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Some Final Beauty and Other Stories
Some Final Beauty and Other Stories showcases women and Chicanx characters whose resistance, reconciliation, and strength vigorously affirm community. Author Lisa Alvarez captures the spirit of empowerment in the struggle for justice faced by marginalized communities in a nation defined by politicians from Reagan to Trump.
From the vibrant streets of Southern California to the arid Nevada Nuclear Test Site, these thematically linked stories explore self-discovery, rebellion, and solidarity as complex personalities and values meet at the intersection of art, love, relationships, activism, and identity. A Mexican American returns from WWII to encounter Paul Robeson. A Spanish Civil War veteran befriends a recovering addict. Young 1980s female activists take to the streets. A big-city Latino mayor discovers the limits of ambition. A grieving aunt confronts her dead niece’s toxic lover.
Both the author and her characters interrogate finality while insisting on the beauty of everyday human engagement, often steeped in Hispanic culture, and stubbornly demanding joyful civic participation. Alvarez constructs more than a sharp, empathetic and funny sociological survey of experiences. She crafts a chronicle of lives lived with purpose, resilience, and the hope of a better future.
From the vibrant streets of Southern California to the arid Nevada Nuclear Test Site, these thematically linked stories explore self-discovery, rebellion, and solidarity as complex personalities and values meet at the intersection of art, love, relationships, activism, and identity. A Mexican American returns from WWII to encounter Paul Robeson. A Spanish Civil War veteran befriends a recovering addict. Young 1980s female activists take to the streets. A big-city Latino mayor discovers the limits of ambition. A grieving aunt confronts her dead niece’s toxic lover.
Both the author and her characters interrogate finality while insisting on the beauty of everyday human engagement, often steeped in Hispanic culture, and stubbornly demanding joyful civic participation. Alvarez constructs more than a sharp, empathetic and funny sociological survey of experiences. She crafts a chronicle of lives lived with purpose, resilience, and the hope of a better future.
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
191 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 5, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
May 31, 2026
I loved these sweet stories tinged with a certain melancholy, many about lost worlds and youthful ideals still informing their older selves. I had a gravely ill family member in the hospital, it was a time I could not stomach most fiction--too fake, too slick, too dramatic, too showy--I was looking for something humane, real, textured but not packed with razor blades. Something that loved life, that valued community, that admitted to the devastations that life brings and our vulnerability while retaining its sweetness. I wanted Lisa Alvarez and her debut short story collection.
Set mostly in the canyon country of Orange County, similar territory to Susan Straight's Mecca, or the old Santa Monica/Venice of youthful activism and cheap apartments over storefronts, this iSouthern California has little overlap with the thrillers and chillers of Hollywood intrigue. It's about real people and their politics and their memories of being raised by single mothers, families that are dysfunctional yet still work on some level, quiet children who made it work, sisters and uncles and roommates and neighbors.
Among my favorite stories are 'Ocean Park #12' a locale that recurs in the book --the story of two women, two old friends, one dying of cancer, and the girls they had been together, 'False Flag', about the pandemic and a woman who suspects her neighbor had been a J6 rioter, and 'Frontera Grill' about a couple who had been broke young political activists in Santa Monica, living on air and ideals, returning to the neighborhood with their young child and eating in a restaurant they could never have afforded before. She recalls those young people so well--the boy, so excited about an eviction--"Now he was finally oppressed!"--where the girl had been evicted many times as a child in a chaotic household.
When you find yourself feeling raw and hunger for something human-scaled, caring and real, check this out.
Set mostly in the canyon country of Orange County, similar territory to Susan Straight's Mecca, or the old Santa Monica/Venice of youthful activism and cheap apartments over storefronts, this iSouthern California has little overlap with the thrillers and chillers of Hollywood intrigue. It's about real people and their politics and their memories of being raised by single mothers, families that are dysfunctional yet still work on some level, quiet children who made it work, sisters and uncles and roommates and neighbors.
Among my favorite stories are 'Ocean Park #12' a locale that recurs in the book --the story of two women, two old friends, one dying of cancer, and the girls they had been together, 'False Flag', about the pandemic and a woman who suspects her neighbor had been a J6 rioter, and 'Frontera Grill' about a couple who had been broke young political activists in Santa Monica, living on air and ideals, returning to the neighborhood with their young child and eating in a restaurant they could never have afforded before. She recalls those young people so well--the boy, so excited about an eviction--"Now he was finally oppressed!"--where the girl had been evicted many times as a child in a chaotic household.
When you find yourself feeling raw and hunger for something human-scaled, caring and real, check this out.
August 5, 2025
The stories in Lisa Alvarez’s new short story collection Some Final Beauty are about real characters living their lives with purpose, resilience, dignity, and strength. Alvarez has a perceptive eye for detail and nuance and can most certainly stick a landing. Each of the eleven stories resolves, not by perfectly tying up every loose end but by allowing the character to hope for a better future.
In the first story of the collection, Laurie walks home with the lyrics to the anti-Fascist protest hymn “Freiheit” carefully folded in her pocket “as if she might have future occasions to sing the song again.” In the heartbreaking “We Told You So,” Barefoot Roy, a canyon elder, tells the grieving widower Angelo, “We did good.” Angelo agrees. “Good enough,” he says.
In the title story of the collection, Toni waits patiently, “suspecting that it will take a while for some to come to what she had finally found.” Alvarez’s characters may be self-proclaimed “do-gooders” as Maggie and Nick call themselves in “The Frontera Grill,” the final story in the collection, but they are never self-righteous.
“It’s what good neighbors do,” a mother tells her daughter in “False Flag, adding, “And we can use the eggs.”
In these troubled times, we can all use these essential stories Bravo Alvarez.
In the first story of the collection, Laurie walks home with the lyrics to the anti-Fascist protest hymn “Freiheit” carefully folded in her pocket “as if she might have future occasions to sing the song again.” In the heartbreaking “We Told You So,” Barefoot Roy, a canyon elder, tells the grieving widower Angelo, “We did good.” Angelo agrees. “Good enough,” he says.
In the title story of the collection, Toni waits patiently, “suspecting that it will take a while for some to come to what she had finally found.” Alvarez’s characters may be self-proclaimed “do-gooders” as Maggie and Nick call themselves in “The Frontera Grill,” the final story in the collection, but they are never self-righteous.
“It’s what good neighbors do,” a mother tells her daughter in “False Flag, adding, “And we can use the eggs.”
In these troubled times, we can all use these essential stories Bravo Alvarez.
May 13, 2025
I wholeheartedly enjoyed this collection and the characters’ lives unfold in ways that are so raw and real, especially in our current state of affairs within the United States. The quote,”How could anybody fall asleep watching the war… unless… they were dying too?” from Lola’s story really haunts me to this day, as it perfectly encapsulates the importance of being aware of the world around us, the consequences, and how to best think in terms of advocacy and hope as opposed to shutting-down.
I truly believe that this collection will rise to the top once published and that if you can pick it up, you 100% should.
Thank you NetGalley & University of Nevada Press for access to this arc for a review!
I truly believe that this collection will rise to the top once published and that if you can pick it up, you 100% should.
Thank you NetGalley & University of Nevada Press for access to this arc for a review!
June 28, 2025
Some Final Beauty contains eleven stories set in Southern California with a variety of characters, some Latinx, some not. The stories are satisfying, the characters interesting, and they are narrated by a writer with a strong moral compass, one who has dedicated her life to social justice, to political action. This shows in the stories she chooses to tell, the stories that choose her. They are compelling tales, page-turners. I read one a night until they were gone, then closed the cover regretfully, wanting more. The publication date is August 2025, but the book can be pre-ordered from University of Nevada Press (support small presses!) and received now.
May 7, 2025
This is definitely a collection that people should read especially now with the god awful dumpster fire that is the political climate right now. Justice more often than not is not given to a big part of our communities (especially the marginalized ones like mentioned through this collection). While we have all of these things going on the author reminds us to find the beauty in the little things especially because life is short. Thanks NetGalley and University of Nevada Press for this ARX read
October 4, 2025
A terrific, heartfelt collection about addicts, artists, activists, and other misfits. I devoured these stories and had trouble putting the book down! The book is at once a rallying cry for justice, a love letter to Southern California, a meditation on Chicanx identity, and a reflection on the ways in which the political is personal and the personal is political. Extremely well-written, moving, and teeming with final beauty.
September 14, 2025
🎯🎯🎯🎯🎯
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews