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Paulino Lim Jr.‘s Review of THE NEWSPAPER WIDOW, novel by Cecilia Brainard

December 29, 2020 by admin Leave a Comment

Book Review of THE NEWSPAPER WIDOW, nov­el by Cecil­ia Manguer­ra Brainard

Uni­ver­si­ty of San Tomas Pub­lish­ing House, 2017, soft­cov­er, 238 pages, ISBN 9780715068116

“The Fic­tion­al Tech­nique of Cecil­ia Brainard’s The News­pa­per Widow”

By Pauli­no Lim, Jr.

The author states that her orig­i­nal inten­tion was to write a mys­tery about a priest found dead in a creek, but the char­ac­ter por­tray­al over­shad­owed the plot, ele­vat­ing the nov­el above a page-turn­ing who­dunit. Still, the  mur­der hooks the read­er, and is reward­ed with a sat­is­fy­ing conclusion.

It opens with a star­tling image: “In the sum­mer of 1909, Ubec was over­run by rats.” The image is a leit­mo­tif that inten­si­fies spe­cif­ic inci­dents nar­rat­ed, and becomes an ele­ment of the set­ting — the fic­tion­al­ized Cebu — that is under­go­ing an “epi­dem­ic of rats.” (184) The year 1909 was the tran­si­tion peri­od from the Span­ish to the Amer­i­can occu­pa­tion of the Philip­pines, cap­sulized by a 19th-cen­tu­ry French trav­el writer thus: “three hun­dred years in a Span­ish con­vent and fifty in Hollywood.”

            Of the two main pro­tag­o­nists  — Ines Mace­da and Melisande More­au — the enig­mat­ic French­woman cap­ti­vates me the most. Ines enters the nov­el as a griev­ing wid­ow whose hus­band Pablo has passed away less than a year ago, com­plain­ing about the jas­mine ruined by the rats. Melisande slights the bom­bas­tic dic­tion of  Pablo , foundet of The Ubec Dai­ly, who  used such words as “ineluctable,” “pro­crustean,” and “ante­dilu­vian.” She tries to the grief-strick­en Inez say­ing, “It’s good to have fun. We’re not here in this world for a long time you know. (17)

            Melisande’s joie de vivre runs con­stant in the nov­el, but Ines evolves from being a wid­ow to that of a suc­cess­ful news­pa­per woman — reporter and pub­lish­er. This devel­op­ment occurs as the plot unfolds, start­ing with the arrest of her son Andres by Police Chief Bor­ja on sus­pi­cion of mur­der­ing the Span­ish priest. If found guilty Andres faces exe­cu­tion by a fir­ing squad intro­duced by the Amer­i­cans, in stead of the gar­rote used bu the Spaniards, which has “more poet­ry than the rude shots fired at the con­demned man.” (164)

            How do the char­ac­ters dom­i­nate the nar­ra­tive? Brainard does it with a skill that is informed by her love for draw­ing — pre­cise, visu­al and imag­i­na­tive. The first time Melisande vis­its Ines, she is wear­ing “a frilly Parisian-style dress, bright yel­low … her face pow­dered and  rouged, her lips red , and her red­dish-brown hair swept up, with a few errant ten­drils bounc­ing around her face.” She makes Ines self-con­scious with “her sim­ple black dress and hair con­fined in a tight bun” (14)

            With the nov­el­’s omni­scient point of view, the nar­ra­tor is free to explore the char­ac­ters’ back­ground, thoughts and dreams, cre­at­ing a visu­al as well as psy­cho­log­i­cal por­traits. The back­ground includes the set­ting (place and time) and the his­tor­i­cal con­text of Amer­i­cans tak­ing over the coun­try that the Spaniards sold to them for $20 mil­lion, includ­ing Guam and Puer­to Rico, con­clud­ed in the Treaty of Paris on April 11, 1899.

            The plot, that hinges on the quest for the mur­der­er of the Span­ish priest Zafra, involves many col­or­ful char­ac­ters, each with a per­son­al his­to­ry. A cou­ple in par­tic­u­lar are a Cata­lan com­pos­er Este­ban and his Fil­ipino friend Juan de la Cruz, a dancer. (Father Zafra used to dine with them on Sun­day evenings.) The read­er gets to know these char­ac­ters as they come alive on the page with spe­cif­ic details that invoke a his­tor­i­cal event. An Amer­i­can young man John Park­er, whom Ines and Melisande meet on a train, tells them that he’s going to teach high school at McKin­ley. The dia­logue links the encounter with the Thom­a­sites, the first group of teach­ers who arrived on the USS Thomas in 1901. (102) Anoth­er Amer­i­can Dr. MacAl­lis­ter, who admin­is­ters the Culyo Lep­er  Colony in the nov­el, recalls the time when the U.S. used to run a lep­er colony named Culion.

            Dri­ven by curios­i­ty of who­dunit to Zafra, the plot takes the read­er to the Babay­lans, an opu­lent wed­ding in Mani­la, and the coro­na­tion of the Ubec princess. Brainard lav­ish­es descrip­tion on cos­tumes, food, and wraps up the nar­ra­tive with the arrival of Samir, who was once in love with Melisande, but mar­ried some­one else. Now a wid­ow­er, he is com­ing to Ubec with his son Didi­er hop­ing to rekin­dle Melisande’s love.

~~

BIO: Dr. Pauli­no Lim, Jr. is an award-win­ning Fil­ipino author of schol­ar­ly arti­cles, nov­els, short sto­ry col­lec­tions, and plays. He is Pro­fes­sor Emer­i­tus at the Cal­i­for­nia State Uni­ver­si­ty, Long Beach, California.

Tags: Philip­pines books, Philip­pines lit­er­a­ture, Philip­pines nov­el, Cebu, his­tor­i­cal, De La Salle Uni­ver­si­ty, DLSU

Filed Under: Fiction, Uncategorized Tagged With: books literature Cebu Philippines

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Welcome!

I am a daugh­ter of the Philip­pines and an adopt­ed daugh­ter of Amer­i­ca. I have also trav­eled to many places so I am also a daugh­ter of the Earth. My expe­ri­ences have found their way into my sto­ries, which try to depict char­ac­ters caught in impor­tant moments in their lives, sit­u­a­tions that force them to act, make deci­sions, change. I try to see the world from my own point of view, not the dom­i­nant West­ern one, thus my inter­est in his­to­ry, cul­ture, and set­ting. But my char­ac­ters car­ry my sto­ries; they are the most impor­tant in my sto­ry-telling. I have to dive deep into them to under­stand their human­i­ty – their good­ness as well as their bad­ness, their beau­ty as well as their ugli­ness. Just like us. Just like each of us. I need to know where they came from, where they are now, so I under­stand where they are going. Just like us.

Please read my full biog­ra­phy here

 

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