As a Filipino, I can understand why Filipinos praise this book. Yes, it’s relatable. Yes, it’s written beautifully. But for me, I don’t think it’s the perfect short story collection.

Short stories for me, personally, are a 50/50. I either love or hate it. In The Country consists of nine short stories about different Filipino dynamics such as families with members who are suffering from drug addiction, OFWs, etc. The thing about this collection is that if I don’t find the story relatable or interesting, I just simply don’t care. I have a natural instinct of wanting to move on because it’s ‘only short’. And I do admit that I am a red flag for that.

What I did love about this book, though, is the fact that the voices are so distinct from each other. You can feel the joy, the sorrow, the angst, of the characters you’re following. In short story collections, there’s a tendency that characters are too similar to each other because short story collections (normally) follow one theme. But that was not the case for Alvar. And I absolutely loved the way she wrote her characters.