Author: gege

I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty sure it is not just me. There have been many times in my life when, confused, clueless, lost, and discouraged, I so desperately wanted to be with God face to face. So He can help me sort out the morass in my mind and figure things out; give me crystal-clear, no-room-for-ambiguity answers to life’s perplexing question; hear something wise and definite; know something for sure; and just be comforted by Him; be assured of His love, His power, and His sovereignty. Sometimes, I just want to tell Him how angry and disappointed I am, how life is unfair, and that sometimes I just don’t feel His favor.

In this novel slash parable slash Christian fiction, the story’s main man, Mackenzie Allan Phillip, gets that once-in-a-lifetime chance to be with God for a weekend in a mountain shack associated with the most horrific incident of his life. That weekend, he gets the chance to throw the questions at; to hear the answers from; to discuss matters of love and sin; hurt and forgiveness; pain and healing; responsibility and relationship with the One who knows all the answers, the Source of truth and light.

Mack has his shares of pain and hurt, probably more than others’. He grew up abused by his father, spent most of his life away from family, he suffered the guilt of his own sins, and dealt with the loss of his daughter. He certainly had a lot of issues to thrash out with God.

God’s answers to Mack answered some of my questions too. Some answers were confirmation of things I already knew in my head, but probably did not understand in my heart. Some answers turned me around to see a different perspective of God’s love and wisdom. Things like marriage not being an institution; it is a relationship. In the same way, that we do not have to treat everything we do for God as an obligation, but as simply a natural part of sharing love and life with Him. “If I take away the consequences of people’s choices, I destroy the possibility of love. Love that is forced is no love at all.”

Like other readers, I was uncomfortable with Young’s portrayal of the Trinity. But I’m sure he had his reasons for taking that approach. Besides, we have to remember that this is fiction.

Yes, it’s fiction. And just like some readers who ranted about the ex-biblical nature of the book, I squirmed at some passages that sounded so dangerously New Age. But, this book being fiction, is just the output of the author’s imagination. This is William Shack’s interpretation of the truth that he knows. And he uses illustrations to drive home the message. His illustration of the father-child relationship to show why Jesus had to die on the cross blew my mind, and had me in tears, gasping for breath, feeling pain, love, and gratitude all at the same time.

I want to end my review now. It’s very hard to give justice to this book without cheapening the message with my own words. I highly recommend it. But I also hope that this inspires the reader to go beyond this work of fiction and to probe deeper into His truths communicated to us through His Word.

I’ve discovered a new genre – the epistolary novel. Okay, don’t be a wiseass, I didn’t discover it; and it isn’t new. That genre has been in existence since the apostle Paul wrote epistles to the Romans and the Hebrews. So what I mean to say is this is the first of this genre that I have read, unless we count Griffin and Sabine. Oh yes, this is G&S but less fantastic, without the pretty postcards and the fabulous art, but with more depth in writing.

This story of husband and wife spending ten months apart is narrated with letters. Only letters. Carol Shields wrote the letters from the man and Blanche Howards took the wife’s point of view. With no plans for how the story will progress, the two authors took turns writing each other and actually sending the letters by post, and this was how the story evolved.

Reading this one letter at a time was just like eating watermelon seeds or M&Ms. I read one chunk at a time, one scrumptious morsel, one delicious bit after another delicious bit. “I’ll read this one last letter and then I’ll go to sleep, okay just one more, no really this is the last.” But I just couldn’t put it down, until I got to its bittersweet, more bitter than sweet, ending, and I realized I read through the night and the sun had just risen.

An intimate peek at a fictional marriage that mirrors the travails of real-life marriages. Wit and humor exquisitely blended with pain and distress. Skillful writing. I loved this book; I can’t understand why, and I’m secretly glad, this was not a bestseller.

I’ve discovered a new genre, and I’m calling it dicklit. This refers to books with plots about men trying to score.

Of course, this novel is not just about sex. It’s also about booze and illegal substances enjoyed by our hero, slacker ad-guy by day, horny lush by night. It’s about the trouble he gets into trying to achieve his objective (see paragraph 1 above). In the process of finding himself and accomplishing his objective, he loses his Dickies pants in a one-night-stand. The rest of the story is about getting his pants back, hence the title. No, it’s not symbolic, and the pants are not metaphysical concepts.

This book offers a lot of laugh out loud moments, which gets you excited to read more, thinking there is more. Rosen is a witty, entertaining writer, and he probably should be given another chance to write a novel. Because this one needs some major redemption. I was hoping underneath all the smut, there would be nuggets of wisdom, that his coming of age story would be about coming to terms with the need to grow up. Sadly, the book ends just a teeny, tiny bit better than when it started. The hero lands a marginally better, though not necessarily better paying, job. But he’s still the slacker lush character the author started with. Worse, he doesn’t even get his pants back. (sorry, spoiler)

Not worth the full price I paid for it.

It took me a long time to get to this review. I guess I have mixed feelings about the book. I can’t help but feel I have to give it glowing praises because the author is Filipina. The writing is great; that’s for sure. It’s good writing by virtue of the author having the capability to turn on a movie (think Crash) in my head and letting me live the experiences of the characters. The characters, so many of them and so diverse, make the book engaging, fascinating, rich. More than a novel, it is a vignette of stories that may or may not be interrelated. A collage, according to the author, that mirrors the eclectic mix that is Manila. It is so non-linear that it took me a while to figure out that the narrative jumps to and from the 50s and 80s. (Headscratch moment) That was pretty dense of me because the 80s character, Joey Sands, was a DJ, which is just so disco era (insert stupid smiley here). The writing is gritty and the narrative incredibly well-paced.

The pacing, to me, is the double edged sword to this novel, the reason why I have mixed feelings about it. To make the reading thick and fast, the author had to rely on representations of Filipinos, representations easily recognized or related to by those who know the culture, representations that easily cross over to stereotypes; or are they more like caricatures? The pacing, because it makes you read fast, does not allow much time for savoring the characters and excavating the layers of suggested meanings that satirize Philippine society.

I suspect, and I can’t say for sure since this is not my perspective, that the novel works well for the American reader who does not know much about the Philippines. This serves as a sampler, though hardly complete, of Philippine culture. And a quick history lesson, though dates and names have been fictionalized. It shows the hard edged side of Philippine society along with the quirky. To the non-Filipino, this can be a good appetizer to start learning more and going deeper into understanding our culture. A bit like how Joy Luck Club serves as a Chinese History for Dummies.

For me, it is realistic to a certain degree. The part where Joey Sands witnesses an assassination successfully brings me back to the political drama of the early 80s. Though I liked the non-linear approach to the story, I think depth has been sacrificed, and the book failed to reach me beyond the entertainment level. Or maybe it deserves a second, slower, deeper read.

I didn’t expect to like this one. Any plot that revolves around politics intimidates me. But I loved it.

This is probably the first African-authored book I’ve read, and I was afraid I would not be able to relate. But the stories of corruption, political violence, and citizens’ apathy hit so close to home.

In a scene where the narrator Odili goes incognito to attend the campaign rally of his political and personal opponent, he stands in the crowd, watches the people on the stage, and thinks to himself:

“What would happen if I were to push my way to the front and up the palm-leaf-festooned dais, wrench the microphone from the greasy hands of that blabbing buffoon and tell the whole people – this vast ontemptible crowd – that the great man they had come to hear with their drums and dancing was an Honourable Thief. But of course they knew that already. No single man and woman there that afternoon was stranger to that news… And because they all knew, if I were to march up to that dais now and announce it they would simply laugh at me and say: What a fool!”

Sounds familiar, huh?

Achebe’s prose is powerful in its simplicity. His fluid narration gives you just enough to capture the events and a smattering of the narrators’ thoughts. Points are not belabored. There is no attempt to pontificate, even when righteous anger at politicians’ injustices may call for it.

As my first Achebe, this inspires me to read more of his works.

I liked Jane Eyre, the book. And I loved Jane Eyre, the character. She is feisty, strong-willed, but not proud. She is forthright, loathing of hypocrisy but not mean. She endures the abuse of her nasty relatives and the despicable Mr. Brocklehurst without playing the helpless victim. She is intelligent, independent, and astute in judging others’ characters. She is not the conventionally pretty heroine. To say that she is more beautiful inside than she is outside is not being trite.

I can only wish I have her strength of character; I believe the colloquial term now is EQ. It would be hard to be so enamored with Mr. Rochester and still have the moral fortitude to choose to do what is right. But I won’t spoil the story for you because if you haven’t read it yet and would want to read a classic, I recommend this one. It was a bestseller during its time and was even considered a trashy romance by some critics. This may be a precursor to chick lit, with light-hearted British humor, but with weighty moral principles.

It’s funny how much I can admire and aspire to be a fictional character. But Charlotte Brontë has written this character so well that in the moments I was reading the book she seemed so real. The first person narration effectively gets the reader into Jane’s brain; this reader at least. I was so into Jane that when the schoolmaster embarrassed her in public, I felt the shame, the indignation. And I felt the frustration that I cannot do anything about it as being merely a reader in Brontë’s able writer hands. So into the story I got that at one point, when Jane received a marriage proposal from an unlikely suitor, I was shouting “No, Jane, No!”

Jane, as narrator, is convincing as a child and even more endearing as an adult. I fell in love with her character. Okay, okay, I was totally suckered into the drama of this book. To think I thought I didn’t like romance. Bah! Nothing wrong with (I’m sure it’s rather healthy) indulging the sappy romantic inside of us.