Philippines Graphic Review Brainard’s Novel ‘Magdalena’

PHILIPPINES GRAPHIC BOOK REVIEW OF CECILIA BRAINARD’S NOVEL “MAGDALENA”

Philip­pines Graph­ic Lit­er­ary Edi­tor and Asso­ciate Edi­tor of the Philip­pines Graph­ic, Alma Anonas-Car­pio, reviews the nov­el MAGDALENA by Cecil­ia Manguer­ra Brainard.

Brainard will be at the #Cebu­Lit­Fest on June 29 and 30, 2019, Ayala Ter­races, Cebu City, Philip­pines, to talk about her works and sign copies of her books.

“THE TREMENDOUS POWER OF SECRETS: CECILIA MANGUERRA BRAINARD’S ‘MAGDALENA’ ”

The tremen­dous pow­er of secrets: Cecil­la Manguer­ra Brainard’s ‘Mag­dale­na’

The first call of a nov­el is to tell a sto­ry. Not just any sto­ry, mind you, but the sto­ry only the author of the nov­el can tell in his or her unique way. What the read­er is led to expect is a bit of an escape into anoth­er time and world, per­haps a ten­ta­tive acquain­tance with the char­ac­ters who pop­u­late the text.

When I first began to read the excerpt of “Mag­dale­na,” which we pub­lished in the Philip­pines Graph­ic a few years back, I found myself learn­ing the book’s char­ac­ters and feel­ing for them on a lev­el I rarely feel. I found myself enam­ored of them in a way one only tru­ly feels for actu­al humans—usually one’s family.

Imag­ine my joy at receiv­ing a copy of the first Philip­pine release of this nov­el. As eager as I was, when I set­tled down to read it, I found my emo­tions were over­loaded by what Manguer­ra Brainard wrote.

The sto­ry of Magdalena’s life is a rich one, full of emo­tion­al inten­si­ty told with the bril­liant clar­i­ty of Manguer­ra Brainard’s pen. It made me cry and it made me sigh. It remind­ed me so much of my mother’s fam­i­ly that I had to put it down mid-story.

As much as I loved the work, I found myself unable to con­tin­ue. For a work of fic­tion, “Mag­dale­na” had quick­ly become as per­son­al to me as my own blood and vital organs are per­son­al to me.

Such inten­si­ty and clar­i­ty as the nov­el holds, it is like the sun one can­not look direct­ly into with­out going blind.

“I’d grown up know­ing my moth­er died at the deliv­ery table, and it wasn’t until I was in school when I real­ized that the oth­er children’s moth­ers hadn’t died dur­ing child­birth,” Jua­na, Magdalena’s daugh­ter, speaks in the pro­logue with sim­plic­i­ty that belies just how big the secrets of her fam­i­ly are, and how con­vo­lut­ed they became over the course of her mother’s life.

“A secret has tremen­dous pow­er,” Jua­na says. I must agree. As my read­ing uncov­ered some of those secrets, I found myself feel­ing a whole range of emo­tions I was unpre­pared for—my usu­al thing is to retreat from emo­tion, and read­ing this book made me have to face my own secret: I could actu­al­ly feel strong­ly enough and intense­ly enough to be uncom­fort­able with the feelings.

So the book sat like a strong yearn­ing on one of my high shelves and I promised myself I would revis­it it when my sched­ule would per­mit me to weep over the women of “Mag­dale­na” and their fate. When I did find myself back in the pages of Mag­dale­na, I found so much reward amid the pun­ish­ments vis­it­ed upon its char­ac­ters. I found courage there, silent­ly over­whelm­ing courage. I found love there, over­flow­ing and heal­ing love. I even found for­give­ness in those pages, and now I have a how-to guide.

I found that for­ti­tude, re-read the parts I’d already read and con­tin­ued on to the bit­ter end—and Manguer­ra Brainard knows her bit­ter end­ings very well indeed. But the epi­logue eas­es the bit­ter­ness with the assur­ance of life, glo­ri­ous life, affirm­ing all the pain in the text.

Like my mother’s fam­i­ly, Magdalena’s fam­i­ly was a mix of Span­ish and Chi­nese. Obvi­ous­ly, the strong emo­tions and the show­ing of them are not unique to my mater­nal line as I’d like to think. This book, writ­ten so far away from the author’s native shores (and mine) show me that the fic­tion is woven of very real threads, that it tells of lives that could very well have been lived in my mother’s ances­tral home in the Visayas. It hit me right at home, dead on the bullseye.

Rarely have I read such exquis­ite com­mand of sto­ry­telling as I see in the pages of this nov­el. Here she uses the back­drop of a Japan­ese-occu­pied Philip­pines to max­i­mum effect, dev­as­tat­ing the reader’s emo­tions with­out giv­ing any quar­ter nor tak­ing any pris­on­ers. You die inside and come to life again when the feel­ings of hope hit you—and they will.

March is Women’s Month, and the strength of Manguer­ra Brainard’s women is a fit­ting cel­e­bra­tion of that. Read “Mag­dale­na” to see how the strength and beau­ty of these women spanned three gen­er­a­tions, defeat­ing even death.
No, not even death can save you from the intense and iri­des­cent beau­ty of Manguer­ra Brainard’s mas­tery of her craft. Don’t miss read­ing this book, even if you need to pause between chap­ters. It is worth the emo­tion­al whiplash, I promise.

‘Mag­dale­na’ and Cecil­ia Brainard’s oth­er nov­els “The News­pa­per Wid­ow”, and ‘When the Rain­bow God­dess Wept’ may be pur­chased from the UST Book­store by click­ing on this link:http://bit.ly/USTPHOrderForm or email: publishing.bookstore@ust.edu.ph or call (02) 406 1611 local 8278.

 

Tags: nov­el, lit­er­a­ture, book, his­tor­i­cal fic­tion, Viet­nam War, Philip­pines, Mac­tan, Cebu