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Gun Dealers' Daughter
Winner of the PEN/Open Book Award
At university in Manila, young, bookish Soledad Soliman falls in with radical friends, defying her wealthy parents and their society crowd. Drawn in by two romantic young rebels, Sol initiates a conspiracy that quickly spirals out of control. Years later, far from her homeland, Sol reconstructs her fractured memories, writing a confession she hopes will be her salvation. Illuminating the dramatic history of the Marcos-era Philippines, this story of youthful passion is a tour de force.
At university in Manila, young, bookish Soledad Soliman falls in with radical friends, defying her wealthy parents and their society crowd. Drawn in by two romantic young rebels, Sol initiates a conspiracy that quickly spirals out of control. Years later, far from her homeland, Sol reconstructs her fractured memories, writing a confession she hopes will be her salvation. Illuminating the dramatic history of the Marcos-era Philippines, this story of youthful passion is a tour de force.
305 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2010
71 people are currently reading
2524 people want to read
About the author
Gina Apostol
19 books344 followersGina Apostol was born in Manila and lives in New York. Her first novel, Bibliolepsy, won the 1998 Philippine National Book Award for Fiction. She just completed her third novel, The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata, a comic historical novel-in-footnotes about the Philippine war for independence against Spain and America in 1896.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 104 reviews
February 9, 2022
I have so much to say. This story is both very personal and surprisingly relevant to the socio-political landscape we are currently facing in the Philippines.
Present day Soledad is broken. She is a shell of her former self, an amnesiac still living in a past that never goes away. We get to listen to her point of view. A self-proclaimed unreliable narrator, she doubts everything she recalls. So we listen as her world is slowly stitched together pieced memory-by-memory till we glimpse the past and observe a shriveled bud turn back the clock back to a beautiful flower - colorful, blooming, alive.
Her story is that of a young aristocratic student who, despite being the daughter of the military’s largest weapons dealer during the Marcos dictatorship in the 80s, discovers radical activism in the university. Like an oblivious sheep whose blindfold is slowly removed, she unearths evidence of slaughtered common folk being mutilated by the very weapons that keep her privileged life sustainable. She asks herself fundamental questions about who she is and ultimately what can she do to atone. Living a double life she plays the part of the witless daughter at home, but works as the conflicted activist in the university.
The university, the one with the nude oblation, is very dear to my heart. It is the same university I call my alma mater. I experienced moments of nostalgia as I read familiar buildings, streets I know by heart, and experiences I had years back. In fact I was still roaming those halls, very much involved in campus activism, when the final events of this story take place.
Sometimes when I close my eyes I can still hear the chants. The years I spent in the university were special to me not just because it afforded me higher education but also because it opened my eyes to things that are bigger than who I am and what is keeping me comfortable. I recall marching through the streets placard held high for different causes from accessible education, women’s rights, affordable healthcare, transparency in governance, and other meaningful causes. I once even attended a rally condemning the efforts of some to allow the entombment of the dictator’s remains in our country’s cemetery for heroes. I chanted with thousands, “Marcos! Hitler! Diktador! Tuta!” You can hear our voices hoarse but the indignation palpable. I can still feel the warm sensation inside my gut when I recall those days.
Sol is an interesting character because her allegiance to the cause is never really established. She teeters between having a serious commitment to just participating out of fancy. Ultimately she decides to take the extreme approach. However she does this not out of commitment to the cause, but rather because of romantic interest to a fellow aristocrat playing the activist. At the heart of this story is a commentary on the social divide and how even in some of the most impactful moments in history, the solemn efforts of the underprivileged is undermined by the passing fancy of the elite. In the end we learn that she is not a victim, but an enabler. That their act of rebellion nothing more than a click of a button, exchanging one evil for another, moving one channel to the next.
In spite of her sins, she was forced into innocence. Her very own sanity questioned so that another can be crucified. All because of who she is. But fortune is not as easily fooled; and so she was punished with the eternal fate of being imprisoned in the past unable to come to grips beyond what was.
Sometimes I think everything we did then was meaningless. Eventually Ferdinand Marcos Sr.’s body was buried in the cemetery for heroes, to the chagrin of many. Now his son is the leading candidate for the country’s Presidency with millions of supporters behind him. Our very own history is being re-written in front of our eyes with majority of the country’s undereducated falling prey to the Marcos’s heavy misinformation campaign on social media that things were “better” during the martial law years. But no matter how much they cloud public opinion - literature, records, and facts – these remind us that human rights abuses and corruption were most rampant during the dictatorship of the Marcoses. Our burden is now to educate the rest of the populace and try to pry the blindfolds away from their unsuspecting eyes.
I still question the impact we had back then, and more so what kind of impact we can have now.
But then I remember that education in our country’s state universities are now free, that reproductive health is now a law in the country, that the freedom of information act was passed a few years ago, and while we have a million more problems to fix, even if things look hopeless, we can take comfort in the small battles we’ve won. The war for a better country is still being fought.
Whether Marcos Jr. wins or loses the elections this year, we, the nation’s citizens, have a responsibility to fight the small battles we face. It’s an accumulation of small battles won that eventually turns the tide. Maybe we’ll lose more battles than we will win. But the records of our battles, whether won or lost, will be chronicled, remembered, so that those after us can learn from what we did. Maybe our struggle can be their absolution.
“It is a lie. But it is one of those things. No one will ever know. No one will tell. There have been no more confessions. It’s horrible how we forget the past, just like that – we forget how war has killed the best of us. People barely remember her name, the names of those who fell to the dictatorship. The best among us have died. And it is the cockroaches who survive. I told Ed: somehow, it seems to me, we are guilty of a failure of memory.”
We forget, but the beautiful thing about memories is that though they might be forgotten, they are just there floating, waiting for a chance to be brought back, remembered.
George Orwell once wrote, “The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”
I desperately hope the people of the Philippines remember.
Present day Soledad is broken. She is a shell of her former self, an amnesiac still living in a past that never goes away. We get to listen to her point of view. A self-proclaimed unreliable narrator, she doubts everything she recalls. So we listen as her world is slowly stitched together pieced memory-by-memory till we glimpse the past and observe a shriveled bud turn back the clock back to a beautiful flower - colorful, blooming, alive.
Her story is that of a young aristocratic student who, despite being the daughter of the military’s largest weapons dealer during the Marcos dictatorship in the 80s, discovers radical activism in the university. Like an oblivious sheep whose blindfold is slowly removed, she unearths evidence of slaughtered common folk being mutilated by the very weapons that keep her privileged life sustainable. She asks herself fundamental questions about who she is and ultimately what can she do to atone. Living a double life she plays the part of the witless daughter at home, but works as the conflicted activist in the university.
The university, the one with the nude oblation, is very dear to my heart. It is the same university I call my alma mater. I experienced moments of nostalgia as I read familiar buildings, streets I know by heart, and experiences I had years back. In fact I was still roaming those halls, very much involved in campus activism, when the final events of this story take place.
Sometimes when I close my eyes I can still hear the chants. The years I spent in the university were special to me not just because it afforded me higher education but also because it opened my eyes to things that are bigger than who I am and what is keeping me comfortable. I recall marching through the streets placard held high for different causes from accessible education, women’s rights, affordable healthcare, transparency in governance, and other meaningful causes. I once even attended a rally condemning the efforts of some to allow the entombment of the dictator’s remains in our country’s cemetery for heroes. I chanted with thousands, “Marcos! Hitler! Diktador! Tuta!” You can hear our voices hoarse but the indignation palpable. I can still feel the warm sensation inside my gut when I recall those days.
Sol is an interesting character because her allegiance to the cause is never really established. She teeters between having a serious commitment to just participating out of fancy. Ultimately she decides to take the extreme approach. However she does this not out of commitment to the cause, but rather because of romantic interest to a fellow aristocrat playing the activist. At the heart of this story is a commentary on the social divide and how even in some of the most impactful moments in history, the solemn efforts of the underprivileged is undermined by the passing fancy of the elite. In the end we learn that she is not a victim, but an enabler. That their act of rebellion nothing more than a click of a button, exchanging one evil for another, moving one channel to the next.
In spite of her sins, she was forced into innocence. Her very own sanity questioned so that another can be crucified. All because of who she is. But fortune is not as easily fooled; and so she was punished with the eternal fate of being imprisoned in the past unable to come to grips beyond what was.
Sometimes I think everything we did then was meaningless. Eventually Ferdinand Marcos Sr.’s body was buried in the cemetery for heroes, to the chagrin of many. Now his son is the leading candidate for the country’s Presidency with millions of supporters behind him. Our very own history is being re-written in front of our eyes with majority of the country’s undereducated falling prey to the Marcos’s heavy misinformation campaign on social media that things were “better” during the martial law years. But no matter how much they cloud public opinion - literature, records, and facts – these remind us that human rights abuses and corruption were most rampant during the dictatorship of the Marcoses. Our burden is now to educate the rest of the populace and try to pry the blindfolds away from their unsuspecting eyes.
I still question the impact we had back then, and more so what kind of impact we can have now.
But then I remember that education in our country’s state universities are now free, that reproductive health is now a law in the country, that the freedom of information act was passed a few years ago, and while we have a million more problems to fix, even if things look hopeless, we can take comfort in the small battles we’ve won. The war for a better country is still being fought.
Whether Marcos Jr. wins or loses the elections this year, we, the nation’s citizens, have a responsibility to fight the small battles we face. It’s an accumulation of small battles won that eventually turns the tide. Maybe we’ll lose more battles than we will win. But the records of our battles, whether won or lost, will be chronicled, remembered, so that those after us can learn from what we did. Maybe our struggle can be their absolution.
“It is a lie. But it is one of those things. No one will ever know. No one will tell. There have been no more confessions. It’s horrible how we forget the past, just like that – we forget how war has killed the best of us. People barely remember her name, the names of those who fell to the dictatorship. The best among us have died. And it is the cockroaches who survive. I told Ed: somehow, it seems to me, we are guilty of a failure of memory.”
We forget, but the beautiful thing about memories is that though they might be forgotten, they are just there floating, waiting for a chance to be brought back, remembered.
George Orwell once wrote, “The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.”
I desperately hope the people of the Philippines remember.
November 12, 2025
insane writing and plotting. absolutely genius.
but i could barely understand most of it until my teacher explained everything 😭
***
𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝 °˖➴ reading this for school... I liked the last one we read, but not sure how I'll feel about this one
but i could barely understand most of it until my teacher explained everything 😭
***
𝐩𝐫𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝 °˖➴ reading this for school... I liked the last one we read, but not sure how I'll feel about this one
December 21, 2014
Set in the latter half of 1980, Sol, a member of the Philippine elite--absurdly wealthy, powerful, and yet timid and unsure--finds herself enrolled briefly in a local university, hoping not to while away a few months of illness before she embarks for America. Along the way she falls in love with another student, himself also the scion of prominent family. Entranced by his passion, and the magnanimity of his girlfriend (her "eponym"), she flirts with a motley crew of anti-Marcos activists and communist rebels. Together, they plot and execute an act of political violence that has farther reaching consequences than Sol had anticipated.
Certain parts of the book--the parlor conversation between expats on Philippine politics during a party; the "confessional" nature of Jed's political voice--are heavily indebted to Jose Rizal's style, and it's clear that Apostol still sees subversive satire as a relevant, and powerful tool to examine the inconsistencies and inequities of Philippine social and political life. Unfortunately, Apostol's wit and comedic efforts have still felt out-of-place in her works, and you can't help but think that she should just embrace the seriousness and severity and grandiosity of the abstract concepts she so willingly takes on: revolution, the nation, language and power, gender, and History.
In addition, the book affirms Apostol's career fascination with language, and the inherent tension of using English as the voice of the post-colony...but like her other works, it can be bit of an effort to get past the denseness of the first couple chapters (you might even think that Apostol has never met a superlative she didn't like). This played really well for "The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata", since the chorus was academic, but to stretch that verbosity, leaping it beyond the crevasses of memory and time--well, Apostol should have figured this out some other way.
Finally, Apostol is also a bit guilty of that nagging trait amongst Filipino writers when it comes to figuring the Philippine elite: she always frames them as excessively and awkwardly Hispanized. As Caroline Hau and Lisandro Claudio have both pointed out, representations of the elite elide the reality that the majority of concentrated wealth in the Philippines--through plantations, industrial plants, state-subsidized private service suppliers, etc--is held by families of Chinese origin. Apostol isn't necessarily uncomfortable with this, nor is she ignorant: she gets little details about Philippine elite families (marriage habits, for instance) so right. Claudio's reasoning for this "absent presence" of Chinese elite is apt: essentially, it's a problem of "legibility", that the world literary community is not quite sure how to process the Philippines as an entity--Hispanized and Christian and animist and Muslim and English-speaking and Asia--and thus Filipino writers by necessity must make their works better "understood" to readers (many of whom are familiar with Latin American literature).
Despite these stylistic issues, Gun Dealers' Daughter is a provocative look at an intersection of Philippine historical forces--rebellion and authoritarianism, active forgetting and the resilience of memory--that's both conceptually well-thought out and confidently written.
Certain parts of the book--the parlor conversation between expats on Philippine politics during a party; the "confessional" nature of Jed's political voice--are heavily indebted to Jose Rizal's style, and it's clear that Apostol still sees subversive satire as a relevant, and powerful tool to examine the inconsistencies and inequities of Philippine social and political life. Unfortunately, Apostol's wit and comedic efforts have still felt out-of-place in her works, and you can't help but think that she should just embrace the seriousness and severity and grandiosity of the abstract concepts she so willingly takes on: revolution, the nation, language and power, gender, and History.
In addition, the book affirms Apostol's career fascination with language, and the inherent tension of using English as the voice of the post-colony...but like her other works, it can be bit of an effort to get past the denseness of the first couple chapters (you might even think that Apostol has never met a superlative she didn't like). This played really well for "The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata", since the chorus was academic, but to stretch that verbosity, leaping it beyond the crevasses of memory and time--well, Apostol should have figured this out some other way.
Finally, Apostol is also a bit guilty of that nagging trait amongst Filipino writers when it comes to figuring the Philippine elite: she always frames them as excessively and awkwardly Hispanized. As Caroline Hau and Lisandro Claudio have both pointed out, representations of the elite elide the reality that the majority of concentrated wealth in the Philippines--through plantations, industrial plants, state-subsidized private service suppliers, etc--is held by families of Chinese origin. Apostol isn't necessarily uncomfortable with this, nor is she ignorant: she gets little details about Philippine elite families (marriage habits, for instance) so right. Claudio's reasoning for this "absent presence" of Chinese elite is apt: essentially, it's a problem of "legibility", that the world literary community is not quite sure how to process the Philippines as an entity--Hispanized and Christian and animist and Muslim and English-speaking and Asia--and thus Filipino writers by necessity must make their works better "understood" to readers (many of whom are familiar with Latin American literature).
Despite these stylistic issues, Gun Dealers' Daughter is a provocative look at an intersection of Philippine historical forces--rebellion and authoritarianism, active forgetting and the resilience of memory--that's both conceptually well-thought out and confidently written.
October 24, 2022
Must a book be written where in every page you have to look up a couple of words in the dictionary? High-sounding, uncommon words prevented me from getting into this book, and I ended up skimming the last half of it so as to get to the end in time for my book club meeting. My friends gave the book a thumbs up, but I couldn't develop an emotional connection with the characters even though at first I got fascinated with the book's story line of dictatorship and revolution in the Philippines.
August 14, 2021
Gina Apostol's Gun Dealer's Daughter is set in two different times: one, the late 1970s to early 1980s in Manila, following Sol in her transition from rich, rich, rich girl to an anti-government rebel; the second in the recent present, with Sol unable to escape the haunting memories of her past. She lives them in a loop; suffering from anterograde amnesia, Sol's mind is not fully able to retain new memories, so she focuses instead on the time period that weighs heaviest on her mind.
The first solid quarter of this novel is immeasurably slow. It doesn't help that the writing style is rather wordy in nature, with rambling sentences filled with grandiose vocabulary; during that quarter of the book, I wondered constantly if I should abandon it for the moment and read something more engaging. This writing style suited the protagonist of the story fully well, I'd say, but with a distinct lack of a forward-moving plot, I was unable to appreciate it due to my overwhelming disinterest in the content.
Then the novel turned to Sol's past, the heart of the plot, and things started looking up. I followed with alacrity the unfolding events surrounding Sol, surrounding Jed, surrounding Soli and the others in the rebel movement, right alongside the parallel world of wealth and the wealthy, of gun-selling tycoons finding and targeting clients for their product. Once I reached this stage, there were no thoughts left of DNFing and moving on to something else. Every memory evoked by this frankly unreliable narrator was intriguing; every fact given about the Phillipines opened my eyes to a culture and history that I wasn't previously familiar with.
Time well-spent after all, in my opinion. If you enjoy slow-paced, informative reads and discovering writer's voices from different parts of the world, you may want to check this one out. Do make sure to read through the trigger warnings mentioned for this novel, though, which include but are not limited to suicide attempts, suicidal ideation and graphic violence.
The first solid quarter of this novel is immeasurably slow. It doesn't help that the writing style is rather wordy in nature, with rambling sentences filled with grandiose vocabulary; during that quarter of the book, I wondered constantly if I should abandon it for the moment and read something more engaging. This writing style suited the protagonist of the story fully well, I'd say, but with a distinct lack of a forward-moving plot, I was unable to appreciate it due to my overwhelming disinterest in the content.
Then the novel turned to Sol's past, the heart of the plot, and things started looking up. I followed with alacrity the unfolding events surrounding Sol, surrounding Jed, surrounding Soli and the others in the rebel movement, right alongside the parallel world of wealth and the wealthy, of gun-selling tycoons finding and targeting clients for their product. Once I reached this stage, there were no thoughts left of DNFing and moving on to something else. Every memory evoked by this frankly unreliable narrator was intriguing; every fact given about the Phillipines opened my eyes to a culture and history that I wasn't previously familiar with.
Time well-spent after all, in my opinion. If you enjoy slow-paced, informative reads and discovering writer's voices from different parts of the world, you may want to check this one out. Do make sure to read through the trigger warnings mentioned for this novel, though, which include but are not limited to suicide attempts, suicidal ideation and graphic violence.
August 20, 2021
“Words are all we have to save us, but at the same time, they are not enough to make us whole.”
This book was just -- woah momma. My brain was panting after I finished it. You HAVE to be a literary snob to actually read this book seamlessly. I had to stop two to three sentences just to know the hifalutin words used and I had to re-read several to know what was going on. I know the book aimed to be poetic but it became so poetic that it was really hard to digest — some intimate scenes sounded ridiculous; I'm surprised I didn't DNF this lol.
I felt disappointed because I loved the premise; a daughter from a rich family tries to relate herself to the sufferings of her fellow-countrymen by joining a democratic organization. But the way it was written really hindered me to connect to the characters and see the themes it tries to portray deeply. Plus I just don’t get why there was a need for it to sound this way, when you want the book to reach people? I don't know, maybe I'm just dumb? Idk? Lol.
Anyway, this was a challenging read. I both loved and hated how it challenged me.
Will I still read Insurrecto? Yes.
This book was just -- woah momma. My brain was panting after I finished it. You HAVE to be a literary snob to actually read this book seamlessly. I had to stop two to three sentences just to know the hifalutin words used and I had to re-read several to know what was going on. I know the book aimed to be poetic but it became so poetic that it was really hard to digest — some intimate scenes sounded ridiculous; I'm surprised I didn't DNF this lol.
I felt disappointed because I loved the premise; a daughter from a rich family tries to relate herself to the sufferings of her fellow-countrymen by joining a democratic organization. But the way it was written really hindered me to connect to the characters and see the themes it tries to portray deeply. Plus I just don’t get why there was a need for it to sound this way, when you want the book to reach people? I don't know, maybe I'm just dumb? Idk? Lol.
Anyway, this was a challenging read. I both loved and hated how it challenged me.
Will I still read Insurrecto? Yes.
May 23, 2017
Currently my new favourite book. The prose was immensely beautiful and the plot, intricately-woven together. The scenes jump back and forth from present and past, which may deem confusing and chaotic to some people. However, I feel that it resonates with the theme of the novel: memory or perhaps the unreliability of memory. Of course, because it was set during a traumatic period in the Philippines (Martial Law era) and because of the trauma experienced by the narrator, she is completely unreliable. Although this may be off-putting for some, I believe it added to the charm of the novel. I especially loved the scene wherein Soli/Ed and Jed visited Sol and how in the next chapter she reiterated the story, only changing the details because the memory was inaccurate. The characters felt real and dynamic as well. It felt like they were more than just characters in a page.
The entire novel was absolutely amazing and I cannot wait to read more of Apostol's works.
The entire novel was absolutely amazing and I cannot wait to read more of Apostol's works.
April 23, 2018
Sol in Gun Dealers' Daughter tries to salvage her memories of being a student in the Philippines, salvage, meaning something else during Martial Law, salvage, because the memories are dim and flickering for a reason. Gina Apostol writes like no other: energetic, brutally fractured. Her sentences reflect Sol's state of mind, fractured, like the Philippines. I personally enjoy it more when a novel challenges me; the lucidity at the end is both reward and admonition. Revolt with caution.
August 16, 2024
tldr; blah blah blah
this is gonna be long. but this book was a very personal read for me having engaged with similar if not the same veins of activism (albeit in the us) as the characters in this book - bourgeois students playing at grassroots activism and romanticizing the plight of the working and peasant class and engaging in political violence as an act of passing interest to gain a rush from participation in a movement or to alleviate the burden of their own guilt in participation of social and political evil, and also to feel something no short of some kind of sick relevance — while still being true to the stories of how people get properly radicalized and can also be integral to and truly believe in movements such as this, but still critiquing the hard-on people get from political violence. certainly there’s a place for everyone in revolution, but it’s the elite that often move from one channel to the next in regards to their brands of activism, never settling and always moving towards what’s most visible in the eyes of the masses. it’s a good critique on who does activism and why, and how not everyone has pure or even helpful intentions. it also captures the inner conflict of being in spaces you feel you don’t belong, especially activist spaces.
the conflict of the main character had me rapt with attention - the amnesiac daughter of a weapons dealer during the marcos regime getting radicalized and then having this inner conflict of the life she lives vs what she is learning to believe in. memory is thrown in there but that’s not my main takeaway from the book. although, the thread was a well done one.
god this book threw me back into when i used to organize for [redacted] and this inter-political alignment warfare of varying communist ideologies such as mao vs lenin vs marx. and also captures this ego inflation that people seem to get when involved in radical politics - so much so that they miss the whole fucking point of why they’re doing it anyway. i think this book captured the arguments both for and against this kind of activism — how students are part of this movement but sometimes use their participation as a means of garnering social brownie points. how people engage in a dick measuring contest of who’s the most radical/whose ideology reigns supreme. it’s a thing.
i think this book captured misguided intentions and critiqued elite martyrdom well. also captured the pretentiousness of the educated, and our sometimes shallow attempts at solidarity — how the efforts of the elite to be seen as radical often undermine the underprivileged and their efforts at activism for their communities. apostol doesn’t necessarily discredit the elite for this, but brings the idea of the activism of the elite as something with flaws into the foray by asking the reader to be critical of the positionalities and motivations of the characters that are often seen in real life. it’s not everyone — but it’s some.
i also think she critiques the culture within radical spaces:
“You have not written your talambuhay. You have not done your class analysis. You cannot express your class relation to the masses. You cannot envision society as a creature with genuine warmth or pumping heart. We do not believe you can tell us truthfully who you are. You are a coward. A moral void lies in you, large as a copper coin—but a hole nonetheless. You do not have the imagination to possess affection. You have a cadaverous soul. You have not yet read the PSR. Comrade: one day, we’ll meet again. Change is possible—after all, it is what we believe. We hope one day you will be a part.”
on a different note, this book brought to life the very active and militant movements of the philippines to end US imperialism and the forces these activists are up against. how this activism is needed and wanted but comes up against institutions and goons who are hellbent on oppression, on violence. and explores ideas such as gender and class in the greater socioeconomic state of the phils.
overall this book did a great job at capturing the political and social landscape of the philippines and its inherent complexity. and the necessity for radicalism in regards to bringing about change. don’t get me wrong, i know im shitting on people (and i’d include myself in that mix, i at one point was a college educated activist who played at and romanticized this movement amongst other things) in this review but overall i believe in the trajectory of what was being presented. granted, my perspective is greatly americanized and comes from learning from solidarity groups, but what she wrote rings true to what i’ve learned and captures it with grace. i think my perspective on a lot of this is jaded from my time organizing and the disagreements i witnessed and partook in but hey, we take whatever we take from what we read. it’s different for everyone.
i think the writing was beautiful and intelligent, but oftentimes inaccessible. apostol has a phenomenal way of stringing a sentence together in a way that’s mostly readable, but sometimes parts read as a pretentious creative writing masters student with a thesaurus. i’d even argue it sometimes read as a scholarly article, which i think works for the overall storyline given the setting the characters were placed in, but i can see why people may not like it or even deign to understand due to the message being mired in a complex diction. i liked it tho.
overall, a fabulous book that brought up a lot of unresolved feelings for me and forced me to think critically. it did, however, feel longer than it was at 295 pages. i want to give it 5 stars for the personal effect it had on me, but it’s probably truly 4.25. still gonna round up. great read.
this is gonna be long. but this book was a very personal read for me having engaged with similar if not the same veins of activism (albeit in the us) as the characters in this book - bourgeois students playing at grassroots activism and romanticizing the plight of the working and peasant class and engaging in political violence as an act of passing interest to gain a rush from participation in a movement or to alleviate the burden of their own guilt in participation of social and political evil, and also to feel something no short of some kind of sick relevance — while still being true to the stories of how people get properly radicalized and can also be integral to and truly believe in movements such as this, but still critiquing the hard-on people get from political violence. certainly there’s a place for everyone in revolution, but it’s the elite that often move from one channel to the next in regards to their brands of activism, never settling and always moving towards what’s most visible in the eyes of the masses. it’s a good critique on who does activism and why, and how not everyone has pure or even helpful intentions. it also captures the inner conflict of being in spaces you feel you don’t belong, especially activist spaces.
the conflict of the main character had me rapt with attention - the amnesiac daughter of a weapons dealer during the marcos regime getting radicalized and then having this inner conflict of the life she lives vs what she is learning to believe in. memory is thrown in there but that’s not my main takeaway from the book. although, the thread was a well done one.
god this book threw me back into when i used to organize for [redacted] and this inter-political alignment warfare of varying communist ideologies such as mao vs lenin vs marx. and also captures this ego inflation that people seem to get when involved in radical politics - so much so that they miss the whole fucking point of why they’re doing it anyway. i think this book captured the arguments both for and against this kind of activism — how students are part of this movement but sometimes use their participation as a means of garnering social brownie points. how people engage in a dick measuring contest of who’s the most radical/whose ideology reigns supreme. it’s a thing.
i think this book captured misguided intentions and critiqued elite martyrdom well. also captured the pretentiousness of the educated, and our sometimes shallow attempts at solidarity — how the efforts of the elite to be seen as radical often undermine the underprivileged and their efforts at activism for their communities. apostol doesn’t necessarily discredit the elite for this, but brings the idea of the activism of the elite as something with flaws into the foray by asking the reader to be critical of the positionalities and motivations of the characters that are often seen in real life. it’s not everyone — but it’s some.
i also think she critiques the culture within radical spaces:
“You have not written your talambuhay. You have not done your class analysis. You cannot express your class relation to the masses. You cannot envision society as a creature with genuine warmth or pumping heart. We do not believe you can tell us truthfully who you are. You are a coward. A moral void lies in you, large as a copper coin—but a hole nonetheless. You do not have the imagination to possess affection. You have a cadaverous soul. You have not yet read the PSR. Comrade: one day, we’ll meet again. Change is possible—after all, it is what we believe. We hope one day you will be a part.”
on a different note, this book brought to life the very active and militant movements of the philippines to end US imperialism and the forces these activists are up against. how this activism is needed and wanted but comes up against institutions and goons who are hellbent on oppression, on violence. and explores ideas such as gender and class in the greater socioeconomic state of the phils.
overall this book did a great job at capturing the political and social landscape of the philippines and its inherent complexity. and the necessity for radicalism in regards to bringing about change. don’t get me wrong, i know im shitting on people (and i’d include myself in that mix, i at one point was a college educated activist who played at and romanticized this movement amongst other things) in this review but overall i believe in the trajectory of what was being presented. granted, my perspective is greatly americanized and comes from learning from solidarity groups, but what she wrote rings true to what i’ve learned and captures it with grace. i think my perspective on a lot of this is jaded from my time organizing and the disagreements i witnessed and partook in but hey, we take whatever we take from what we read. it’s different for everyone.
i think the writing was beautiful and intelligent, but oftentimes inaccessible. apostol has a phenomenal way of stringing a sentence together in a way that’s mostly readable, but sometimes parts read as a pretentious creative writing masters student with a thesaurus. i’d even argue it sometimes read as a scholarly article, which i think works for the overall storyline given the setting the characters were placed in, but i can see why people may not like it or even deign to understand due to the message being mired in a complex diction. i liked it tho.
overall, a fabulous book that brought up a lot of unresolved feelings for me and forced me to think critically. it did, however, feel longer than it was at 295 pages. i want to give it 5 stars for the personal effect it had on me, but it’s probably truly 4.25. still gonna round up. great read.
February 15, 2022
This is a vivid, sensual portrayal of the late Marcos years through the clouded eyes of an elite daughter of the revolution -- or, more accurately, daughter of the counter-insurgency whose political allegiance lies elsewhere, though in a confused, solipsistic way. I'm a little apprehensive about fictional accounts of the Marcos/martial law era because it's been mined to death for cultural capital outside the Philippines, but there's a richness to Gun Dealers' Daughter that exceeds less substantial efforts to relate that period. Though it's resolutely set in the early '80s, at some moments it seems like the novel is actually about Metro Manila in the '90s and about the parallel structures of willful forgetting and obliviousness that were built by the urban elite during those time periods.
It took me a while to get into Apostol's prose -- the first page had a jarring change in perspective and verb tense -- but once I did, it reminded me of Nabokov with its wordplay and playfully uncertain remembrances.
I read the Philippine edition published by Anvil in 2010, but I'm happy to see that this book will be published in the US this year.
It took me a while to get into Apostol's prose -- the first page had a jarring change in perspective and verb tense -- but once I did, it reminded me of Nabokov with its wordplay and playfully uncertain remembrances.
I read the Philippine edition published by Anvil in 2010, but I'm happy to see that this book will be published in the US this year.
April 13, 2023
Philippine Society and Revolution are the rich kids’ playthings in this novel. I found it hard to empathize with Sol’s (the protagonist) 200-page pity party since the political and social backdrop of the story were only mentioned in snippets. The story in fact lacks the emphasis on the repercussions of Sol’s parents’ munitions business dealings to the rest of the country despite the eponymous book. Sol’s was a story of romantic-driven blitzkrieg for which she was rarely slapped back into reality. As if true to her incapability to be a true comrade to the masses, only a tragedy personal to Sol sinks the teeth into her protective privilege. Otherwise, she remains unfazed and rather contented with her status as the “worst kind of recruit” for the activist movement. The “hard truths” that Sol, and occasionally Jed, had to confront were iterations of banalities rather than epiphanies. To me, this makes the novel fall short in attempting to reveal the naïveté of the one percent and the hopelessness in the prevailing system, if at all. What this novel had an abundance of, however: highfalutin words and protracted sentences.
March 10, 2015
As a fan of historical fiction, and revolutionary women in historical fiction, I really wanted to like this book. But this was one of those times I was happy to not be a graduate student in English, forced to plod my way through some unreadable tome, slogging through deeply boring and overwritten text.
Certainly, the book is literate; words like "recidivating" and "carious" pepper the pages. However, I found the protagonist to be frankly unlikable; born rich, very passive, swept up in the romance of revolutionary idealism in the Philippines. We first meet her after her second suicide attempt, and are treated to pages and pages of a meandering, self-pitying internal dialogue. And it went downhill from there. Clearly, the book is well-loved by many a reader; just not by me.
So nice to be able to not have to finish this uninteresting book under penalty of a failing grade!
Certainly, the book is literate; words like "recidivating" and "carious" pepper the pages. However, I found the protagonist to be frankly unlikable; born rich, very passive, swept up in the romance of revolutionary idealism in the Philippines. We first meet her after her second suicide attempt, and are treated to pages and pages of a meandering, self-pitying internal dialogue. And it went downhill from there. Clearly, the book is well-loved by many a reader; just not by me.
So nice to be able to not have to finish this uninteresting book under penalty of a failing grade!
January 4, 2013
The ending was fitting but I don't think the book should have been more than 200 pages. A lot of the things she wrote were irrelevant, unreliable and mindless rants that didn't help move the story along.
December 11, 2017
Gina Apostol babbles profusely in flowery language with unnecessarily abundant ornate adjectives.
August 29, 2022
The simplest Gina Apostol book I've read, yet it's still so poetic to understand at first read. I appreciate the plot and the character's context but I had a hard time determining whose POV is whose. But I also think that's the beauty of this novel - how we can't really tell who owns the narrative until it hits too close to home.
July 10, 2021
Wow, my reading experience is an adventure!!!
I was tasked to moderate Gina's another novel, The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata, but since that book is more confusing and more tricky (with its literary styles), I tried searching for her other works in linear form. After her short story in Manila Noir, this came as another alternative. Bibliolepsy, meanwhile is to be re-released next year, by Soho Press.
But then again, this book is not really straight-forward. It composed of puns, reiterating moments, scenes going around in circles, and ending scene with a carousel, taking the circular trip literally and figuratively. The book is about Soledad Soliman and her world revolving around the Alta-de-sociedad of the 70s, with the dictator & his wife on cameo, the latter singing Dandansoy and flexing her aesthetic tastes in music and art. Her parents, Frankie and Queenie, are those visionary businessmen who provides military might, via gun trade. They have a beshie who used to do gangster moves - Uncle Gianni, the soltero who helped Sol recuperate in Europe.
Reading the first part is hard for me, not engaging at times. It only kicked off when she started narrating her piece of story, at around chapter 6. After surviving the first 5 chapters with its confusing POVs, the plot started kicking in. It is not fast-paced, there are parts that circulate. Pages that ruminates. Lines being repeated, or words being reiterated. I liked its lyrical appeal. Also, some scenes are really memorable. The long queue of limousines at CCP because the audiences do not walk, the Philippine Insurgency medallion stirred over a coffee, and the fantasy of Sol and Jed doing the deed while stealing guns.
The ending is not like an action film, but rather an update of these Martial Law babies, and it seemed rather unattached to its full-circle effect. But sometimes this is how our stories play in our mind: sometimes intense, but mostly detached.
I suggest that GenZ should really read this to get out of their petit-bourgeois fantasies and really get a grasp of how the Pinoy society works, especially now that our social climate gets to its primitive dog-eat-dog realm.
I was tasked to moderate Gina's another novel, The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata, but since that book is more confusing and more tricky (with its literary styles), I tried searching for her other works in linear form. After her short story in Manila Noir, this came as another alternative. Bibliolepsy, meanwhile is to be re-released next year, by Soho Press.
But then again, this book is not really straight-forward. It composed of puns, reiterating moments, scenes going around in circles, and ending scene with a carousel, taking the circular trip literally and figuratively. The book is about Soledad Soliman and her world revolving around the Alta-de-sociedad of the 70s, with the dictator & his wife on cameo, the latter singing Dandansoy and flexing her aesthetic tastes in music and art. Her parents, Frankie and Queenie, are those visionary businessmen who provides military might, via gun trade. They have a beshie who used to do gangster moves - Uncle Gianni, the soltero who helped Sol recuperate in Europe.
Reading the first part is hard for me, not engaging at times. It only kicked off when she started narrating her piece of story, at around chapter 6. After surviving the first 5 chapters with its confusing POVs, the plot started kicking in. It is not fast-paced, there are parts that circulate. Pages that ruminates. Lines being repeated, or words being reiterated. I liked its lyrical appeal. Also, some scenes are really memorable. The long queue of limousines at CCP because the audiences do not walk, the Philippine Insurgency medallion stirred over a coffee, and the fantasy of Sol and Jed doing the deed while stealing guns.
The ending is not like an action film, but rather an update of these Martial Law babies, and it seemed rather unattached to its full-circle effect. But sometimes this is how our stories play in our mind: sometimes intense, but mostly detached.
I suggest that GenZ should really read this to get out of their petit-bourgeois fantasies and really get a grasp of how the Pinoy society works, especially now that our social climate gets to its primitive dog-eat-dog realm.
December 12, 2022
This was such a good book, compelling, insightful, and incredibly well-written.
The premise is of course very relevant to the modern day Philippines, with “the dictator”’s son being elected as president, but my favorite part of the story was how Gina Apostol explores the importance of language and memory in the construction of a narrative. We are told the story through the perspective of a woefully unreliable narrator, and it seems poetic that a book that is reminding us to never forget about the history that has gone past is told by someone who cannot move on from the past.
Sol is definitely one of the best written protagonists I’ve ever read. Tracing her past through the broken pieces of memory we are given was very engaging and kept me hooked for the entire novel.
All in all, it’s just so incredible to see a turning point in Philippine history portrayed with so much attention to detail and care for the culture of the nation. I’m reminded of The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen, but this one hits right where home is. I really hope this becomes required reading for high schools one day.
The premise is of course very relevant to the modern day Philippines, with “the dictator”’s son being elected as president, but my favorite part of the story was how Gina Apostol explores the importance of language and memory in the construction of a narrative. We are told the story through the perspective of a woefully unreliable narrator, and it seems poetic that a book that is reminding us to never forget about the history that has gone past is told by someone who cannot move on from the past.
Sol is definitely one of the best written protagonists I’ve ever read. Tracing her past through the broken pieces of memory we are given was very engaging and kept me hooked for the entire novel.
All in all, it’s just so incredible to see a turning point in Philippine history portrayed with so much attention to detail and care for the culture of the nation. I’m reminded of The Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen, but this one hits right where home is. I really hope this becomes required reading for high schools one day.
August 19, 2022
Let’s just say I really wanted to like this highly acclaimed novel. Unfortunately, I found myself disoriented by its oblique, mosaic style. I get it- the disjointed structure is precisely the point, that it reflects the protagonist’s state of mind. I just feel that the prose gets too richly embroidered and comes off as frustratingly overwritten. Don’t get me wrong, some of the best books are just so exquisitely written so as to render the reader breathless . Nabokov does it without being too flowery. This book seems like it was going for the same effect but it just didn’t do it for me.
Maybe it didn’t help that I read this as part of my pre-semester vetting of readings for a course I’m designing. I’m looking for a good novel about Martial Law for non-Filipino students with little to no knowledge of the Philippines. Alas, I don’t think this book would sustain the interest of this particular readership.
Maybe it didn’t help that I read this as part of my pre-semester vetting of readings for a course I’m designing. I’m looking for a good novel about Martial Law for non-Filipino students with little to no knowledge of the Philippines. Alas, I don’t think this book would sustain the interest of this particular readership.
June 4, 2022
Found it hard to read through. The writing style was pretentious.
December 5, 2018
a fantastic book! sometimes apostol is e.m. forster or edith wharton, ie a proto-modern who can linger over a scene's details with almost victorian pacing. simultaneously she's a wit and an experimentalist à la calvino or cortázar and her novels become a penrose staircase of amnesiac memoirists or an erasing documentarian, mazes of duplicitous memory.
here, there are passages that are downright society farce -- until they open into truly darker territory, exposing class relations and imperial power-clutching so that the farce turns into a horrorshow version of upstairs downstairs. the bringing-it-back -around structure was brilliantly executed. a great book.
____________
i read INSURRECTO first and there's a passage in GUN DEALER'S DAUGHTER that i think serves well as commentary/intro to that work:
I discovered that our books of history were invariably in the voice of the colonist, the one who misrecognized us. We were inscrutable apes engaging in implausible insurrections against gun-wielding epic heroes who disdained our culture but wanted our land. The simplicity and rapacity of their reductions were consistent, and as counterpoint to Soli’s version of the past, these books provided, as I admitted to Soli, the ballast for my tardy revolt. Soli reproved me. Why do history books persuade you but not the world around you? You live in a puppet totalitarian regime, propped up by guns from America, so that we are no sovereign country but a mere outpost of foreign interests in the Far East. She said this with such conviction, I could barely reply. But, I countered, the military-industrial complex, as you call it, does it not suggest not only an economic order but also a psychiatric disorder? It occurred to me that it was a system of oppression that spurred both of our delusions—hers (to save the nation) and mine (to save myself). Soli nodded, disarmed at the thought, but in the end she disagreed. Obscurantism, she said, does not serve change. The therapeutic couch may be necessary—at least for some, she said pointedly. But it is not the place for action. Next time you drive home to Makati, she said, look around: all you need is to look out your limousine’s window to know that it is a problem to be living the good life in such bad times.
here, there are passages that are downright society farce -- until they open into truly darker territory, exposing class relations and imperial power-clutching so that the farce turns into a horrorshow version of upstairs downstairs. the bringing-it-back -around structure was brilliantly executed. a great book.
____________
i read INSURRECTO first and there's a passage in GUN DEALER'S DAUGHTER that i think serves well as commentary/intro to that work:
I discovered that our books of history were invariably in the voice of the colonist, the one who misrecognized us. We were inscrutable apes engaging in implausible insurrections against gun-wielding epic heroes who disdained our culture but wanted our land. The simplicity and rapacity of their reductions were consistent, and as counterpoint to Soli’s version of the past, these books provided, as I admitted to Soli, the ballast for my tardy revolt. Soli reproved me. Why do history books persuade you but not the world around you? You live in a puppet totalitarian regime, propped up by guns from America, so that we are no sovereign country but a mere outpost of foreign interests in the Far East. She said this with such conviction, I could barely reply. But, I countered, the military-industrial complex, as you call it, does it not suggest not only an economic order but also a psychiatric disorder? It occurred to me that it was a system of oppression that spurred both of our delusions—hers (to save the nation) and mine (to save myself). Soli nodded, disarmed at the thought, but in the end she disagreed. Obscurantism, she said, does not serve change. The therapeutic couch may be necessary—at least for some, she said pointedly. But it is not the place for action. Next time you drive home to Makati, she said, look around: all you need is to look out your limousine’s window to know that it is a problem to be living the good life in such bad times.
December 6, 2022
Gina Apostol's mind is mesmerizing. Sometimes, while reading this book, I wondered whether or not I ACTUALLY know how to read. Her sentence structures and wordplay baffled me. A self-proclaimed unreliable narrator had me eating every word off a dirty plate.
Marcos-era historical fiction from the perspective of an aristocratic daughter of an international arms dealer, who becomes tangled in a plot against the people within her family's own circle.
A useful fool.
I have read no other literary fiction like this. A glimpse into the life of someone living under martial rule.
Marcos-era historical fiction from the perspective of an aristocratic daughter of an international arms dealer, who becomes tangled in a plot against the people within her family's own circle.
A useful fool.
I have read no other literary fiction like this. A glimpse into the life of someone living under martial rule.
November 10, 2025
Not my favorite. All the confusing words made it really snobby seeming and just a really hard and unenjoyable read. I did learn a lot though.
August 19, 2018
"Gun Dealers' Daughter" revolves around themes that are central to the Filipino experience: the vast socioeconomic divide, the social and political weight of titles and family names, political corruption and its impact on all citizens, and the complicated and enduring legacy of colonialism. These themes come together in what is one of the novel's main conflicts: Can a person from the upper echelons of society participate meaningfully in acts of political resistance? Is such a person best positioned or least well-equipped to effect change, given her social standing and political connections?
Gina Apostol's novel wrestles with these questions through the characters of Sol and Jed, who, as college students, join a Communist study group and participate in political activism aimed at resisting the Marcos dictatorship. Yet Sol and Jed are from Makati families, unlike their comrades from the provinces, and they enjoy a high level of protection from the police by virtue of their family names. The story of Sol, Jed, and their comrades is an illustration of how social and political inequities play out in a country where political corruption is rampant and often turns violent. This novel is both particularly Filipino and translatable to numerous other global contexts where the poor are especially vulnerable to the violent policies of a militant government (name your Latin American or African country).
"Gun Dealers' Daughter" is a dark novel: against the backdrop of martial law, there are deaths and cover-ups and escapes and lots of unfairness. As I read, it occurred to me that, today, we see a lot of the same, in the Philippines and elsewhere, under the guise of maintaining law and order in a democracy.
Yet although "Gun Dealers' Daughter" is set in a tumultuous and frightening period of Filipino history, Gina Apostol manages to make the novel pretty funny, as well. She describes the Filipino upper classes--including, of course, the Marcoses--with such sharp wit and humor, almost as caricatures. I don't think I'll ever forget the image of Mrs. Esdrújula, always perfectly made up but constantly perspiring, requiring a maid to be at her side at all times bearing a stack of towels and ready, at any moment, to dab at the lady's collarbone.
Americans know tragically little about Filipino history, and I count myself among those who still have a lot to learn. "Gun Dealers' Daughter" is a great place to start, and I also can't wait for Gina Apostol's forthcoming novel. I saw Gina Apostol speak at an event this past April, where she and other Filipino writers discussed Filipino politics in the Duterte era. That discussion is what prompted me to obtain my Filipino citizenship so that I can vote instead of just complaining about the headlines. Fitting, then, that I was reading "Gun Dealers' Daughter" while waiting for my papers to be processed at the Philippine Consulate in Manhattan.
Gina Apostol's novel wrestles with these questions through the characters of Sol and Jed, who, as college students, join a Communist study group and participate in political activism aimed at resisting the Marcos dictatorship. Yet Sol and Jed are from Makati families, unlike their comrades from the provinces, and they enjoy a high level of protection from the police by virtue of their family names. The story of Sol, Jed, and their comrades is an illustration of how social and political inequities play out in a country where political corruption is rampant and often turns violent. This novel is both particularly Filipino and translatable to numerous other global contexts where the poor are especially vulnerable to the violent policies of a militant government (name your Latin American or African country).
"Gun Dealers' Daughter" is a dark novel: against the backdrop of martial law, there are deaths and cover-ups and escapes and lots of unfairness. As I read, it occurred to me that, today, we see a lot of the same, in the Philippines and elsewhere, under the guise of maintaining law and order in a democracy.
Yet although "Gun Dealers' Daughter" is set in a tumultuous and frightening period of Filipino history, Gina Apostol manages to make the novel pretty funny, as well. She describes the Filipino upper classes--including, of course, the Marcoses--with such sharp wit and humor, almost as caricatures. I don't think I'll ever forget the image of Mrs. Esdrújula, always perfectly made up but constantly perspiring, requiring a maid to be at her side at all times bearing a stack of towels and ready, at any moment, to dab at the lady's collarbone.
Americans know tragically little about Filipino history, and I count myself among those who still have a lot to learn. "Gun Dealers' Daughter" is a great place to start, and I also can't wait for Gina Apostol's forthcoming novel. I saw Gina Apostol speak at an event this past April, where she and other Filipino writers discussed Filipino politics in the Duterte era. That discussion is what prompted me to obtain my Filipino citizenship so that I can vote instead of just complaining about the headlines. Fitting, then, that I was reading "Gun Dealers' Daughter" while waiting for my papers to be processed at the Philippine Consulate in Manhattan.
December 30, 2022
Objectively speaking, it was a classic amnesiac-trying-to-remember-her-traumatic-backstory novel. We go on to read about and try to empathize with her as she pieces together the lead heroine's memory, overflowing with misplaced and blurred details.
Subjectively speaking, I wanted to like this book so bad because it was my first read from a Filipino author. I was a bit disappointed realizing it was unreadable for me, in a sense that the flowery language overpowered the plot I was initially interested in. I expected this provoking PH Martial Law-themed read to be targeted towards a more general audience.
The protagonist, Sol, a college girl in a private university who (I assume later on) becomes an advocate for the masses, could have been someone I related to. I was halfway through the book and I still did not find her likable; she still seemed very out-of-touch with reality (as part of the super wealthy) and seemed to be passively joining her activist friends at first just to belong, but maybe that was the point and I did not get to the good part yet? But then again, it was already half of the book.
Subjectively speaking, I wanted to like this book so bad because it was my first read from a Filipino author. I was a bit disappointed realizing it was unreadable for me, in a sense that the flowery language overpowered the plot I was initially interested in. I expected this provoking PH Martial Law-themed read to be targeted towards a more general audience.
The protagonist, Sol, a college girl in a private university who (I assume later on) becomes an advocate for the masses, could have been someone I related to. I was halfway through the book and I still did not find her likable; she still seemed very out-of-touch with reality (as part of the super wealthy) and seemed to be passively joining her activist friends at first just to belong, but maybe that was the point and I did not get to the good part yet? But then again, it was already half of the book.
March 5, 2023
I was excited to dig into this book because I’ve been wanting to read more works by Filipino authors. Unfortunately, my excitement quickly turned into annoyance..
Gina Apostol overwrites. Overwrites to the extent that a simple paragraph turns into a stilted mess. Mind you, I’m fairly well read and knew most of the obscure words she used but reading this literally made me think of that Friends episode where Joey uses the computer thesaurus to make his letter sound more smart and the entire thing becomes a bunch of nonsense. Yes, it was almost that bad. It’s such a shame too because the plot itself and the story has such great bones.. It’s her writing style that really messed it up for me. And I honestly wouldn’t pick up another book of hers.. So disappointing that I practically regretted buying this book new and at full price if not for the fact that I bought it at an independent, minority-owned, small bookshop.
Gina Apostol overwrites. Overwrites to the extent that a simple paragraph turns into a stilted mess. Mind you, I’m fairly well read and knew most of the obscure words she used but reading this literally made me think of that Friends episode where Joey uses the computer thesaurus to make his letter sound more smart and the entire thing becomes a bunch of nonsense. Yes, it was almost that bad. It’s such a shame too because the plot itself and the story has such great bones.. It’s her writing style that really messed it up for me. And I honestly wouldn’t pick up another book of hers.. So disappointing that I practically regretted buying this book new and at full price if not for the fact that I bought it at an independent, minority-owned, small bookshop.
January 27, 2020
At first I thought I wouldn't like it but the ending was so perfect that everything previously mentioned on the book made so much sense.
December 23, 2020
Confusing as hell but well worth it
February 18, 2022
Weeks before the Presidential Election and with the dictator's son running and leading in the surveys, it is fitting to have read this book that tells how people of the two different classes of society lived during Marcos's reign—in true Gina Apostol fashion, of course.
Despite the singular style of writing in this, the political critique was clear as day in this brilliant book. Those who march and fight against the tyrannical President and his goons and hoodlums would be brought down by discreet violence and secret extrajudicial killings. And those who party and celebrate with him and his Imeldific, bloody elegant wife would survive the storm unscathed. In Gun Dealers' Daughter, however, Apostol asked whether the default benefitting party could be part of the masses' revolution.
Soledad Soliman was the eponymous character: the daughter of rich businesspeople who supply guns to the government and its army and police force; born with a silver spoon and did not, until she spent a semester in the unnamed, but clearly University of the Philippines Diliman campus, even know how to cross streets or ride public transportation—only having her always available, always ready to help, white limousine chauffeur Manong Babe, and; who was an all-around kid of riches and privileges. That was until she joined a group of activists in the University—out of a pure desire to be part of the movement or out of lust, desire, and love for Jed, her privileged peer/neighbor in an exclusive rich village in Makati, was quite unclear. But she did join and was part of it until the very end.
Out of the three Apostol books I've read, this is the most straightforward. It had a beginning, a middle, a rising action and conflict, and a melancholy denouement. But it was still a dizzying affair, especially since the narrator, Sol, was diagnosed and was experiencing anterograde amnesia. Living in the present in a mansion overlooking the Hudson river in New York, she recalled and recounted, albeit blurry and fragmented, her names and places even interchanging—a convenient avenue for Apostol's love for puns and wordplays, her talambuhay: something she was asked to do while joined in the activist group, but failed to do so. Her talambuhay was confusing at first, but Apostol brilliantly unfolded the events until the end where things were uncannily and weirdly clear.
The book had an overall tone of sadness and struggle: in recalling important memories that constantly evade you; in following a love that was more unrequited than not; in putting yourself in a situation, a group, a cause that felt too vast and too essential that you could never feel an actual part of, and; in recounting, although in fiction, but still potent, the real and actual conflicts and deaths that happened during a very dark time in the Philippine history.
Gun Dealers' Daughter ended with this quote, somewhat spoiler-y, but is a very important and sad reminder and wake-up call to everyone, especially with the upcoming election, to never again vote for the tyrant:
“No one will ever know. No one will tell. It's horrible how we forget the past just like that—we forget how war has killed the best of us. People barely remember her name, the names of those who fell to the dictatorship. The best among us have died. And it is the cockroaches who survive. I told Ed: somehow, it seems to me, we are all guilty of a failure of memory. Ed agreed.”
Despite the singular style of writing in this, the political critique was clear as day in this brilliant book. Those who march and fight against the tyrannical President and his goons and hoodlums would be brought down by discreet violence and secret extrajudicial killings. And those who party and celebrate with him and his Imeldific, bloody elegant wife would survive the storm unscathed. In Gun Dealers' Daughter, however, Apostol asked whether the default benefitting party could be part of the masses' revolution.
Soledad Soliman was the eponymous character: the daughter of rich businesspeople who supply guns to the government and its army and police force; born with a silver spoon and did not, until she spent a semester in the unnamed, but clearly University of the Philippines Diliman campus, even know how to cross streets or ride public transportation—only having her always available, always ready to help, white limousine chauffeur Manong Babe, and; who was an all-around kid of riches and privileges. That was until she joined a group of activists in the University—out of a pure desire to be part of the movement or out of lust, desire, and love for Jed, her privileged peer/neighbor in an exclusive rich village in Makati, was quite unclear. But she did join and was part of it until the very end.
Out of the three Apostol books I've read, this is the most straightforward. It had a beginning, a middle, a rising action and conflict, and a melancholy denouement. But it was still a dizzying affair, especially since the narrator, Sol, was diagnosed and was experiencing anterograde amnesia. Living in the present in a mansion overlooking the Hudson river in New York, she recalled and recounted, albeit blurry and fragmented, her names and places even interchanging—a convenient avenue for Apostol's love for puns and wordplays, her talambuhay: something she was asked to do while joined in the activist group, but failed to do so. Her talambuhay was confusing at first, but Apostol brilliantly unfolded the events until the end where things were uncannily and weirdly clear.
The book had an overall tone of sadness and struggle: in recalling important memories that constantly evade you; in following a love that was more unrequited than not; in putting yourself in a situation, a group, a cause that felt too vast and too essential that you could never feel an actual part of, and; in recounting, although in fiction, but still potent, the real and actual conflicts and deaths that happened during a very dark time in the Philippine history.
Gun Dealers' Daughter ended with this quote, somewhat spoiler-y, but is a very important and sad reminder and wake-up call to everyone, especially with the upcoming election, to never again vote for the tyrant:
“No one will ever know. No one will tell. It's horrible how we forget the past just like that—we forget how war has killed the best of us. People barely remember her name, the names of those who fell to the dictatorship. The best among us have died. And it is the cockroaches who survive. I told Ed: somehow, it seems to me, we are all guilty of a failure of memory. Ed agreed.”
January 22, 2023
that was the longest 249 pages of my life!!! 🤣 i read this book for almost 14 days ata? the chapters were very confusing tapos once na hindi ko na maintindihan, binababa ko na. the 3rd person to 1st person pov transition miss mam Gina did, i'm not a fan huhu. it pains me to rate this 3 stars but what can i do 😭😭😭 the reading experience is not that good that i even sandwiched many books while reading it.
the last 20%!!!!! i mean, it's not suprising anymore but still shocked. just bc he knew something, they killed him.
“even the police keep confusing your names.”
"He told them where to find her body. Somewhere in Batangas. Buried, not gunned down. There had been no shoot-out. The rumors were right. She was mutilated, tortured, as the rumors always said." poor, Soli. lucky Jed and Sol, rich parents at Don ang tatay kaya nakatakbo at nasa abroad.
this book is perfect for those who have books clubs and discussions 👍🏻
some notable parts:
“We live in the world not in the classroom.”
“ ..do we, foreigners here, have a right to comment on this country’s history? We can’t redeem ourselves, we can’t repent, we can’t even look the people in the eye.”
“So what is there to do?”
“Why, rob them blind, of course.”
“If you can’t look them in the eye, rob them blind.”
“If you knew that your parents sold arms that prop up your country’s military dictatorship, what would you do?”
“Don’t you see? We live outside of the country’s rules. We can do whatever we want. We can commit crimes. We can even play at revolution. We could kill people, for all we knew. And then in the end we will always get away. We’re cockroaches. It’s we who are the problem, Jed. Don’t you see?” Sol
“Speak for yourself. I’m no cockroach: I’m going to be part of the solution.” Jed
“No, you’re not. Your fucking family has fucked this country up. You and your family and your goddamned hold on the countryside. I mean, you guys own goddamned Bukidnon or something. You will never be a part. You will always be the problem.” Sol
"It’s horrible how we forget the past, just like that—we forget how war has killed the best of us. People barely remember her name, the names of those who fell to the dictatorship. The best among us have died."
the last 20%!!!!! i mean, it's not suprising anymore but still shocked. just bc he knew something, they killed him.
“even the police keep confusing your names.”
"He told them where to find her body. Somewhere in Batangas. Buried, not gunned down. There had been no shoot-out. The rumors were right. She was mutilated, tortured, as the rumors always said." poor, Soli. lucky Jed and Sol, rich parents at Don ang tatay kaya nakatakbo at nasa abroad.
this book is perfect for those who have books clubs and discussions 👍🏻
some notable parts:
“We live in the world not in the classroom.”
“ ..do we, foreigners here, have a right to comment on this country’s history? We can’t redeem ourselves, we can’t repent, we can’t even look the people in the eye.”
“So what is there to do?”
“Why, rob them blind, of course.”
“If you can’t look them in the eye, rob them blind.”
“If you knew that your parents sold arms that prop up your country’s military dictatorship, what would you do?”
“Don’t you see? We live outside of the country’s rules. We can do whatever we want. We can commit crimes. We can even play at revolution. We could kill people, for all we knew. And then in the end we will always get away. We’re cockroaches. It’s we who are the problem, Jed. Don’t you see?” Sol
“Speak for yourself. I’m no cockroach: I’m going to be part of the solution.” Jed
“No, you’re not. Your fucking family has fucked this country up. You and your family and your goddamned hold on the countryside. I mean, you guys own goddamned Bukidnon or something. You will never be a part. You will always be the problem.” Sol
"It’s horrible how we forget the past, just like that—we forget how war has killed the best of us. People barely remember her name, the names of those who fell to the dictatorship. The best among us have died."
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