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… Read More Accidents Happen: Angry Stories that Thirst for Justice
“Delightful” is perhaps a weird adjective to use when describing a collection of horror stories, but Kenneth Yu’s book is truly a joy to read, in a genre-expanding work redefining the possibilities of this reader’s Halloween treat. Mouths to Speak, Voices to Sing is a collection of fourteen short stories and a one-act play, and… Read More Mouths to Speak, Voices to Sing: ‘Horror’ that Delights
Podium Mall’s usually quiet hallways echoed with screams of tired trick-or-treating children that Saturday (be honest; if we were dolled up as zombies, painted head to toe in corpse-white make-up to boot, and compelled to traipse up and down five floors asking store owners for candy, we’d probably be whining our heads off as well).… Read More Haunted Reads: Filipino Horror Writers Speak About Facing Our Fears
One emerges from ‘Dogs in Philippine History’ with a heightened affection for the aspin and a better understanding of our nation’s past. The aspin is a neologism formed from Asong Pinoy (Filipino dog) that has supplanted the older term “askal,” a blend word that stood for Asong Kalye (street dog). The older portmanteau is loaded… Read More ‘Dogs in Philippine History’: Tracing Pawprints through Time
“A god lives in this house.” ASCENSION is a novel with such a strong sense of time, people, and place, it feels almost real. A word of caution: Drinking your pumpkin spice latte while reading Eliza Victoria’s latest novel might not be the best idea. You might end up spilling it out of sheer fright,… Read More Ascension: When A God Haunts A House
To read the English translation of filmmaker and Ateneo college professor Alvin Yapan’s book Worship the Body (Sambahin Ang Katawan) is to be awash in a sea of images. Of clothing revealing nakedness (between man and wife, and man and fellow man). Of sea and sky, lands urban and rural. While acclaim and praise follow… Read More Worship The Body: What Price Love?
Every beginning of November, Filipinos reenact the ancient tradition of going home to one’s province, to the land that birthed us, to the cemeteries that still house the fleshly remains of our ancestors. This story begins, and ends, in such a graveyard. Books and plays inspired by them are always two different art forms, yet… Read More Balete / Tree : F. Sionil Jose’s Word Made Flesh by Tanghalang Pilipino
If author Ronaldo S. Vivo Jr.’s aim is to leave readers devastated, if the intention is to give us no respite from cruelty or from descriptions of material and moral filth, if the purpose is to shove this country’s reality in our faces when we would prefer to look away, then The Power Above Us… Read More The Power Above Us All: Today’s Trauma in Translation
Douglas Candano’s collection of eight stories are all set in one universe that feels so much like ours, but defy Newtonian physics in its population that includes amalgamations of aswang and the Chinese jiangshi, as well as museums that house experiences rather than relics, and historical events with a few monsters thrown in the mix.… Read More Infinite Lives, Infinite Deaths: Chillingly Cold Prose Delivers 8 Doses of Fil-Chi Horror
My second book by Catherine Dellosa had me sobbing uncontrollably in the last couple of chapters, making my Sunday morning coffee a bit more salty than usual. It also has one of the most striking opening paragraphs I’ve ever come across: “Fate is fixed, love is a thunderstorm, and Cheetos are mankind’s greatest invention since… Read More The Summer of Letting Go: Catherine Dellosa Guides Us How to Deal with Loss and Love
Ex Libris Philippines 