F.H. Batacan’s newest book comes 26 years after she wrote the award-winning novel Smaller and Smaller Circles, which was hailed as a crime classic and turned into a 2017 film starring Nonie Buencamino and Sid Lucero. Set in the same Manila as her previous book, the short story collection manages to be both very similar and yet more hopeful than its predecessor. Thankfully, a reader does not have to have read the first novel in order to enjoy Accidents Happen and Other Stories.

These eleven tales may be described as Edgar Allan Poe-esque, a compelling mix of supernatural horror, a bit of sci-fi, and true crime that rings with authenticity, as they feature extremes of depravity, corruption, and twisted passion that every newspaper-reading Filipino would recognize as the familiar refrains of our haunted land. From globally contaminated waters bringing death to power-drunk police officers dispensing abuse, from pedophile child abusers to mayors’ relatives smoothing over the most heinous crimes with threats and money… even the supernatural elements feel familiar, as these are tales as old as time, yet brought to life in a contemporary way.

The stories are a kind of litmus test for the reader to see how much they know of the workings of this world. Younger readers may be in for quite a shock, while those of us who have lived long enough to see the agonizingly slow wheels of justice turn may smile at how neatly the endings are written.

Perhaps the best indicator that Accidents Happen and Smaller and Smaller Circles are fiction (and not reportage) is that they both tell stories that end in very satisfying ways. Both books beat with the steady pulse of an undying rage, yet show the author’s desire for justice, for Batacan understands the hope that drives readers into reading fiction that lays bare our lived realities. What keeps us reading books that show the rot in our institutions and the chasm between social classes is the need to have some sense of meaning shown to us. As one of her crime journalist characters says, half a year after the events of an investigation bear fruit, “I wrote a story. That’s all I could do. But here she is. And here we are.”

To read the stories of FH Batacan is to take an unflinching look at the underbelly of Philippine society, whether they live in exclusive villages or the provinces.

Here are eleven tales easily read in one sitting, bringing us inside gated subdivisions where daughters study guitar under maestros from the UP College of Music, to the inside of homes where wives do not care for their crippled husbands. Violence exists everywhere and reside in every thing in FH Batacan’s world, even in seemingly innocent apartments with Japanese knives, and especially in innocuous No. 1 pencils.

Thankfully, this reader came away from this short story collection feeling that there was more hope in its pages, compared with the unmitigated darkness of the novel that came before it. The characters do not always end up alive at the end, but boy do they fight, with everything that they have. And in my favorite story of the entire collection, Keeping Time, is embedded a lovely message: “Don’t be alone when the end comes. That’s key. Everything else is just noise.”

FH Batacan’s short story collection is deafening in its polyphony, yet reading it, one comes away with the sense that we are not alone in our human desire for evil to be rewarded by justice. And this imagined community of righteously angry readers, hopefully, is enough to keep that spark alive: the flame in our hearts to continue working for a better, more just country.

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[The reviewer purchased “Accidents Happen and Other Stories” from Fully Booked for P1,064.00.]

ABOUT THE REVIEWER:

Gabi Francisco is a classically trained soprano who now performs in the English / Music / Drama classroom. On weekends she soaks in as much art and literature as she can, so she can pass her love for the arts on to her students. She passionately believes in the transformative role of arts education in nation-building. (IG: teacher.gabi.reads )