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The Quiet Ones
During a regular shift at the call center, Alvin Estrada discovers a way to embezzle money from the American telecom giant for which he mans the phones. Soon a couple of friends join in, and the operation proceeds smoothly up until they quit, vowing to take the secret to their graves. A month later, a phone call at 4 in the morning tells Alvin that the police are on their way.
At once a workplace novel and a meditation on history and globalization, The Quiet Ones is a grimly humorous take on a soul-sapping, multi-billion-dollar industry. In interlocking narratives, it explores lives rendered mute by irate callers, scripted apologies, and life’s menial violence, but which manage to talk back every now and then, just as long as the Mute button is firmly pressed.
Winner, 2017 Palanca Grand Prize
Winner, 37th National Book Award
At once a workplace novel and a meditation on history and globalization, The Quiet Ones is a grimly humorous take on a soul-sapping, multi-billion-dollar industry. In interlocking narratives, it explores lives rendered mute by irate callers, scripted apologies, and life’s menial violence, but which manage to talk back every now and then, just as long as the Mute button is firmly pressed.
Winner, 2017 Palanca Grand Prize
Winner, 37th National Book Award
386 pages, Paperback
First published November 10, 2017
98 people are currently reading
1249 people want to read
About the author
Glenn Diaz
9 books104 followersGlenn Diaz is the author of the novels The Quiet Ones (2017) and Yñiga (2022), recipients of the Philippine National Book Award, and When the World Ended I Was Thinking about the Forest (2022), published by Paper Trail Projects. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Rosa Mercedes, Liminal, The Johannesburg Review of Books, and others. Born and raised in Manila, he holds a PhD from the University of Adelaide and currently teaches with the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the University of the Philippines Diliman.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 100 reviews
December 23, 2017
THE QUIET ONES lures you in with a pitch and an opening scene straight from a crime-thriller, or from a really good game of Clue -- a man with a black bag at the airport, trying to escape from the police. But Diaz unleashes even better literary pyrotechnics to make you stay: scintillating prose that, with Drag Queen-like versatility, shifts from time periods to settings to characters to expose the beating heart at the center of each one of its scrappy characters. It excels both as a piece of fiction and as a remarkable text for the social sciences, by rendering visible the cages rendered invisible by the totalizing processes of global capital. The meandering nature of its narrative could easily be mistaken for messiness or a lack of direction -- if it weren't for Diaz's sparkling writing, which packs humor and tenderness, and centuries of colonial/personal baggage in a single scene, sometimes a single line. Note the ending of the chapter entitled SHOOTING, which appears towards the middle of the book, and manages to humanize a peripheral character, explore the falling-out of a college romance, and deal with the national history of armed struggle in ten pages. Ten pages that prove how much of a talented hoe Glenn Diaz is. The book is 384 pages, so it's best to start reading as soon as you can.
December 6, 2017
The Quiet Ones is about call center agent Alvin who finds himself involved in scamming his employer of tens of thousands of dollars. Set in modern day Manila, the novel is an observationally dense story of Alvin's direction in life -- and the lives of his colleagues, mother, sisters, boyfriend, and others.
I'm not sure where the author wanted to take this story. Do you know how it is when a friend tells you a personal story chock-full of details which you can't get yourself interested about?
If the intention was to communicate the feelings of a Filipino amidst the phenomenon of the business process outsourcing industry, this story succeeds -- I felt both frenzy from the many cultural references, and existential dread wondering where this entire business would take me.
My displeasure may be a matter of taste. However, I found that the novel needed a better editor.
Many thought processes and emotions were explained rather than showed.
Happy to find someone who can get me to see a different perspective.
I'm not sure where the author wanted to take this story. Do you know how it is when a friend tells you a personal story chock-full of details which you can't get yourself interested about?
If the intention was to communicate the feelings of a Filipino amidst the phenomenon of the business process outsourcing industry, this story succeeds -- I felt both frenzy from the many cultural references, and existential dread wondering where this entire business would take me.
My displeasure may be a matter of taste. However, I found that the novel needed a better editor.
Many thought processes and emotions were explained rather than showed.
Happy to find someone who can get me to see a different perspective.
December 27, 2018
I developed a renewed and chastised relationship with the city after reading the novel. There is life in Manila after all: its voice buried alive and drowned by traffic along EDSA, its body crucified and pinned down by towering concrete skyscrapers standing proudly from Ayala to Ortigas. As a commuter living in Makati, and as a former BPO industry worker, the monotonous drag of everyday rush hours has the power to flatten the city to a mere afterthought. For a long time now, NCR has been nothing to me but just a perpetual scab: something to learn to live with, to leave untouched as if it is a natural part of the body, careful not to scratch, not to acknowledge and complain about, lest it bleeds and awaken a hibernating ancient itch.
In a poignant point of the novel, Diaz talked about that very specific liminal space underneath the MRT Shaw station, between Starmall and Shangri-La, where people scamper to reach as soon as the traffic lights turn red. This space, which I both abhor and hold dear (the abject?), is where I used to pass by every day after my graveyard shifts. It provided a collective and momentary sigh of relief and solace with the people I walked with; to me, a temporary shade from the sun at noon, an opportunity to curse the company I worked with after missing lunch yet again due to the series of Australian news I had to (gloatingly) transcribe. This space, this is one of the quiet ones that Diaz gives voice to in his novel; the same space where-even for the briefest of moments-resistance to the capitalist industries that makes automatons out of us happens.
In a poignant point of the novel, Diaz talked about that very specific liminal space underneath the MRT Shaw station, between Starmall and Shangri-La, where people scamper to reach as soon as the traffic lights turn red. This space, which I both abhor and hold dear (the abject?), is where I used to pass by every day after my graveyard shifts. It provided a collective and momentary sigh of relief and solace with the people I walked with; to me, a temporary shade from the sun at noon, an opportunity to curse the company I worked with after missing lunch yet again due to the series of Australian news I had to (gloatingly) transcribe. This space, this is one of the quiet ones that Diaz gives voice to in his novel; the same space where-even for the briefest of moments-resistance to the capitalist industries that makes automatons out of us happens.
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January 5, 2021One review described Diaz's prose as "plain and muscular". These may be on account of its sass and virtuosic wit.
Another review claimed that the novel "pulverized banality". What was once a blur of routine and minor accidents was scrutinized, unveiled and perhaps, "pulverized" with the sheer weight of Diaz's details, dramatic moments, and lively dialogue.
Nonetheless there are some uneven portions within the novel which may be accounted by the writer's stylistic strategy. The novel, after all, paints a multi-faceted picture of the middle-class subject dealing with capital in its various permutations - as fantasy of "ginhawa" (Alvin), as the inevitable intertwining of contrasting subjectivities in a hopelessly globalized world (Carolina and Rey, Karen and Brock), as dealing with one's cultural distance to 'masa' culture (the anthropologist analyzing the Pacquiao phenomenon and Filipinos like specimen), and others. In short, there is not so much a narrative but an intricate weave of characters, circumstances, and their respective decisions.
Another review claimed that the novel "pulverized banality". What was once a blur of routine and minor accidents was scrutinized, unveiled and perhaps, "pulverized" with the sheer weight of Diaz's details, dramatic moments, and lively dialogue.
Nonetheless there are some uneven portions within the novel which may be accounted by the writer's stylistic strategy. The novel, after all, paints a multi-faceted picture of the middle-class subject dealing with capital in its various permutations - as fantasy of "ginhawa" (Alvin), as the inevitable intertwining of contrasting subjectivities in a hopelessly globalized world (Carolina and Rey, Karen and Brock), as dealing with one's cultural distance to 'masa' culture (the anthropologist analyzing the Pacquiao phenomenon and Filipinos like specimen), and others. In short, there is not so much a narrative but an intricate weave of characters, circumstances, and their respective decisions.
February 27, 2018
You get hooked not because of the plot - hardly anything happens in the novel - but because of the articulate, chatty and witty writing style. Most times the vivid descriptions impress. At other times they make for quite some mental gymnastics. Throughout, it was a relatable, almost too honest, "meditation on history and globalization" and ourselves, the Filipino people.
July 7, 2018
3.5 quiet stars.
November 6, 2018
Didnt know where the author wanted to go with this one. Bouts of pretentious monologues in between.
May 25, 2018
Goodness, that was so good. I was stressed with everything else when I encountered this book. Perhaps, this book and I were meant to meet on my downtime (when I was in Zambales, and when I was so lucky to go home earlier than expected).
The story line is a slow-burn, with all the characters introspecting about their lives, their philosophical pursuits, and the little mundane things like traffic and the art of commute. It was a roller-coaster of plot lines and emotions, and all those little tangents and meet-ups being seen, one way or the other. The book is immersive, that even when your (as a reader on a bus or inside the coffee shop) surroundings are filled with noise, you can hear the sighs as you read along. You can even feel the panic attacks, the adrenaline rush and those high-alerted decision points in the novel.
These same sentiments is what I've seen in most of my personal favorites --- Ruth Ozeki's A Tale for the Time Being, Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns, Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven, and Nicole Krauss' A History of Love. If you guys have read these novels I mentioned, be prepared for the same trance of engrossed reading.
Happy reading, guys!
The story line is a slow-burn, with all the characters introspecting about their lives, their philosophical pursuits, and the little mundane things like traffic and the art of commute. It was a roller-coaster of plot lines and emotions, and all those little tangents and meet-ups being seen, one way or the other. The book is immersive, that even when your (as a reader on a bus or inside the coffee shop) surroundings are filled with noise, you can hear the sighs as you read along. You can even feel the panic attacks, the adrenaline rush and those high-alerted decision points in the novel.
These same sentiments is what I've seen in most of my personal favorites --- Ruth Ozeki's A Tale for the Time Being, Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns, Emily St. John Mandel's Station Eleven, and Nicole Krauss' A History of Love. If you guys have read these novels I mentioned, be prepared for the same trance of engrossed reading.
Happy reading, guys!
June 23, 2019
I'm kind of unsure how to rate this book: on one hand I think the way it explored the themes of personhood and belonging was amazing. There's a thing I don't usually see in Filipino novels written in English, the question Alvin poses towards the end of the novel, about how Filipinos are deemed 'better' simply for speaking English fluently. There's a lot that this novel wants to unpack, which I think is pretty much the quintessential Filipino experience: the traces of colonisation vs our efforts to keep up with the demands of globalisation.
Glenn Diaz explores Filipino-hood through the lens of call center agents Alvin, Karen, Eric, and Philip. But we also see the culture from a foreigner's perspective in Carolina and Scott (although the latter only through his conversations with Alvin). Looking at the Philippines and its people through a foreign lens created by a Filipino writer is kind of jarring, but I love how Diaz explores the difference in cultures and backgrounds.
Which isn't to say the novel is all rosy pictures of the tropics and making love in the beach. It's also the overcrowded trains, being unable to reach for your coin purse because you've been jammed like sardines into a jeepney, and wading through the flood in Manila. Tbh I had to pause many times while reading because it was too much: too much like my life and the stress of survival. And I feel that's exactly what Diaz was going for: despite the thriller-type premise of being caught stealing from a mega corporation and being on the run, the novel is also very much an observation of contemporary Filipino life. And boy is it harsh.
On the other hand, I'm not the biggest fan of the narrative style. Some of the sentences felt vague to me and I'm not sure what they actually wanted to say. This gets better once you get used to the writing style, but I'm still not sure about the balance between implying something vs being too vague for the reader to actually get what you are saying. Like I understand some of it is painting the mood instead of a still life picture, but Idk man.
The ending is very modern in that nothing is really addressed except for a feeling of freedom. Which I'm not complaining about. But it would be so much better had there been more solidity to the plot before we got to the ending you know what I mean?
Still glad I read it and I definitely consider Glenn Diaz a writer I should look out for.
Glenn Diaz explores Filipino-hood through the lens of call center agents Alvin, Karen, Eric, and Philip. But we also see the culture from a foreigner's perspective in Carolina and Scott (although the latter only through his conversations with Alvin). Looking at the Philippines and its people through a foreign lens created by a Filipino writer is kind of jarring, but I love how Diaz explores the difference in cultures and backgrounds.
Which isn't to say the novel is all rosy pictures of the tropics and making love in the beach. It's also the overcrowded trains, being unable to reach for your coin purse because you've been jammed like sardines into a jeepney, and wading through the flood in Manila. Tbh I had to pause many times while reading because it was too much: too much like my life and the stress of survival. And I feel that's exactly what Diaz was going for: despite the thriller-type premise of being caught stealing from a mega corporation and being on the run, the novel is also very much an observation of contemporary Filipino life. And boy is it harsh.
On the other hand, I'm not the biggest fan of the narrative style. Some of the sentences felt vague to me and I'm not sure what they actually wanted to say. This gets better once you get used to the writing style, but I'm still not sure about the balance between implying something vs being too vague for the reader to actually get what you are saying. Like I understand some of it is painting the mood instead of a still life picture, but Idk man.
The ending is very modern in that nothing is really addressed except for a feeling of freedom. Which I'm not complaining about. But it would be so much better had there been more solidity to the plot before we got to the ending you know what I mean?
Still glad I read it and I definitely consider Glenn Diaz a writer I should look out for.
July 31, 2020
REREAD (7/30/2020) - 4.5 STARS~ ROUNDED UP TO 5
wala po talagang bearing 'yung nauna kong review dahil mga 3 days lang nilaan ko para basahin 'tong libro az a naghahabol makapagpasa ng final requirements sa klase ni sir eros T____T ayon so binasa ko ulit siya ~2 years later and sobrang ganda T___T
-glenn diaz really said capitalism turns us all into numb, mindless machines and did he stutter tho??? his writing is SO GOOD. it feels...seamless, the way he weaves ideas together. it's like water. i will forever gush about some of the passages he's written here.
-nakakairita si scott ayoko na tuloy mag-anthro chz (i liked his essay tho, even as he romanticizes the sad parts about filipino culture)
-the middle of the book >>>> the beginning and the end (maybe i just don't like alvin lmao). i guess i just cared more about the slice-of-life vignettes about the characters' lives than the actual heist element of the book. the characters feel very real and i loved seeing their dynamics together!!
-i also really really liked the allegorical aspects of each relationship!! it was very interesting to see their dynamics. and come on, the filipinoxamerican and filipinoxspanish relationships couldn't have been coincidences!!
-even though it was the shortest part in the book, i loved eric and gene's story the most T___T
-i also really liked how "it's still me" was repeated throughout. as it was mentioned in the book, the fact that you have to say those words is just proof of how much you've actually changed.
-ang ganda ganda sobrang ganda talaga ng prose. glenn diaz write more books challenge char
PRIOR REVIEW (12/17/2018) - 3 STARS
beautiful but boring
wala po talagang bearing 'yung nauna kong review dahil mga 3 days lang nilaan ko para basahin 'tong libro az a naghahabol makapagpasa ng final requirements sa klase ni sir eros T____T ayon so binasa ko ulit siya ~2 years later and sobrang ganda T___T
-glenn diaz really said capitalism turns us all into numb, mindless machines and did he stutter tho??? his writing is SO GOOD. it feels...seamless, the way he weaves ideas together. it's like water. i will forever gush about some of the passages he's written here.
-nakakairita si scott ayoko na tuloy mag-anthro chz (i liked his essay tho, even as he romanticizes the sad parts about filipino culture)
-the middle of the book >>>> the beginning and the end (maybe i just don't like alvin lmao). i guess i just cared more about the slice-of-life vignettes about the characters' lives than the actual heist element of the book. the characters feel very real and i loved seeing their dynamics together!!
-i also really really liked the allegorical aspects of each relationship!! it was very interesting to see their dynamics. and come on, the filipinoxamerican and filipinoxspanish relationships couldn't have been coincidences!!
-even though it was the shortest part in the book, i loved eric and gene's story the most T___T
-i also really liked how "it's still me" was repeated throughout. as it was mentioned in the book, the fact that you have to say those words is just proof of how much you've actually changed.
-ang ganda ganda sobrang ganda talaga ng prose. glenn diaz write more books challenge char
PRIOR REVIEW (12/17/2018) - 3 STARS
beautiful but boring
April 4, 2021
"One moment, you're convinced he was brilliant, the next, you wondered if it was all just eloquent bullshit."
—Glenn Diaz, The Quiet Ones
—Glenn Diaz, The Quiet Ones
September 14, 2022
Not gonna lie, it took me a while to get into this book. I enjoyed everyone except for Alvin who, I believe, is the main character. I liked the way that everyone's stories came together.
February 28, 2018
Anger, desire, and history on mute. The Quiet Ones follows the intersecting lives of call center agents set in the noise of a country grappling with its fractured identity. There are crimes; there are heartbreaks. But there's also Jollibee, Jasmine Trias, and the kind of happiness that makes Pico Iyer sad. Diaz has accomplished what, in my mind, is impossible, a modern Filipino novel that is funny, thoughtful, critical and *extremely likable*. I am buddy-reading this with @mabidavid and our discussions so far mostly revolve around which characters we would date (Alvin wins but maybe also Scott?). Dating preference and pop culture references (Lorrie Moore!) aside, The Quiet Ones shines when it writes about silences: the unarticulated farewell in mini-chapter Shooting, the agonizing impossible possibilities between ex-lovers in a bus ride, and the mute button, when all else fails. 🔹The Quiet Ones is the 2017 Palanca Grand Prize Winner and is published by BUGHAW, an imprint of Ateneo de Manila University Press.
July 27, 2018
“Regret: it felt rhythmic, like a mild but endless asthma attack. Regret rippled from core to the fringes.”
It’s not hard to love The Quiet Ones by Glenn Diaz. Each chapter of the novel – touching the topics of relationships, greed, and Jasmine Trias, among others – can very well stand on its own yet still perfect when consumed together. I also am in love with how small details were treated in the same level of importance as main points of the plot – making each interaction between characters alive and not solely depend on dialogue. I’ve always been a fan of authors who do not sideline details as fillers for the next big moment in their stories.
Easily one of my best reads. Go pick up this book. Give it to your friends. Basta don’t let this gem pass you by.
It’s not hard to love The Quiet Ones by Glenn Diaz. Each chapter of the novel – touching the topics of relationships, greed, and Jasmine Trias, among others – can very well stand on its own yet still perfect when consumed together. I also am in love with how small details were treated in the same level of importance as main points of the plot – making each interaction between characters alive and not solely depend on dialogue. I’ve always been a fan of authors who do not sideline details as fillers for the next big moment in their stories.
Easily one of my best reads. Go pick up this book. Give it to your friends. Basta don’t let this gem pass you by.
May 25, 2018
We often find comfort in a beginning, a climax, and an end when reading stories. The Quite Ones' appeal does not emanate from this comfort, or expectation, if there is such, but its close-to-'reality' depiction of our every day uncertainties and contradictions. The novel is a depiction of our amorphous Philippine society - juggling between our contested narratives and our looming future, between the right to live and and the demise of our aspirations; and our continuing effort to unclutch our lives from decay.
I agree with one of the reviews: 'the book is a meditation' through the lives of yuppies and expats.
I agree with one of the reviews: 'the book is a meditation' through the lives of yuppies and expats.
August 22, 2018
Forget the crime/thriller plot! This gripping and lyrical novel from Palanca award-winning author Glenn Diaz is more of a meditation on Philippine history and anthropology, and our place in this phenomenon called globalization. Full review on my blog https://princessandpages.wordpress.co...
April 30, 2020
And as a large portion of its narrative made me reminiscent of my first few years in the BPO- vividly bringing my once overburdened self back to memory; I realized this novel wasn't quiet after all.
January 1, 2019
Reading The Quite Ones by Glenn Diaz got me strayed into my thoughts to an unspoken reality of where I’m currently in at the moment – a man of mid twenties, working in a call center, and with personal attachment to the story. You don’t have to have that stature to feel the same, I’m sure enough that by giving this enough time, you’ll understand.
“Something happened when one was alone for too long. A wasting, a peeling off, like the duhat tree outside his window that remained standing even as its leaves had all but wilted. To be sure there was peace, too, a kind of joy, in this inward turn, but weren’t a lot of joy , in this things – ennui, disinterest, nothingness – like peace.”
And I guess, I’ve been alone for too long with this book, given that I read slow. Then thoughts flowed like the conversation that did not actually happened. Thoughts of how I realized it was never bad to think, I know now. Sometimes it’s revolting, but it’s never bad. To question oneself – the place, the life we’re living, the standards of the life we’re living, who we are.
“We are the city! … You see? The city is not a place. It is a social arrangement. Defined by concession. By consensus. It is us. A city ends when there are no longer people to define it.”
And that’s how we are left as destinations and journeys at the same time – us people. I just realized that the places I went to are as familiar as the people I’m with during the journey, or the people I met by being in the place itself. That by being in the place of interest is not the peak of experience, but rather the interaction with the place – the people. And that solo flight and soul searching are still destinations of people – meeting ourselves again. The Quiet Ones showed us different destinations.
And then acts, I thought of acts too. Actions that become meaningless due to repetitions, and at the same time becomes philosophical by contemplating the moments of each act; in between moments of repetitions. Acts I do and I don’t do – smoking, that came to my mind after reading for hours. Taking into Alvin and Scott’s chapter from reading Escape several times before deciding that there’s so much more to delve into the book. Indeed, there are, like that of the act I’ve been thinking of: that of putting in the stick to your mouth; that of inhaling and exhaling a wisp of cloud.
Once a colleague told me to take a smoke only when there’s just so much brooding in your chest; the weight, when it feels so heavy beyond what you have ever experienced. It was one of their thesis nights, he recounted, when he started smoking; one of those nights that he’s the only one working. I thought of those moments, possible moments reasonable enough to considering the weight to smoke. I recounted: I could have smoked during those alienating moments when I thought of having an incurable disease; or those moments when I decided to just drop off everything; possibly the time when I thought of my own death while in front of a person fighting, breathing, to face another day. I could’ve, but thankfully I didn’t. Maybe I’m saving the moment.
Now back to Alvin and Scott, and what I liked about the book – it speaks. It speaks the language of unspoken. I like how it describes how the glass muted the world. I liked how it hurt me to feel that the characters are holding their emotions – like a masochist. (But aren’t we all masochist? Who chose to stay within the grip of fatalism, fatalism which we thought is our comfort zone but is actually the opposite, just because we had what we needed.)
Thoughts…
I like several lines, say one for example,
“Anchors. In a world where distance is a function not so much of miles but of sheer willingness, that’s what we need, that’s what we aspire for. Well, most of us, at least. It’s the antithesis to placelessness.”
Placelessness. A thing in me that makes me out of place is when I don’t know how to articulate what’s inside my thoughts. It’s the lack of being able to say things I wanted to. Or to a more common term, it’s the feeling when we can’t join into the conversation just because we do not have anything to say. Doesn’t have something to say, or does not want to say something, it all leads us to certain distance that makes us feels out of place. And I think these characters not telling everything makes them more displaced, throughout the end.
But more than the book that was finished, what matters now are what was left of its readers. Does the book been insightful to my everyday question whether the life I’m living is an escape or an act of facing reality? It’s not always the answer that I’m looking for, oftentimes another question was enough. In this case as to how much distance must we require ourselves to move forward? The author also mentioned that he has to be at a certain distance to be able to write this, he thinks so. As for him, this is a personal and a political project.
Overall this won’t justify the book. This is barely a statement, thoughts that won’t sleep until written. This is merely a story of an experience of reading the stories of unquiet minds.
September 15, 2019
I first saw of this book at a bookstore and I just knew from reading the text in the back cover that I need to acquire this title for my collection. My bookworm's instinct turned out to be correct. For some reason, I finished this book almost a whole year after I bought it from a bookstore after a harrowing day at work.
The postcolonial Philippine culture is so real in this fictional universe that you can actually taste it as you peruse through the pages. I chose this book as my rainy weekend read. Based on the number of days I refused to reply to friends or stayed holed up in my favorite couch, it did not disappoint. There are some winding paragraphs that tend to veer off track with the main meat of the narrative and was quite distracting (one less star to an otherwise 5-star review), but I guess that's the price the author had to pay to paint an ultra-vivid picture of the country as the backdrop for this Money Heist-like plot.
The author's extensive experience in the Philippine call center or business process outsourcing industry reflects in the adept way with which he set the story as it circled the lives of 4 call center workers. It was narrated with the microscopic details of a true insider, turning the nuances of call center life inside out, literally showing the intestines of this industry to those who have the time to curl up and read. For someone like me who had experience serving foreign clients at work, I find some paragraphs personally relatable.
If a newcomer to the Philippines tells me that he or she needed to read something to get to know more of the modern idiosyncrasies and vagaries of people in the Philippines, I happily recommend this book. For all its literary or editing-related limitations, this thing holds its own. It is a gem of a novel and it holds a special place in my bookshelf because of its unique plot and Glenn Diaz's bold choices in its storytelling.
The postcolonial Philippine culture is so real in this fictional universe that you can actually taste it as you peruse through the pages. I chose this book as my rainy weekend read. Based on the number of days I refused to reply to friends or stayed holed up in my favorite couch, it did not disappoint. There are some winding paragraphs that tend to veer off track with the main meat of the narrative and was quite distracting (one less star to an otherwise 5-star review), but I guess that's the price the author had to pay to paint an ultra-vivid picture of the country as the backdrop for this Money Heist-like plot.
The author's extensive experience in the Philippine call center or business process outsourcing industry reflects in the adept way with which he set the story as it circled the lives of 4 call center workers. It was narrated with the microscopic details of a true insider, turning the nuances of call center life inside out, literally showing the intestines of this industry to those who have the time to curl up and read. For someone like me who had experience serving foreign clients at work, I find some paragraphs personally relatable.
If a newcomer to the Philippines tells me that he or she needed to read something to get to know more of the modern idiosyncrasies and vagaries of people in the Philippines, I happily recommend this book. For all its literary or editing-related limitations, this thing holds its own. It is a gem of a novel and it holds a special place in my bookshelf because of its unique plot and Glenn Diaz's bold choices in its storytelling.
September 20, 2020
This book has easily become one of my favorites. I initially thought that I was going to embark on a call center's embezzlement gig (a rather interesting plot), but the book was more than that. The embezzlement played only a small part of the whole narrative. Glenn Diaz flawlessly painted the beauty/wreck that is Metro Manila, the relationships of seemingly ordinary characters with complex lives, Philippine history, capitalism, romance, and loneliness.
Reading the book felt like reuniting with a friend or a lover that I have not seen for a long time, and re-tracing all the experiences -- the good and the bad -- that I had with them. Everything felt all too familiar.
I don't usually re-read books, but I'm sure to read The Quiet Ones again, maybe two or three times, just because the stories were written so beautifully that I feel I wasn't able to give some parts enough attention.
Reading the book felt like reuniting with a friend or a lover that I have not seen for a long time, and re-tracing all the experiences -- the good and the bad -- that I had with them. Everything felt all too familiar.
I don't usually re-read books, but I'm sure to read The Quiet Ones again, maybe two or three times, just because the stories were written so beautifully that I feel I wasn't able to give some parts enough attention.
April 10, 2020
Diaz sets up his work as a hyperlink cinema-inspired crime novel, with promises of jump cuts, wisecracking prose, amoral “dog-eat-dog” characters, and kinetic descriptions. That’s what it pretended to be for the first few pages, until it becomes completely something else: cartography — a linguistically crafted recreation of the city, an ex-subaltern that has learned to smooth-talk (and is smooth-talked) into hypercapitalism, and its ill-fated romance with everything it arranges as periphery. The characters constellatorily make up Manila, both indigenous and foreign aspects of it, and the heavily semioticized cant and quiet of call-center agents is the language that demonstrates its self-birthing, its self-determination, and ultimately, its self-destruction.
September 6, 2020
The Quiet Ones took my breath away forcing me to stare on its cover after I read its last pages. I feel overwhelming pride relishing the fact that it’s set in the country and metropolis I have a complicated relationship with. I saw myself sitting in the airport lounge, inside the train car braving the sweaty rides, and patiently holding myself together in the godforsaken traffic. In all its tragedy, it is a celebration of cultural identity that we rarely see on our shelves. I’m glad this was such an easy read that I never got tired of its words. In contrast, I found myself again in the wee hours of the night with a light attached on the pages. It’s brutal out there man but it’s really worse here.
January 10, 2020
Thought this is a thriller throughout. I was wrong. It was far better than that. The writer once tweeted that if there were a soundtrack to this novel, it would be Joni Mitchell’s “ A Case Of You” I listened to it. It was perfect.
Things I liked:
-almost everything
Things I liked:
-almost everything
January 17, 2020
call center heist thing. just awesome. so gay. explores the idea of the feeling of placelessness in manila
December 31, 2022
Borrowing a morsel of Woolf's opinion on Howards End (and I say this tentative, vague, with little self-confidence, merely by intuition), this book was written with so much responsibility. Diaz rehearsed astounding, inimitable range of novel writing in his inaugural work (which made it amusing however personally challenging). Its ethos, not missing a beat, its verisimilitude/circumstantiality perfervidly compelling, wanton, lush but certainly never superfluous. One thing I didn't expect from Diaz was his humor, every quip was risible—every throwaway query/sentiment scathingly saddening. Each of his work is an assertion of my college courses' simple assertion in literature (at least what I think they do), novels and histories are inseparable. To quote Gemino, “Memory is Imagination's heartland.”
September 24, 2021
The vivid descriptions of the Manila commute got me. Great debut.
July 18, 2022
I wanted to like this more because the writing is humorous and the setting is interesting, but I am not quite sure where the story is going.
March 7, 2022
What's unique about The Quiet Ones is that it focuses on the whys of the crime. As one of the many readers who expected the novel to dwell on what happens once Alvin and his friends inevitably get caught, I was in for a treat once the novel takes a turn to focus on those who are involved in the crime. Once the novel lures us in to explore the lives of its many characters, we also explore the country the book is set in. Glenn Diaz' writing style provides us both with niche descriptives to help us build the different experiences of the Philippines each character feels and vague descriptives that make the reader want more.
A mesh of 00's pop culture references and raw human emotion, The Quiet Ones hits the spot on what it aims to be: a meditation on history and globalisation. I tend to look back at the novel's blurb when I tend to get lost at some parts. This is not going to be the crime/thriller novel I was expecting it to be, nor was it going to be a novel that was going to intricately describe the inevitable cat and mouse chase that Alvin's scenario brings. This novel focuses on the many backstories and root causes in such an excellent way serving both as literary entertainment and interesting commentary on the political situation of the Philippines. What is also notable is that the commentary on capitalism, globalisation, and Philippine politics doesn't turn preachy, and complex topics such as these three are seamlessly discussed and introduced in such a simple and relaxed way.
A new approach to the labor force in Philippine literature, The Quiet Ones brings us vivid depictions of what it is like to live in the country: whether it may be in the congested cities in the Metro, or in the peaceful solace of the provinces. The novel really deserves the Palanca nod.
A mesh of 00's pop culture references and raw human emotion, The Quiet Ones hits the spot on what it aims to be: a meditation on history and globalisation. I tend to look back at the novel's blurb when I tend to get lost at some parts. This is not going to be the crime/thriller novel I was expecting it to be, nor was it going to be a novel that was going to intricately describe the inevitable cat and mouse chase that Alvin's scenario brings. This novel focuses on the many backstories and root causes in such an excellent way serving both as literary entertainment and interesting commentary on the political situation of the Philippines. What is also notable is that the commentary on capitalism, globalisation, and Philippine politics doesn't turn preachy, and complex topics such as these three are seamlessly discussed and introduced in such a simple and relaxed way.
A new approach to the labor force in Philippine literature, The Quiet Ones brings us vivid depictions of what it is like to live in the country: whether it may be in the congested cities in the Metro, or in the peaceful solace of the provinces. The novel really deserves the Palanca nod.
March 5, 2021
Nope. Not worth it. Disappointing.
I purposely breezed through this because I wanted to get this over with.
Diaz is good in building the setting, sure, but I felt he fell into the usual pitfall most POC authors find themselves in when they’re trying to be relevant, i.e., they put way too much information in descriptions, almost as if it renders the reader dumb and clueless about anything that isn’t in the West.
Sure, your average reader won’t be as familiar - if at all - with having EDSA as the setting compared to the gridlocks in Los Angeles or even Mexico City, but this book is so talkative I had to skim through so mant paragraphs just to keep myself sane (which, by, the way, I have to clarify didn’t make a single dent on me being to comprehend the plot).
Even the characters are overly described that I’m led to believe that the author had this precise photo of the characters in his mind and we must see them that way too.
A “meditation” on history and globalization? Sure. Buy it’s a history that belittles the reader’s ability to infer context clues on their own regarding this new, unfamiliar, Southeast Asian setting (wow, how trailblazing!) and a narrative far too chatty.
That doesn’t mean to say Diaz isn’t skilled. He is, and that is what frustrates me most. Who failed most was the editor. There were too many irrelevant descriptions. As I said in my past update, this could’ve been a hundred pages shorter.
I purposely breezed through this because I wanted to get this over with.
Diaz is good in building the setting, sure, but I felt he fell into the usual pitfall most POC authors find themselves in when they’re trying to be relevant, i.e., they put way too much information in descriptions, almost as if it renders the reader dumb and clueless about anything that isn’t in the West.
Sure, your average reader won’t be as familiar - if at all - with having EDSA as the setting compared to the gridlocks in Los Angeles or even Mexico City, but this book is so talkative I had to skim through so mant paragraphs just to keep myself sane (which, by, the way, I have to clarify didn’t make a single dent on me being to comprehend the plot).
Even the characters are overly described that I’m led to believe that the author had this precise photo of the characters in his mind and we must see them that way too.
A “meditation” on history and globalization? Sure. Buy it’s a history that belittles the reader’s ability to infer context clues on their own regarding this new, unfamiliar, Southeast Asian setting (wow, how trailblazing!) and a narrative far too chatty.
That doesn’t mean to say Diaz isn’t skilled. He is, and that is what frustrates me most. Who failed most was the editor. There were too many irrelevant descriptions. As I said in my past update, this could’ve been a hundred pages shorter.
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