What do you think?
Rate this book
The Collected Stories of Gregorio C. Brillantes
Gathered in this book are stories that bear witness to half a century of postwar life in the Philippines: A country doctor reckons with mortality after seeing a dying infant. A young boy fears the end of days on his way home from the movies. Friends throw parties to discuss dictatorships and insurgencies over bottles of whiskey. Meanwhile, a family besieged by rising floodwaters faces a more menacing threat.
Gregorio C. Brillantes, often labeled as a “Catholic writer,” went beyond this calling and explored the possibilities of realist fiction, producing stories that Nick Joaquin considered as “Literature with a capital L” and are increasingly aware of their political milieu—the Marcos regime, the social unrest, and the vacillations of the middle class. Pensive and philosophical, at times funny and parodic, his work attests not only to a mastery of the short story but also, in the hands of a genius, to the capaciousness of the form.
Edited and with notes by Jonathan Chua, The Collected Stories of Gregorio C. Brillantes reintroduces the author in a time of repeated history.
Gregorio C. Brillantes, often labeled as a “Catholic writer,” went beyond this calling and explored the possibilities of realist fiction, producing stories that Nick Joaquin considered as “Literature with a capital L” and are increasingly aware of their political milieu—the Marcos regime, the social unrest, and the vacillations of the middle class. Pensive and philosophical, at times funny and parodic, his work attests not only to a mastery of the short story but also, in the hands of a genius, to the capaciousness of the form.
Edited and with notes by Jonathan Chua, The Collected Stories of Gregorio C. Brillantes reintroduces the author in a time of repeated history.
521 pages, Unknown Binding
Published May 1, 2023
3 people are currently reading
26 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 5, 2025
"To be happy with her, that was not enough, it seemed; with a little effort, one could be happy anywhere; I would embrace pain for her sake."
———
THE COLLECTED STORIES BY GREGORIO C. BRILLANTES is a staggering volume that manages to feel intimate and expansive as it explores lives that refuse to be contained by the page.
Brillantes’ writing is so vivid and so attuned not just to the the textures of daily life but also the subtle shifts in human emotion. That even the smallest gesture – a father lighting a cigarette or a doctor knocking on a wooden door – pulses with the weight of entire histories. You read one paragraph and suddenly it’s not just about a young man driving somewhere, it’s about postwar Philippines and the immensity of growing up in a world still recovering from loss. There’s always something humming beneath the surface that gives off a sense that, yes, everything revolves around these characters, but that they are also mere specks in a vast complicated universe.
And yet these stories never feel alienating. In fact, Brillantes draws you in with his rich descriptions and careful pacing that allows the reader to settle into the rhythm of both sleepy Tarlac towns and chaotic Manila. He is a master of the slice-of-life form and this shows in the way he presents lives not through spectacle but through mood, memory, and atmosphere. Like how a young boy sees his future with strange clarity in one random afternoon or how a group of friends argue about fascism as casually as they do about who won yesterday’s basketball game. You find yourself getting lost in these scenes not because they are especially dramatic, but because Brillantes renders them so truthfully and with such quiet intensity that they feel lifted straight from your own recollections.
What’s also remarkable is how these stories capture the emotional palette of Filipinos – from hope, tenderness, to guilt, and regret – with such precision that they transcend their time and place. Brillantes doesn’t explain or analyze these emotions too. He just shows them with such honesty, like how in one story a son reckons with the emotional distance he’s inherited from his father. These stories might collapse under the weight of sentimentality or cliché if handled by other writers. But Brillantes knows better than to tell readers what to feel. He simply places the moment in front of us and trusts that we will see ourselves in it.
Perhaps no story encapsulates this more than DISTANCE TO ANDROMEDA. Brillantes reminds us in this particular story that while life is more than what we feel, it is our feelings that tether us to everything, including our families, our histories, and our futures.
Brillantes' writing is a masterclass not because he seeks to reinvent the short story, but because he understands exactly what the form can do. And he does it over and over again with such control and grace. The constraints of length are not limitations here, but opportunities. Each story feels distilled and sharpened to its emotional essence. Each lingers and asks questions that echo long after the last line. You come to realize that the mundane is anything but. It is, in fact, where life truly resides.
———
THE COLLECTED STORIES BY GREGORIO C. BRILLANTES is a staggering volume that manages to feel intimate and expansive as it explores lives that refuse to be contained by the page.
Brillantes’ writing is so vivid and so attuned not just to the the textures of daily life but also the subtle shifts in human emotion. That even the smallest gesture – a father lighting a cigarette or a doctor knocking on a wooden door – pulses with the weight of entire histories. You read one paragraph and suddenly it’s not just about a young man driving somewhere, it’s about postwar Philippines and the immensity of growing up in a world still recovering from loss. There’s always something humming beneath the surface that gives off a sense that, yes, everything revolves around these characters, but that they are also mere specks in a vast complicated universe.
And yet these stories never feel alienating. In fact, Brillantes draws you in with his rich descriptions and careful pacing that allows the reader to settle into the rhythm of both sleepy Tarlac towns and chaotic Manila. He is a master of the slice-of-life form and this shows in the way he presents lives not through spectacle but through mood, memory, and atmosphere. Like how a young boy sees his future with strange clarity in one random afternoon or how a group of friends argue about fascism as casually as they do about who won yesterday’s basketball game. You find yourself getting lost in these scenes not because they are especially dramatic, but because Brillantes renders them so truthfully and with such quiet intensity that they feel lifted straight from your own recollections.
What’s also remarkable is how these stories capture the emotional palette of Filipinos – from hope, tenderness, to guilt, and regret – with such precision that they transcend their time and place. Brillantes doesn’t explain or analyze these emotions too. He just shows them with such honesty, like how in one story a son reckons with the emotional distance he’s inherited from his father. These stories might collapse under the weight of sentimentality or cliché if handled by other writers. But Brillantes knows better than to tell readers what to feel. He simply places the moment in front of us and trusts that we will see ourselves in it.
Perhaps no story encapsulates this more than DISTANCE TO ANDROMEDA. Brillantes reminds us in this particular story that while life is more than what we feel, it is our feelings that tether us to everything, including our families, our histories, and our futures.
Brillantes' writing is a masterclass not because he seeks to reinvent the short story, but because he understands exactly what the form can do. And he does it over and over again with such control and grace. The constraints of length are not limitations here, but opportunities. Each story feels distilled and sharpened to its emotional essence. Each lingers and asks questions that echo long after the last line. You come to realize that the mundane is anything but. It is, in fact, where life truly resides.
October 7, 2025
Stories I liked in this collection, in no particular order:
* Faith, Love, Time, and Dr. Lazaro
* The Exiles
* My Cousin Ramon
* The Radio and the Green Meadows
* The Last December
* Sunday
* The Rice Fields
* The Sound of Distant Thunder
* What Shall We Do When We All Go Out?
* The World of the Moon
* The Light and Shadow of Leaves
* All short stories in Part II except for Excerpts from the Autobiography of a Middle-Aged Ghostwriter with Insomnia
* All short stories in Part III
* Faith, Love, Time, and Dr. Lazaro
* The Exiles
* My Cousin Ramon
* The Radio and the Green Meadows
* The Last December
* Sunday
* The Rice Fields
* The Sound of Distant Thunder
* What Shall We Do When We All Go Out?
* The World of the Moon
* The Light and Shadow of Leaves
* All short stories in Part II except for Excerpts from the Autobiography of a Middle-Aged Ghostwriter with Insomnia
* All short stories in Part III
December 28, 2024
This is such an amazing collection. Gregorio Brillantes is a must-read if you are going to study Philippine fiction.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews