Naermyth by Karen Francisco

It’s a little weird, writing this post months after having read the book and having given my copy away, but my personal need to chronicle my reading life is compelling me, so here we go.

Naermyth by Karen Francisco is a take on post-apocalyptic YA that combines the tropes of the genre with uniquely Filipino references. In this world, the creatures of mythology suddenly emerge and lay waste to most of civilization. In the Philippines, these are the creatures parents used to invoke to strike fear into children’s hearts, such as the aswang, sigben, and the manananggal. Only pockets of surviving and resisting bands of humanity continue to exist, including a fort in Manila that is protected by the so-called Shepherds.

The Shepherds venture to the aswang-infested territories of Manila to find surviving humans and lead them to relative safety. One of the most efficient and competent aswang-killers among this ragtag group is a girl that answers to the name Aegis. One day, she finds an unconscious man who is about to be attacked by aswangs and saves him, only to find out that this man has absolutely no recollection that the end of the civilization has occurred.

So far so good, right? I was initially interested in reading this book because of the premise. A sustained novel of this genre from a Filipino author has been a long time coming. I was ready to experience some intricate worldbuilding, a spunky heroine, and copious amount of Filipino mythology thrown. All requisite boxes are checked. However, I found no pleasure in reading it because the first person point of view, the dialogue, and the plot twists struck me as utterly unconvincing.

Blue Angel, White Shadow by Charlson Ong

Nostalgia for a Manila slowly ebbing away lies at the heart of Blue Angel, White Shadow, the newest offering from one of the Philippines’ most renowned novelists, Charlson Ong. With references to Marlene Dietrich, John Coltrane, Old Binondo, World War II, dogfights and summary executions, his foray into the mystery genre results in a symphony about the constant push and pull between the old and the new, the artful and the brutal.

The story begins with an iconic noir image: the beautiful woman in a red dress. Rather than a seductive shift, however, singer Laurice Saldiaga was wearing a red cheongsam when she died in the upstairs apartment of the Blue Angel, a decrepit jazz bar in the middle of Chinatown. A Hokkien-speaking mestizo policeman named Cyrus Ledesma is brought into the investigation because of its delicate nature, even as he comes to terms with his own dodgy past. He encounters a list of people with motives and opportunities to kill Laurice. The implication even goes as high up as the Mayor of Manila himself, Lagdameo Go-Lopez.

Philippine Speculative Fiction 6, editors Nikki Alfar and Kate Aton-Osias

Something peculiar happens to stories when they are housed in the same anthology, especially when an overarching theme or rubric comes into play. Aside from the sensibilities of the editors informing the curation process, the stories themselves cease to become autonomous units of narrative. Difference in writing styles become sharper by contrast, premises are either reinforced or disputed by the stories that come before or after it.

In Philippine Speculative Fiction Anthology Volume 6, editors Nikki Alfar and Kate Aton-Osias continue the annual tradition of gathering short fiction in with a speculative vein, with works of publishing newbies mingling with those by seasoned, award-winning authors. Kapres, supervillains, galactic warship captains, and (alleged) cannibals are among the archetypal characters featured this time around. The stories that stand out for me explore the unease that is often overshadowed or glossed over by the flashier aspects of science fiction, horror, and fantasy.

Quick Notes: Ruth Rendell and Mina V. Esguerra

A Guilty Thing Surprised by Ruth Rendell

Despite my fondness for British Golden Age mysteries (Christie, Sayers, Marsh), I have yet to find a more contemporary mystery writer that I really enjoy. To wit, Ruth Rendell is widely regarded as a master of the form, yet this manor mystery about a woman found dead in the woods left me cold (pun not intended). There’s a certain amount of wit that I feel is lacking here, despite erudite nature of the story.

A Guilty Thing Surprised is a novel that features Chief Inspector Wexford and Inspector Burden investigating the murder of Elizabeth Nightingale, the mistress of a manor that only seems genteel on the surface. Suspects immediately crop up as a series of interviews reveal the victim’s manipulative nature. The retiring husband, the worldly au pair, and the professor brother–each one has something to hide. The novel’s title is from a Coleridge poem, alluding to a setting that involves many literary and academic preoccupations.

Ilustrado

Ilustrado is a novel full of and about fakes. The fragments that make up the book are themselves knockoffs of different genres–murder mystery, satire, interviews from The Paris Review, everything but the kitchen sink. Miguel Syjuco’s brassy debut novel turns on its head the first accusation thrown in the face of every expat writing a novel set in the Philippines: “Just how authentic are you?”

A manuscript by lionized (or should it be “pantherized?”) Filipino writer Crispin Salvador disappears after his death in New York. This propels his student Miguel to travel to the Philippines, taking it upon himself to connect together the different threads of his mentor’s existence and hopefully retrieve the lost magnum opus. Interspersed between fragments of Crispin’s earlier novels, plays, and newspaper columns, the narrative follows Miguel as he tracks down the different people that Crispin had loved and wronged, unearthing a portrait of a sublime failure.

Housekeeping

This is kind of embarrassing. I fell off the face of the blogging world without really intending to and I can’t even blame my lack of free time. Most of my writing recently have been for work but I’ve also discovered the wonders of Twitter. I admit to giving in to the temptation of expressing myself exclusively through 140-character spurts. I’m also hopelessly behind in my writeups–eight books’ worth of backlog–but I’m determined to catch up.

Speaking of writing, please read my PGS Crime Issue Review, published by The Philippine Online Chronicles a couple of weeks ago. A short excerpt:

None of the stories in the PGS Crime Issue are whodunits in the true sense of the word. They are, however, why- and how-dunnits, with a couple of stories morphing into revenge tales redressing sins of the past.

Justice takes on a very fluid quality in Philippine crime, where the trick isn’t finding who the culprit is, but making sure he does pay. Even the arrival of the police does not signal the end of a criminal ordeal–they often turn out to be a different, more dangerous complication.

I’ve finished 18 books so far this year which, according to Goodreads, means I’m six books behind if I still wish to read 50 books in 2011. Cry. Still, that’s already six books more than I’ve read the whole of last year so I can’t really complain.

Day 08 – A Pinoy mystery everybody should read

Happy belated New Year, and let’s pretend I didn’t fall off the book blogging wagon in a major way, shall we? To make up for my neglect, I have decided to make another try at fulfilling the 50 Book Challenge in 2011. The good news is, I’m already on the right track, after having just finished Arturo Perez-Reverte’s The Flanders Panel. Yay!

Another thing keeping me happy lately: my friend and former officemate Karen is now starting here own book blog! Seek her out at And She Really Read. Her first post is about the pain of a room with simply too many books. I know this drama pretty well.

I’m also going to continue with the 30 Days of Books Meme and consider the gap, uh, the result of an inter-dimensional war of attrition. Or something.

Day 08 – A book everyone should read at least once

F.H. Batacan’s Smaller and Smaller Circles

I’m going to amend this question into “A book every Filipino reader should read at least once.” Mystery is a genre that has always been close to my heart, and I have been very much invested in discussions regarding the dearth of crime and mystery fiction from Filipino authors. Batacan’s novel about two Jesuit priests and their quest to find the murderer and mutilator of young boys in the Payatas Dumpsite is a relative bestseller, consistently read and reviewed in different blogs through the years. But it’s also a bit a of an outlier, unique in its position as the only Filipino novel so far that I believe follows the convention of a proper mystery novel.

The Melancholy of Cultural Identity in Dean Alfar’s Short Fiction

I made this in early 2007 I think, since we were studying post-colonialism. I wanted to frame this kind of critical thought around the two stories by Dean Alfar that really struck me for their themes. This is only the first part and it’s horribly incomplete; I seem to remember that this paper came to a total of 9 pages. There was even a specific reading of L’Aquilone du Estrellas and The Middle Prince that has seemed to be lost within the bowels of my hard drive.

Looking back on it three years later, I can see a lot of difference in the literary climate today. For one, there’s a mention of the lack of printing venues for fantasy and science fiction aside from indie publishing. I mentioned that in the essay but that was before Anvil released it’s own line of Fantasy titles. I’m pretty sure many of my former assumptions have changed (or have been modified, at least) since then.

In his introduction for Philippine Speculative Fiction Volume 2, editor and writer Dean Francis Alfar discusses the category “Philippine Speculative Fiction.” Presented with the demand to define it, he gives a simple answer: “[It is] speculative fiction written by Filipinos (“Introduction” ix).” He then asserts that as more Filipinos write science fiction, fantasy, and other genres in between, the “Filipino perspective” will sharpen, moving towards the ultimate goal of developing stories that can be seen as distinct products of the Filipino imagination. He then articulates the Filipino spec writer’s “anxiety about [their] national identity (x),” especially when confronted with the question of “Filipino-ness” in terms characters, settings, and even themes.

This clamor for definition is a legitimate one. Recently, there have been several forays at publishing “genre fiction” by Filipino writers, demonstrated by publications such as The Digest of Philippine Genre Stories, Story Philippines and the various titles produced by Psicom Publishing. It’s not that Filipinos haven’t been writing such stories until now. Filipino pop culture is riddled with such characters as Darna, Captain Barbel, and Pedro Penduko, and few can dispute how their storylines fit neatly under this umbrella term. However, as interest in genre grows and its practitioners attain higher levels of sophistication, the question of authenticity in these works as Filipino creations comes into question.

The Filipino Novel Comes of Age

A peculiar thing has happened to my reading habits which I have only realized recently. Having grown up as a reader who shifted from Nancy Drew mysteries in her elementary years to the meatier (and longer) Stephen King horrors in high school, I have never been a stranger to the novel form. It is, by far, the easiest way to get lost in a different world, with nothing required for travel expenses except time and imagination. Having been part of a readers club, I have encountered other people who expressed a great love for long, engaging narratives as well. However, there has been a glaring lack in this aspect of my formative years–an exposure to Filipino novels.

Ask a Pinoy on the street about a Filipino novel he has read and the most frequent answer would be Jose Rizal’s Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo, a product of the educational system that declares them required reading for every high schooler in the country. If you are lucky, you will hear a few other titles such as Lualhati Bautista’s Dekada ‘70 and Amado Hernandez’s Mga Ibong Mandaragit, which has gained light fame (or is it infamy?) recently due a recent online discussion about the Philippine canon. But the titles that have emerged from Filipino writers through the years aren’t reaching the consciousness of the lay man.