Book Review THE NEWSPAPER WIDOW by Angeles De Leon

 

BOOK REVIEW of The News­pa­per Wid­ow a Nov­el by Cecil­ia Manguer­ra Brainard

PALH 2021 & Uni­ver­si­ty of San­to Tomas Pub­lish­ing House 2017

By ANGELES DE LEON

Start­ing out as a riv­et­ing mur­der mys­tery, it took me along as it branched, twist­ed & turned along the way, it deep­ened into the sto­ry of a friend­ship between 2 women, of dif­fer­ing per­son­al­i­ties from dif­fer­ent cul­tures (one a French­woman, the oth­er a Chi­nese-Span­ish-Native hybrid) as they mourned their lost loves, and strug­gled to sur­vive in the clash of the ear­ly 1900’s Amer­i­can Colo­nial Peri­od. The cus­toms, cos­tumes, soci­ety, and details of those times gone by, ring true; they evoke tales of my own grand­ma. The char­ac­ters are rec­og­niz­able- — rem­i­nis­cent of some folks I have met in the Visayan soci­ety of my day. Ubec, (Cebu named back­wards) a south­ern Philip­pine island, is paint­ed with the atmos­phere redo­lent of the trop­i­cal islands where I grew up.

For copies of the book:

In the US check out Ama­zon, Barnes & Noble and oth­ers; in the Philip­pines check out Laza­da and Shopee

tags: Fil­ipino mur­der mys­tery, Fil­ipino nov­els, Philip­pine nov­els, Philip­pine detec­tive nov­els, Fil­ipino detec­tive nov­els, Fil­ipino books, Philip­pine lit­er­a­ture books, best Fil­ipino nov­els, best Fil­ipino books