Category: books

Nan is fifty. She feels the weight of her body, its sudden changes, the weight of her marriage and her little sadnesses, and she gets up and into her car and drives away. Left behind is her husband Martin, and their daughter, Ruthie, away in college.

This isn’t new. I’ve read many stories of runaway wives and mothers. Runaway rich, ex-hippie wives and mothers, who meet interesting characters during their road trip. Of course. But what makes this novel special for me is Nan herself, with her clear-eyed insights about age and marriage, and her honesty.

When I got to the grocery store, the oddest thing happened. I found it very, very difficult to buy anything. I would pick something up, then think, no, it’s Ruthie who really likes pineapple. No, Martin is the one who loves London broil. I wanted to get something special, a real treat, something I liked to cook and liked even more to eat, but everything I picked up, I put back. Finally, I leaned against the dairy case and thought, well, come on, Nan, what do YOU really, really like? And then I thought, my God, I don’t know. I’ve forgotten.

This novel is told through Nan’s letters to Martin and their daughter, and entries from her journal. Most runaways, they run and never look back. Not Nan, though. Every day she sits down to write in her journal, and to write to her family. Every day she learns something new about herself. In a way this is like a coming-of-age story. Not necessarily the term you’d use for a story with a protagonist that is already fifty years old, but the body becomes new when it becomes old. New in the sense that it becomes foreign, surprising, puzzling. Sometimes even frightening.

My mother is fifty. Many times while reading this book I would stop and stare into space, just wondering if my mother feels this way. If I would feel this way, when I get to be that age.

The Mighty Reading List!

Feast for Crows

The Kobayashi Maru of Love

Showbiz Lengua

PGS Horror issue

Floating Dragon

El Bimbo Variations

The Tesseract

The Dispossessed

Our Story Begins

Glass Soup

Here on Earth

The Pull of the Moon

Little Bee

The novel opens like a thriller. A British seaman waits in a seedy Manila hotel for a rich Filipino mafioso. He notices several things almost all at once: the dead phone, the peephole covered from the outside, rusty blood spatters on the bedsheet, a gunshot hole in the ceiling, a room with no exit. The Filipino don is in a car with his crew, weaving through the dark streets of the city, and the seaman takes out his gun, believing that they are coming to kill him.

Gunshots and a chase – the staples of action movies – but what reeled me in were the characters and their personal tragedies, and the fact that Garland set his story of one, stifling night in Manila.

Such a pleasure to read a familiar world, made new and intriguing by Garland’s compassionate treatment of his characters, his insights, and his crisp, clear, high-energy prose: Back in his room, some of the wetter stains on the street began to glow red as the sun dropped from the sky. Dropped, because the sun didn’t sink in these parts. At six-fifteen, the elastic that kept it suspended started to stretch, and at six-thirty the elastic snapped. Then you had just ten minutes as the orange ellipse plummeted out of view, and the next thing you knew it was night. You had to watch out for that in Manila. Ten minutes to catch a cab to the right side of town if you were on the wrong side.

Garland writes about Manila (and Negros and Quezon Province, in some flashbacks) as both an insider and an outsider. An outsider because he wasn’t born here, an insider because he’s been here, and has (presumably) learned much about the language and the culture. Because the familiar is made foreign (and the foreign made familiar) he sees and describes things I don’t normally pay attention to, like that rapidly sinking sun.

He obviously had fun with using Filipino words for places: Patay, Sugat, Sayang, Sarap. He also liked mentioning Filipino brand names whenever he could. Magnolia, Bench, Inquirer.

There are errors. You don’t write “Yes, po” if in your head the characters are speaking in Filipino (better stick with “Yes”  or write the proper “Opo”), and you don’t say “Mang Don Pepe” because that’s an awkward double honorific (unless of course “Don” is the person’s first name).

But other than that, this is a highly readable book.

Very poignant. Unputdownable.

Read an excerpt.

Listen to an excerpt.

The Mighty Reading List!

Feast for Crows

The Kobayashi Maru of Love

Showbiz Lengua

PGS Horror issue

Floating Dragon

El Bimbo Variations

The Tesseract

The Dispossessed

Our Story Begins

Glass Soup

Here on Earth

The Pull of the Moon

Little Bee