First book read belonging in what can be called a speculative wave in Philippine fiction in English. Younger writers frustrated with the realist canon and a handful of conservative publications venture into online publishing to showcase their works in the last two decades or so. Print presses and award giving bodies have started talking notice. Off the top of my head, I presume the towering influence of Neil Gaiman and Haruki Murakami, and maybe waves of YA series from the West. Hence the name ‘speculative’ to distance from pulp connotations.
Interesting because I think sci-fi and horror pulp writing didn’t take hold locally, mostly because the market is over-saturated by English materials. Filipino pulp usually refer to romances novels, and its enduring reading communities. Also a few horror and sexy komiks that died down by the 90s. Anyway, the still navigating sensibility and overturning tropes is evident in Gabriela Lee’s stories. Mostly domestic and tales of petty bourgeois youth adult angst. Nothing grand like sci-fi of underdevelopment in Yoss or recreating to re-investigate history of the nation like Cixin Liu. Still pretty impressive, considering these are short stories, so they are more like windows to the newer generation Filipino psyche, different aspirations but still bogged down by underdevelopment. Though the treatment is not as critical as I would have preferred.
Some favorites; ‘Bargains’ is about a young writer finding the fulfillment of her dreams to be very different than expected. “Tabula Rasa” is about a woman who discovers that every time she makes love to her partner makes him lose a memory, and have it transfer to her, and the end point this arrangement reaches. “Hunger” is about a girl suppressing her feelings for a friend, and the fact that she is a manananggal. Erotic horror, kind of sad too. “Honesty Hour” is a drive with friends that got more deadly as more secrets are revealed, provoked a by radio DJ. The title story, is a break-up story, that got really metaphoric and literal;
“It started to rain last night. You’ve been changing to often that you no longer notice that even your feet has started to to transform into glass. You lie in bed, listening to the storm outside your window, watching the shifting gradients of light peek underneath your curtains. Once, you opened the window as a blast of water came in. Your fingers were fragile then, and in your hurry to close the window, you managed to shatter one of them. Now, when you look at your hands, the smallest finger on your right hand is missing. Pieces of it are still on the floor.”
Highly recommended. Hoping for a longer work to come out soon.
Jacob Laneria 