Manila Times Book Review: Cecilia Brainard’s Novel The Newspaper Widow

Book Review:
The News­pa­per Wid­ow: A cut above oth­er who­dunits
by Faye Valen­cia, May 12, 2019, The Mani­la Times
https://www.manilatimes.net/the-newspaper-widow-a-cut-above-other-whodunits/553054/?fbclid=IwAR3-AdSGYnAD11rv0xVmFzvjO6b0SXX3jbVPpAqXFW16xbQr0_DOvUUeRtM

FOR the most part, crime fic­tion, also called the “who­dunit,” is con­sid­ered escapist enter­tain­ment. After all, it fol­lows a for­mu­la. Crime — most often mur­der — serves as the cen­ter­piece of the sto­ry, whose main char­ac­ter is usu­al­ly a detec­tive or expert of some sort who is guar­an­teed to catch the per­pe­tra­tor. Con­sid­er: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s bril­liant sleuth Sher­lock Holmes clos­es every case, Stieg Larsson’s hack­er extra­or­di­naire Lis­beth Salan­der nev­er fails to dish out jus­tice, and so on.

In her paper “Mur­der as Social Crit­i­cism,” pro­fes­sor Cather­ine Nick­er­son the­o­rizes: “The world of the detec­tive nov­el is a place of untime­ly death, cru­el­ty, sus­pi­cion and betray­al. If detec­tive fic­tion is a lit­er­a­ture of escape, why would any­one want to be trans­port­ed to such anx­ious locales? Per­haps, detec­tive fic­tion pro­duces its plea­sur­able effects by allow­ing us to feel that no mat­ter how over­whelm­ing our own sit­u­a­tions seem, some­thing much worse is hap­pen­ing to some­one else.”

The News­pa­per Wid­ow (Uni­ver­si­ty of San­to Tomas Pub­lish­ing House; 238 pages; 2017) by Cecil­ia Manguer­ra Brainard may be clas­si­fied as crime fic­tion, but it doesn’t real­ly fol­low the for­mu­la — and that, in this case, is a very good thing. The open­ing scene of Brainard’s mur­der mys­tery, set in the small town of Ubec in Cebu province, indi­cates that this isn’t your usu­al detec­tive nov­el.

“In the sum­mer of 1909, Ubec was over­run by rats. Rodents larg­er than cats scam­pered through­out the sea­side city, fear­less of man even dur­ing the day­time when the scorch­ing sun shone down on them expos­ing their hideous­ness — their wiry brown fur, long snouts, and naked tails as long as their bod­ies,” it reads.

Brainard’s dis­turbing­ly vivid intro­duc­tion serves as a warn­ing that peo­ple are not always what they seem, and there are far worse things that could hap­pen to a town than a rat infes­ta­tion. In fact, the rodents were the rea­son for the dis­cov­ery of Father Nico­las Zafra’s body. The novel’s title char­ac­ter, the qui­et­ly tena­cious Ines Mace­da, ends up cov­er­ing the sto­ry for The Ubec Dai­ly. The paper is some­thing that Ines inher­its from her late hus­band, the cere­bral Pablo.

Ines becomes more involved in the inves­ti­ga­tion of the priest’s mur­der when her son Andres is iden­ti­fied as the main sus­pect. In her attempt to clear her son’s name, Ines knocks over a few cans of worms and what-not. Thank­ful­ly, Brainard does not resort to cheap tricks when it comes to the novel’s dark rev­e­la­tions.

“My orig­i­nal inten­tion had been to write a mys­tery, but I rely too much on char­ac­ter and char­ac­ter devel­op­ment more than the plot, and so I present a nov­el that is more about Ines Mace­da than it is about the mys­tery of the dead priest,” she explains.

In this sense, The News­pa­per Wid­ow fol­lows crime fic­tion writer Ray­mond Chandler’s per­spec­tive on the genre. In his crit­i­cal essay “The Sim­ple Art of Mur­der,” Chan­dler asserts: “Mur­der, which is a frus­tra­tion of the indi­vid­ual and hence a frus­tra­tion of the race, may have and, in fact, has a good deal of soci­o­log­i­cal impli­ca­tion.”

The oth­er qual­i­ty that makes The News­pa­per Wid­ow stand out is that even the sup­port­ing char­ac­ters are ful­ly fleshed out. And they’re not just the basic per­sonas, either. For instance, the one who becomes the title character’s unex­pect­ed best friend is a French expa­tri­ate named Melisande More­au, who also hap­pens to be the town’s most sought-after dress design­er. Brainard gives Melisande the sauci­est lines. In one scene, the French­woman tells Ines: “I should go. I have to fin­ish the mayor’s wife’s gown. She’s in the Maria Ele­na pro­ces­sion of the car­ni­val. You know she is big-boned and it took me a while to come up with the right design, but final­ly I dis­cov­ered that the accent has to be on her big bosom. She has beau­ti­ful breasts, so we have some cleav­age, and we have to tell all eyes to look there…and not else­where.” Ulti­mate­ly, it is Melisande who con­vinces Ines that she should think of The Ubec Dai­ly as her own instead of just some­thing that was left behind by her hus­band.

Then there’s a char­ac­ter named Juan dela Cruz, whose com­mon name belies his extra­or­di­nary real­i­ty. Brainard writes: “Peo­ple learned that Juan dela Cruz was the only son of the own­er of San­doval Rum and that father and son were like oil and water. His father had want­ed Juan to go to busi­ness school, but Juan pre­ferred fine arts and music. His father had pres­sured him to mar­ry the daugh­ter of his busi­ness part­ner, an unac­cept­able sit­u­a­tion for Juan. Juan’s moth­er final­ly sold some of her jew­el­ry to finance her son’s stud­ies at the Reial Acad­e­mia Cata­lana de Belles Arts de Sant Jor­di in Barcelona.”

Juan goes on to fall in love with a Spaniard named Este­ban Magri. The cou­ple live in Ubec and are well-respect­ed mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty. The only real prob­lem they encounter is when Juan also becomes a sus­pect in Father Zafra’s mur­der.

Aside from its com­plex char­ac­ters, The News­pa­per Wid­ow also con­tains a lot of his­tor­i­cal detail. These include even the most dis­turb­ing things, such as instru­ments of tor­ture. Brainard writes: “The gar­rote, an all-time Span­ish favorite, was used for cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment dur­ing the Span­ish time, and for a few years, the Amer­i­can mil­i­tary gov­ern­ment availed of the gar­rote for exe­cu­tions.

“The prin­ci­ple behind gar­rot­ing was sim­ple: Crush the lar­ynx while apply­ing pres­sure to the victim’s back. All you need­ed was a chair with a back rest and a neck clamp which could be tight­ened by crank, wheel, or hand, there­by stran­gling the vic­tim.”

The News­pa­per Wid­ow may not have a flashy detec­tive as its pro­tag­o­nist, but it is def­i­nite­ly crime fic­tion that’s a cut above the usu­al who­dunits. Thanks to Brainard’s ele­gant prose and insights, it’s also a social com­men­tary that attempts to shine the light on the dark cor­ners of orga­nized reli­gion. It does not demo­nize the Church, but it rec­og­nizes the fact that there are a few demons pos­ing as angels with­in it.

Brainard’s mas­ter­piece also reminds us that in life, things are not always resolved as neat­ly as we would like them to be. There’s a clear demar­ca­tion between good and bad, but there are also a lot of gray areas that we have to learn to nav­i­gate.

The News­pa­per Wid­ow costs P400 and is avail­able in lead­ing book­stores.

“The News­pa­per Wid­ow” by Cecil­ia Manguer­ra Brainard can be pur­chased by vis­it­ing the UST Book­store or by click­ing this link:http://bit.ly/USTPHOrderForm.