A collection of short stories by Daniel Alarcón, who I had not previously heard of. The title drew me to this one - one of my favourite titles of the year so far.
The narrator of most of these stories, while a different person, has the same narrative voice, which made the stories quite easy to get into. I thought the stories got better the further into the collection I got. We are never told the location of many of the stories, having to assume that they’re set in Mexico, or another Latin American country. The collection has quite a Hispanic feel and the setting is important in many of the stories - characters often mention America, people who have emigrated or their desire to, or family who live there. There are some place names but it wasn’t clear to me what country they were in, or if they even existed, and this was one flaw for me. I felt there could have been some firming up of location to give the reader a better sense of place.
Favourite stories included the title story, The Provincials, República and Grau, and The Bridge.

Overall an enjoyable little collection. I think fans of Junot Díaz might enjoy this.

An interesting collection of short stories by Alarcón and he presents a wide variety of topics in this collection, each done with a specific focus on that topic. I liked how the collection overall fitted together however there were a couple of stories that stuck out at me. The most part the stories were good but i felt a couple were not as good as the rest.