Where There Was Fire by John Manuel Arias
Read it in San José, Costa Rica
Because I lived in Costa Rica for several years, authored a relocation guide to that country, and have a novel (You Could Be Happy Here) coming out that is set there, I’ve made a point of reading as many books as I can find set in Costa Rica and/or written by Costa Rican authors. I can read Spanish but it’s more enjoyable for me to read in English, my native tongue.
So I was thrilled to discover that a young Costa Rican author had written a novel set in Costa Rica, in English. John Manuel Arias has lived in both Costa Rica and the US, so maybe at this point he feels more comfortable writing in English. Whatever the reason, English speakers have the good fortune of being able to read his work in our own language, both Where There Was Fire and the upcoming Crocodilopolis, pitched as One Hundred Years of Solitude meets HBO’s Succession.
Where There Was Fire ripples out from one sweltering and tragic night in 1968, in Barrio Ávila, in the Costan Rican capital city of San José. That fateful night has a very long tail – both in what led up to it, and the aftermath. The tragedy is of both familial and national proportion, and the characters spend most of book trying to make sense of it.
All the characters in this novel seem haunted, plagued by both personal, generational, and even environmental trauma.
The story is moody, lyrical, violent, sad, enraging, and, toward the end, it teases us with a little bit of hope. The narrative jumps around in time and switches point of view; we as readers only slowly discover how things are connected and just how deep the damage runs. If that sort of slow burn makes you impatient, you might not love this book. For me, there was enough lyricism and interesting family dynamics to keep me happy while the whole picture came into focus.
Do all Latin American writers labor under the shadow of the esteemed Gabriel García Marquéz? This book, for one, wears that influence on its sleeve. As in One Hundred Years of Solitude, Where There Was Fire comes complete with ghosts, grandmas, and an evil multinational banana company that treats its workers like toxic dirt. In Where There Was Fire, the criminally negligent banana company just may get its comeuppance, while the main character, a gay man who returns from living in the US to “excavate his [Costa Rican] lineage,” comes to better understand himself and his heritage.
I lived just outside of San José for many years, and used to take the bus to the upscale Barrio Ávila for their very well-stocked supermarket. I know the houses and the railroad tracks of which the author writes. I like how the author, who describes himself as a “queer Costan Rican American poet and writer” lovingly describes San José, his home and the city tourists love to hate.
“San José is alive and ecstatic—a lottery vendor, a café owner reciting Shakespeare…and a stout, devout woman quoting from the good book—not the Bible, but One Hundred Years of Solitude.”
Where There Was Fire
John Manuel Arias
288 pages, Hardcover
Flatiron Books, 2023