FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly
Born and raised in the Philippines, poet and playwright Hagedorn sets her first novel in the volatile political climate of that country's recent past. Although in many respects a thinly disguised roman a clef , the book succeeds on the strength of its characterization. Hagedorn ( Dangerous Music ) weaves together the immature impressions of Rio Gonzaga, a spunky well-to-do Manilan schoolgirl whose life is influenced as much by the movies and radio serials as the tsismis (gossip) of her large extended family, with the voices of Joey, a popular DJ and male prostitute; Rainer, a world-weary German film director being honored with a retrospective; and the Philippine's astonishingly candid First Lady, addressed only as Madame, among others. Hagedorn's unflinching view of Manila, encompassing child prostitution, the torture chambers and the slums, as well as the palatial quarters of the First Family, is leavened by ironic, often humorous observations. When the popular opposition leader is slain, each of the characters is directly affected; for some it is a moral awakening, for others the beginning of the end of a stranglehold on power. (Mar.)

Library Journal
This jazzy, sardonic novel depicts the nightmare world that was the Philippines of the Marcoses. Its terrain is familiar to us from the writings of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Manuel Puig: a lush, fantastical, overheated landscape, where the fractured lives of the poor are rendered palatable solely by dreams. Rich and poor, everyone sells something here; everyone has a price. The common dream of a myriad group of characters--bored teenagers, timid shop girls, male prostitutes on the make--is that hollowest of all modern apotheoses, ``stardom.'' A visiting filmmaker, a German degenerate, buys the services of a pretty boy, who soliloquizes: ``I'll have it all worked out, soon. I know I will. I have to. I'll hit the jackpot with one of these guys. Leave town. Get lucky . . . . Soon.'' This is a novel about the death of the good life of the soul: of all virtue, meaning, and hope. Exceptionally well written and emotionally wrenching. Recommended.-- David Keymer, SUNY Inst. of Technology, Utica

LEARN MORE ABOUT JESSICA HAGEDORN

Read an interview with Jessica Hagedorn.

Read Jessica Hagedorn's essay Ghost Town on the spirits and inspirations of Philippines.