rawness or tension. In stark black and white, Alvarado's illustrations intensify the sentiment of the text through visual interpretations ranging from literal to purely fantastical. Frequently stunning in their clarity and economy, the illustrations give this already complex story an added layer of richness and depth. Darkly satisfying but with no easy endings.--Hayes, Summer Copyright 2015 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review
Set in contemporary Peru, City is the story of a young journalist wrestling with grief, loss, and dissociation in the wake of his philandering father's death, exacerbated by the discovery of his father's second family and the pressures of urban life; flashbacks detail the poverty and betrayals of the past. This illustrated version of Alarcón's titular 2003 short story (first published by The New Yorker and appearing in his collection War by Candlelight) benefits from the careful detailing, innovative layouts, and marvelous line shading of Alvarado's black-and-white artwork. However, some literal and figurative color might have brought it all to life; Lima is depicted as merely a mildly surreal, concrete, and lonesome place, and the protagonist is just another disaffected cipher. Includes Alarcón's afterword and Alvarado's preliminary sketches. (This review is based on an advance proof copy; the finished copy will have black-and-white images.) Verdict Fans of the original story may appreciate this distinctive adaptation, but it's too elliptical and unsatisfying to recommend to most readers of fiction or sequential art; an optional purchase. Some profane, violent, and sexual content; suitable for YA and up.-J. Osicki, Saint John Free P.L., NB © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A graphic adaptation of a short story from Alarcn's debut, War by Candlelight (2005). Larceny, legacy, and Lima, Peru, with illustrations by Alvarado. Don Hugo was a thief and a cheat, and his sudden death pulls his estranged journalist son, Chino, back into the family's orbit for the first time in yearssince Don Hugo abandoned Chino and his mother for a mistress. Chino takes the current close relationship between his mother and the mistress-turned-common-law wife and her sons, Chino's half brothers, as a humiliation. After crafting an obituary truncated in favor of his sweet mother, Chino chases a story on street-performing clowns, his research taking him into Lima's hustle and bustle even as dark ruminations on family and greasepaint take him straight to his true inheritance. Alarcn (At Night We Walk in Circles, 2013, etc.) paints a fascinating Lima teeming with whores, used-nail salesmen, class warfare, corrupt politicians and security guards, workers building houses only to rob them, marching shoeshine boys, and the ever looming clowns, whose garish appearances put them beyond society's recognition. The flat blacks and stark whites of Alvarado's art accentuate a noir atmosphere, one color slicing the other into crisp definition as in an etching. Alvarado's simple backgrounds, flat figures, and heavy outlines sometimes give characters a dioramic pop off the page, though the art rarely wows. The finest illustrations open sections with small, Edward Gorey-like figures depicting Lima's hoi polloi, the reduced scale enhancing Alvarado's linework through compaction. Some pages panel imaginativelydelivering narration of Don Hugo's construction work one word per brickand the elegantly concise text takes to the graphic treatment nicely, breaking into bouncing boxes that easily tease the gaze along. This quick pacing helps to gloss over some illustrations' stiff figures and blunted affect. A swift, fatalistic love letter to Lima, with spirited if inconsistent art. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
