When Eduardo “Eddy” Arias sat down to write down Alicia, he didn’t start with a top level view or a grand plan. He started with a picture. A rich Manhattan couple, determined for a kid, rent their undocumented housekeeper as a surrogate—then she vanishes weeks earlier than giving delivery. What begins as a seek for the lacking lady turns into one thing darker: the belief that the couple cares extra in regards to the child she carried than about her life. “That ethical inversion stayed the identical,” Arias says. “Every thing else advanced, however that haunting contradiction was the ebook’s backbone.”
Arias’s debut novel, now accessible on Amazon and AliciaTheBook.com, reads like a psychological thriller wearing literary garments. Alicia strikes with the rhythm of a movie—unsurprising, given Arias’s background as a filmmaker and government at Paramount and Sony Photos. The previous NYU Legislation graduate, who teaches media negotiation on the College of Miami, has lived many lives: lawyer, producer, storyteller. But probably the most pivotal story of his life—the 24-hour kidnapping of his mom in Venezuela—reshaped how he writes about concern and loss.
“Actual concern is one thing it’s a must to handle,” Arias says. “Generally, it’s a must to let go of management.”
Energy love betrayal
That lesson bleeds into each web page of Alicia. The ebook is as a lot in regards to the violence of energy as it’s about love. The story unfolds from the standpoint of Claire Cooper, the elegant artwork supplier who convinces herself she’s serving to her housekeeper by providing her “an opportunity”—a call that units in movement a sequence of moral, emotional, and authorized collapses. Arias frames the narrative as a contemporary retelling of Alice in Wonderland, solely this time by the Queen of Hearts’ eyes. “I used to be extra all in favour of exploring the opposite facet,” he says. “For me, the actual story was about management, and I may solely discover that truthfully by her standpoint.”
The Queen’s gaze
Claire’s Manhattan is Arias’s Wonderland: dazzling, claustrophobic, and morally inverted. The Higher East Facet glitters with privilege, however each luxurious conceals quiet despair. “I knew individuals whose lives seemed like Claire and Andrew’s,” Arias remembers. “Polished, profitable, picture-perfect from the surface. However beneath that perfection, there was a disappointment and a type of loneliness that nobody ever admitted to.” That contradiction—between picture and inside—turns into the novel’s heartbeat.
As Claire’s good world begins to unravel, Arias pushes readers to query the kindness of privilege itself. “Privilege typically disguises itself as kindness,” he says. “Claire convinces herself she’s serving to Alicia, however that assist comes with possession, situations, and leverage.” Writing these scenes, Arias explains, meant confronting how energy protects itself beneath the guise of compassion.
“Ethical rigidity is what retains the pages turning,” he says. “I wished discomfort, not consolation.”
From movie to fiction
Arias’s filmmaking background taught him self-discipline. “Movie taught me economic system: each line should serve story or character,” he says. “However it additionally educated me to chop too early. In fiction, typically it’s a must to let discomfort unfold as an alternative of enhancing it away.” That refusal to look away defines Alicia. His prose is cinematic but restrained, capturing New York Metropolis as a spot the place magnificence and exploitation coexist inside 100 toes.
His influences run deep. He cites Kazuo Ishiguro as a significant inspiration: “His restraint creates insufferable rigidity. Nothing explodes, however every part trembles.” That quiet dread hums all through Alicia, the place the hazard is emotional, not bodily. Even when the thriller drives ahead—the lacking surrogate, the unraveling marriage—what lingers is unease. The actual suspense lies in what the characters can’t admit.
The legislation of affection and management
Arias’s years at NYU Legislation additionally form his storytelling. “Each contract is a narrative about management,” he says. In Alicia, the surrogacy settlement is each invisible and binding—a authorized fiction that mirrors the emotional ones individuals assemble to outlive. Claire holds all of the leverage; Alicia, undocumented and unprotected, has none. The imbalance drives the ebook’s tragedy.
For Arias, management is love’s disguise. “We frequently attempt to management what we’re too afraid to lose,” he explains. “However the nearer we get to somebody, the better it ought to be to just accept that love isn’t possession—it’s connection.” That perception—delivered with out sentimentality—anchors Alicia’s emotional core.
A darker Wonderland
Alicia transforms the acquainted rabbit gap right into a tunnel beneath the American dream. Wonderland isn’t fantasy right here—it’s an ethical labyrinth. “In my model, falling down the rabbit gap means crossing authorized, private, and moral borders,” Arias says. The town turns into a stage for contradictions: a spot of ambition and invisibility, compassion and cruelty, order and chaos.
“New York is Wonderland,” he says. “It’s the place magnificence and exploitation dwell facet by facet.”
By way of that lens, Alicia feels each allegorical and frighteningly actual. The lacking surrogate isn’t just one lady; she’s the embodiment of each unseen employee sustaining privilege from the shadows. “It’s in regards to the invisible worlds beneath the polished floor,” Arias says. “The quiet ethical cracks that run by even probably the most lovely properties.”
The filmmaker’s precision
Arias brings the self-discipline of movie construction to prose: sharp scenes, deliberate pacing, dialogue that hums with rigidity. But his novelist’s instincts pull in the wrong way, permitting silence to linger. He envisions Alicia as a bridge between media—an intimate story that would, sooner or later, return to the display. “I’d like to direct it,” he says. “However the hazard with adaptation is explaining an excessive amount of. If I ever direct Alicia, I’d strategy it as a psychological thriller moderately than a thriller—one thing that lives extra in silence than in motion.”
The cinematic qualities are unmistakable: stark imagery, rhythmic sentences, a continuing interaction of motion and pause. Every chapter looks like a scene reduce with surgical precision, but Arias refuses neat resolutions. “The tales that scare you most,” he says, “are those price writing.”
Worry, loss, and redemption
The kidnapping of Arias’s mom stays an unstated ghost in his work. It taught him about give up, in regards to the futility of management. “We needed to let the negotiator take cost,” he remembers. “That have fully modified how I write. Each act of management comes from the necessity to defend what you like, even whenever you’re powerless.”
That paradox—love as each salvation and weapon—drives Alicia. Its last chapters go away readers suspended between empathy and judgment, compelled to confront their very own ethical thresholds. Arias doesn’t supply solutions; he presents reflection. “I would like readers to query their very own limits,” he says. “Compassion ought to be the sensation that lingers after the ultimate web page.”
The story beneath the story
What started as a screenplay thought in 2008 advanced right into a full-length novel solely after Arias acknowledged {that a} ebook may attain readers instantly—no studio greenlight required. “A screenplay is likely to be learn by ten individuals,” he says. “A novel can attain hundreds. I wished to listen to instantly from readers, not gatekeepers.”
That impulse—to attach with out mediation—mirrors the novel’s themes. Alicia is about invisible individuals, unseen labor, and the illusions of management that construction trendy life. By writing from the angle of privilege, Arias forces readers to take a seat in discomfort. It’s not a ebook that flatters; it’s one which exposes.
“Each selection has a shadow,” he says. “Each act of affection hides a secret.”
A descent price taking
At its core, Alicia is a narrative of motherhood, energy, and survival—however it’s additionally a mirror held as much as a society constructed on quiet exploitation. It’s each intimate and political, a meditation on what it prices to keep up the phantasm of perfection. Arias’s Manhattan isn’t just a setting; it’s a frame of mind.
For readers drawn to tales of ethical ambiguity, cinematic rigidity, and emotional realism, Alicia presents a descent price taking. It’s a novel that stays with you—not due to its twists, however due to its fact.
Alicia by Eduardo “Eddy” Arias is accessible now on Amazon and www.AliciaTheBook.com.