If there’s anything that last year’s national elections have made clear, it’s that Marcosian myth-making has national consciousness completely in thrall. They are fluent in the telling, perhaps more so than their detractors, and this fluency forms part of the myriad ways they made their way back to Malacañang.
On a technical level, the language in the novel is its strength. Go, in the voice of Macaraeg, has a gift for breaking words down to deliver a gut punch. In one instance, he talks about the rice terraces in terms of what its name sounds like – “” – as the very space upon which “you can really hear the clip-clop of someone’s feet ascending or descending.
The story itself is interesting. The narrator has a colorful past, and the work that the author put into characterization means he can be forgiven for his decisions, his stubbornness, his thoughts on matters. There is an episode in the mountains, for example, with the narrator in the company of rebels, that works to justify his politics as an adult. The novel never asks the reader to agree with Macaraeg, but it never asks to be questioned, either.
In this, the fanciful version of former president Cory Aquino is warm. Their interactions — Macaraeg and Aquino — paint a picture of familiarity: here, the former president is merely a woman, widowed and dying, veiled in quiet sadness and yet capable of laughter. She is firm, but she cares. She is capable of forgiveness. This level of sympathizing for the Aquinos was something unexpected, as given the title, it’d have been more reasonable to assume it of the Marcoses.
The shame is that this is a good debut. Its language is beautiful, its characters fully realized. Lito Macaraeg is a convincing narrator. But the entire premise makes it harder to evaluate the novel as a story solely about one man. Here and now, even just the notion of forgiveness sans justice reads insidious.
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