Soledad's Sister

by Jose Y. Dalisay, Jr.

A casket arrives at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Manila, bearing the body of a woman manifested as "Aurora V. Cabahug" - one of over 600 overseas Filipino workers who return as corpses to this airport every year. The real Aurora, however, is very much alive, a karaoke-bar singer in the distant town of Paez; the woman in the box must be her sister Soledad who used Rory's identity to secure a job in Saudi Arabia. No one knows for sure how this woman died; the body bears signs of foul play and abuse, and now waits to be claimed at the airport.

A Paez policeman, Walter, is assigned to drive out to Manila to pick up the body, accompanied by Rory. Both Walter and Rory, who vaguely know each other, find their own lives redefined by the sudden return of the dead: Walter has been left by his wife and son for a new life in England; Rory feels herself standing on the brink of great prospects, ambitions that her sister never achieved. Somewhere on its long way home, the body gets stolen, and things get even more confused than ever.

Genres: Fiction, Mystery, Asia, Novels, Asian Literature, Read For School, Literary Fiction

204 pages, Bookpaper

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Dr. José Y. Dalisay Jr. (Butch Dalisay to readers of his "Penman" column in the Philippine STAR) was born in Romblon, Philippines in 1954.

As of January 2006, he had published 15 books of his stories, plays, and essays, with five of those books receiving the National Book Award from the Manila Critics Circle. In 1998, he was named to the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) Centennial Honors List for his work as a playwright and fictionist.

He graduated from the University of the Philippines in 1984 (AB English, cum laude ), the University of Michigan (MFA, 1988) and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (PhD English, 1991). He teaches English and Creative Writing as a full professor at the University of the Philippines, where he also serves as coordinator of the creative writing program and as an Associate of the UP Institute of Creative Writing. After serving as chairman of the English Department, he became Vice President for Public Affairs of the UP System from May 2003 to February 2005.

Among his distinctions, he has won 16 Palanca Awards in five genres (entering the Palanca Hall of Fame in 2000), five Cultural Center of the Philippines awards for playwriting, and Famas, Urian, Star and Catholic Film awards and citations for his screenplays. He was named one of The Outstanding Young Men (TOYM) of 1993 for his creative writing. He has been a Fulbright, Hawthornden, David TK Wong, Rockefeller, and British Council fellow.

Reviews

[Marion · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Aurora v. Cabahug" - so steht es auf den Namensschild an dem Zinksarg, der am Manila Airport ausgeladen wird. Allerdings ist Aurora als Nachclubsängerin " Rory" quicklebendig: Es war ihre Schwester, die mit geliehenem Pass als Dienstmädchen in Saudi-Arabien arbeitete und nun tot ist. Rory und der Polizist Walter machen sich gemeinsam auf den Weg, um den Leichnam nach Hause zu holen. Nach einem schnellen Imbiss ist das Transportfahrzeug und die Leiche verschwunden. Alles wird noch verworrener als zuvor.

"Da waren Haushaltshilfen, Köche, Fahrer, Tänzer, Klempner, Konstrukteure, Schweißer, kräftige Seeleute und andere Vertreter aller möglichen Dienstleistungen und Gewerbe, die ihre Küchen, Ställe, Klassenzimmer, Fruchtstände, Videoke-Bars, Schuh- und Gummifabriken verlassen hatten auf der Suche nach besseren Jobs – auf tobender See oder brennendem Sand, von Singapur bis Stockholm, London bis Lagos, Riad bis Reykjavik, in zwielichtigen Kaschemmen und auf Bohrinseln, in Pflegeheimen und Konservenfabriken, Welle um Welle über all die Meere und Ozeane hinweg, die ihre Inseln umschlossen."

Dalisay erzählt lakonisch und teilweise zynisch aus dem philippinischen Alltag und von moderner Leibeigenschaft.
Vom Schicksal dieser Arbeitssklaven, die sich in die ganze Welt begeben mit dem Traum eines besseren Lebens.
Von Menschen mit guter Ausbildung ohne eine Zukunft im eigenen Land, von Korruption und Geberlaune der Regierenden, von Kleinkrimminellen und Rebellen. Von den Arbeits- und Lebensbedingungen sowie das Abhandenkommen eines würdigen Sterbens in einer Gesellschaft, die fast nichts hinterfragt oder beachtet.

Rorys und Walters persönliche Geschichten zeichnen das Abbild dieses Landes.

Spannend und atmosphärisch reich liest sich diese "Kriminalgeschichte".

Die Philippinen werden literarisch von uns kaum beachtet, obwohl auf den mehr als 7.000 Inseln des Archipels ca. 100 Millionen Menschen leben. Dazu zählt auch Jose Dalisay, 60 Jahre. Er ist der bekannteste und meist ausgezeichnete Schriftsteller der Philippinen. Dalisay ist Professor für englische Literatur an der Universität der Philippinen.

Für mich mal wieder ein Lese-Highlight der anderen Art aus der Reihe der Büchergilde Weltempfänger, die für litarisches Reisen und immer überraschende Einblicke, in noch zu entdeckende Literatur aus Afrika, Asien, Lateinamerika und der Arabischen Welt steht.

Immer wieder ein absoluter Lese- und Lerngenuss auf jeden Fall eine Leseempfehlung.

[Ｆｒａｎｋｈ · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The truth was never just one person's story, or one version of what happened, never a shining absolute but an often filthy and ragged compromise that took not only godly patience to piece together, but also the devil's sureness of the worst of human nature."

This was one of the few books that stayed on my shelves for a very long time and I was only able to pick it up now because I knew I had to include it on my Book Diet schedule for this year at long last. Now I've always considered it a great, humbling experience every time I would come across a novel to which I had no kind of expectations for or familiarity with whatsoever; and yet it'd ultimately fill me with clear-cut emotions that defied almost a logical explanation for their being. Jose Dalisay's 2008 fiction Soledad's Sister was exactly just that. It tackled really hard truths with an almost ethereal glow of optimism in its pages while still being able to leave readers an incompleteness that refuses to become whole. It's a troubling experience that personally made it unforgettable.

At its heart, it's an unmistakable tale of two sisters steeped in sweetness and tragedy, both as a hopeless and a fruitful examination of what happens when certain family conflicts never get resolved or find a happier ending. It's also primarily a novel that is so simple and straightforward in concept because it's rather familiar; yet another story that concerns overseas Filipino workers and the loved ones they left behind. Such a story has now become an insistent archetype dealing with themes of loss and opportunity as portrayed through countless middle and low-class Filipinos journeying to foreign lands to become more or less minimum wage workers (more specifically as caretakers) since it seems to be the only decent option to financially provide for their families back home. There is something immediately tragic with this storyline and Dalisay quite deftly approaches the subject with surprising empathy that for me was uniquely devastating. This has a sincere delicacy to it that can be haunting.

The premise is this: a casket with the corpse of one Aurora Cabahug arrived to an airport to be picked up by her next of kin. It turns out that the real Aurora Cabahug is alive. She is an ambitious twenty-one year old singer in a karaoke entertainment bar somewhere in the humble district of Paez, who is taking care of a nephew whose mother hasn't stayed in constant contact with for several months now. It was the police officer and Walter Zamora who notices this anomaly. Retired from a life of investigating brutal crimes, Zamora had met Aurora one night in the bar and could not forget her and so he was eager to fix the mistake concerning the wrongfully identified remains of Aurora's older sister Soledad, who used her identity to get another passport. What follows is a deceptively murder mystery scenario where readers might expect Walter Zamora to "solve" the puzzle on how and why Soledad Cabahug died.

They would be mistaken to expect something like that to take place so I must caution anyone not to get stuck on this promising style of narrative because Soledad's Sister is foremost an intimate and leisurely tale about forgiveness and second chances; but mostly it's about hope--what it truly means to hope and live in hope against all odds that would state otherwise; and why there's a recurring painful pattern to that practice. That is the real mystery that can never be solved.

What I love about Soledad's Sister are the lavish descriptions and introspective passages about the two main characters, Aurora and Walter. I find myself drawn and readily sympathetic for them. Dalisay knows how to make readers care about these people which was why I was invested to know how this story will end. He was able to build up both Aurora and Walter with respective strengths and admirable qualities and then, much like with real people, expose us with their harmless deceptions, deep-rooted fears and insecurities and failures along the way. I feel like I know them very well and not at all as soon as the novel wraps up. And the wrap-up itself is just as frustrating. The ambiguous ending could be the defining quality of Soledad's Sister as a whole and it would depend on the type of reader you are on how you would perceive its rather unfair conclusion.

If you're a completeist, then this book could be seen as a waste of time because the characters you've learned to root for didn't get a grand pay-off to their emotional struggles. But if you're like me and you enjoy the constant intrigue of a story that is not supposed to be about endings but of beginnings in the first place then you will appreciate the heartfelt and poignant message of Dalisay's book.

His prose is something I really fell in love with; it was magnetic and rife with uncomplicated subtext and imagery that get under your skin quite easily; while also persistently character-driven in its scope, with a sadness in its delivery that's almost akin to tasting one's own sweat and tears. This distinguishing flavor in his prose had rendered me speechless every now and then.

"But duty, she thought, was also a kind of love, perhaps a superior one, even; it had always been about duty, about doing the right thing by and for others, even if they didn't know it, and no matter what it cost."

My favorite character, ironically enough, is Soledad Cabahug who was already dead when this novel began. She was rather pitiful; a woman trapped within the prison of her own guilt for what happened in the past; and yet there are small moments when she was also brave enough to hope for better horizons even if she prioritizes penance and sacrifice as a person. It has made her so deliberately dull without any dreams of her own unlike her younger sister, but it made me love her more deeply. The quoted statement above was written in her point of view of things which demonstrates what a selfless creature Soledad Cabahug is which can also be seen as her foremost flaw. That quote summarizes her as a person and her inclinations to give more than receive something in return.

Her relationship with Aurora was so moving and uncomfortable all at once. I can liken it to the unexplored theme of emotional separation and distance between Frozen characters, Elsa and Anna which were left fully unexplored because that cartoon must have the happier Disney-twist. Removing that and we get what Soledad and Aurora's relationship as sisters who spent their lives not understanding or knowing one another in spite of living under the same roof but barely interacting meaningfully in a regular basis. It's a more realistic portrayal of such a tragic and fragmented sisterhood and I really appreciated the way Dalisay took his time weaving these emotions within the framework of their respective personalities and struggles.

Overall, Soledad's Sister has the near-perfect simplicity and elegance that one may never expect from a two-hundred paged novel. It has heart and soul and the author has a great understanding on what makes characters sympathetic and easy to root for. It's definitely worth the purchase years ago.

RECOMMENDED: 8/10

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[kwesi 章英狮 · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I and my family went to Hong Kong last 2007 to enjoy our summer vacation, it only made our summer worst like an acupuncturist pin you with thousand of needles one at a time, slowly but surely. It was a nightmare that until now I can't help but to regret everything I spent to that trip but one thing that really struck me most, it was the number of OFWs or Overseas Filipino Workers in Central, Victoria Park.

You can't imagine, the whole park was populated by Filipinos who works as a nurse, domestic helper, drivers and many more. They went there to mingle with co-Filipinos and have their spare time relaxing and picnicking with friends. There are also stores that sold Filipino delicacies and products like our local junk food, canned goods and instant noodle. Even a foreigner or newly worked Filipinos can feel the presence of the spirit of his own culture in Victoria Park. When you are planning to go to Hong Kong don't forget to visit Victoria Park, I'm sure you'll enjoy the view and the chirping voices of everyone, and we're lucky enough that my cousin had a friend there working and she guide us to the park. It was the whole replica of the Philippines in a very small rectangular land of Hong Kong.

How many Filipinos do you think died every year because of maltreatment of their employers? Well, only 600 of OFWs died every year and they were played by their employer like a toy that they didn't even think of a single soul living to the body of the innocent worker. When I heard that my cousin was willing to go to Israel to work as a caregiver I was shocked and I want to force her to stop, fortunately she successfully went to Israel and worked like what she planned and met a Jew family that cared her. Not all of them really have the chance to meet nice people, but what really forced them to work outside the country?

When you tried to search the word OFW or google it, you will see 5,990,000 results are currently been searched by Google in .14 seconds. That must be so impossible for a librarian to look for but the numbers of results have two in common, it was the promised work and money you'll get abroad. How promising, it was like watching a TV commercial that repeats every 10 to 30 minutes that persuade the watchers to buy the product. Money and work, yes, we need them to live but if you are willing to work and gain money you don't need to go outside the country and become a slave. It's because people don't have contentment in life. They want more money so they work outside, they want foreign goods they went outside, they want green bucks they went outside and so on. WTH, can we even stop thinking of other countries and tried to work our countries political showbizness?

The event in Jose Dalisay's book, Soledad's Sister, happened in the Philippines but the story mentioned a lot of places around the world like Hong Kong, San Francisco, Jeddah and many more were Filipinos migrated and worked to sustain the needs of their family back to their country.

The story evolves in the three main characters, two still alive and the other died to unknown incident, they have different stories to tell and each have different problem to be solve. Soledad Cabahug corpse delivered to NAIA International Airport to be received by her family, 26, lost and drowned. Before the incident she was dedicated to her work to be a nanny of a King's son to save money for her son and sister's future. Aurora Z. Cabahug or Rory a promising singer and worked as entertainer at Flame Tree, she lives with Sole's son in an expensive subdivision. When SPO2 Walter G. Zamora, a policeman who had been forgotten by his family and wife who worked outside the country, received a letter from NAIA and fall in love to Rory. They went to Manila and received the corpse of Soledad and in a minute the corpse was stolen by an unknown thief. What really happened to the corpse of Soledad? Will Rory find light and peace after the incident? Will Walter find his true love and his family in Marikina?

The characters of the book are unforgettable they are well developed but the writer. But the problem of reading this book is the changing perspective of every set of paragraphs and sometimes the whole chapter, nobody knows whom and nobody knows what really they discuss. The whole book not only relates to the life of OFW but also relates to the problems of the whole society. If I only have the chance to write a journal or an article to our school newspaper, no doubt I'll write articles related to the society's anxieties.

The story end up open to readers, there is no ending and it was like you are still in the beginning of everything. There are still questions that may ask like What really happened to Soledad before she died? I asked myself the question for a week and I understand why, because some OFWs died without any reason or cause because they were guarded by national guards. If I can still remember if you worked in a King's household, the national police are not allowed to investigate the cause of death but to stay the decaying body for three days. It must be so awful for the family of the victim not knowing the killer.

A friend of mine reviewed the book and mentioned lack of identity. It must be but not in the point of lacking her own personality identity but the personal identity that we search for the freedom of the victims. They are unknown, they become shadows and they become lost memories of everyone.


I can still remember that we bought adobo for lunch and Filipino made soft drinks that replenish me again. Next time don't try to visit places that no one can speak English. Picture taken from Central, Victoria Park.

Rating - Soledad's Sister by José Y. Dalisay Jr., 4 Sweets and the tragic events of every OFWs who worked hard abroad and abused like animals. (It's been awhile that I write reviews and I really missed reading books again. Swear, a week of no reading was like living in an island alone. My most loved review. Complimentary copy from Anvil and special thanks to Fanta and Gege of Flips Flipping Pages .)

Challenges:
Book #24 for 2011

[Kristel · Rating 3 out of 5]

2008 can be considered a high watermark for the Philippine novel as Jose Dalisay, already an established name in Philippine letters (as well as columnist, academic, and untiring blogger), came close to bagging Asia’s most coveted literary award.

His quirky hybrid of a novel, Soledad’s Sister has been a literary triumph even before seeing print. It is included among the five shortlisted novels for the first ever Man Asian Literary Prize. Beating other English-language works from much more robust literary scenes like India and China, the Jury calls Soledad’s Sister, “a work of warmth, humanity and confidence."

The story begins with a casket arriving at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport. Charmed by Dalisay’s dry wit and tongue-in-cheek imagery, we follow a series of mishaps that causes the body labeled “Aurora Cabahug” to take the place of another Filipino OFW, one Filemon Catabay, in the tarmac, much to the annoyance of his family. To add to the confusion “Aurora” isn’t even the corpse’s name, having borrowed it from a younger sister, very much alive and singing her heart out at a karaoke in the far-flung town of Paez.

Snagged into this confusing web is the unlikely hero, a has-been cop whose faint affections towards Paez’s songbird compels him to take on the duty to drive the grief-stricken Rory (the live one) to fetch Soledad (the dead one) and bring back to their hometown.

What happens after is a sort of morbid road trip, two people going through a long and lonely journey through the countryside. For the younger sister Rory, fetching her sister’s body is a filial duty, compounded by guilt for taking all her sister’s sacrifice and hard work for granted.

The exiled cop, SPO2 Walter Zamora, however, it is his time to go back to the city he once called his home, the bustling and often dangerous Manila. His return brings back memories of infidelity and betrayal, a botched kidnapping rescue, and a young girl who disappeared from his life at a 7-11.

Oh, and the body is stolen on their way back.

Dalisay himself has dubbed this tale his, “glorious mess of a novel,” and in many ways, it is. The story itself touches upon many narrative tropes and conventions, turning them over their heads in ways that are often surprising.

Take Walter Zamora, the cop, one of the stock characters in every Filipino action movie. Fernando Poe Jr. or Erap Estrada has never played a policeman quite like this, however, he who prefers the company of an undemanding cat rather than human contact and who considers answering crossword puzzles the highlight of his week.

Throughout the story we catch glimpses of his young, more reckless self, probably with the trademark swagger of an action hero. But the man facing Rory is already a tired gunslinger, resigned to oblivion in Paez.

Rory Cabahug, the karaoke singer is a character described with much warmth and compassion,–a certain zest for life. She prefers Karen Carpenter to Edith Piaf and is unapologetic about it, but at heart, she is a vulnerable girl who suddenly finds herself acutely alone in the world. She will need to find her own strength to live a life that is not chained by duty, the way her Ate Soledad’s existence had been.

If there is an aspect to the story that comes short, it has to be the ending–it loses some of its steam and finally putters off to uncertainty. In the beginning, there has been teasing suggestions of a crime novel, but there is no dramatic final revelation about the culprit or the repercussions of the crime. Soledad’s gruesome fate in Jeddah is only disclosed to the reader as an omniscient aside, bearing no significance for the living. Even a Johny-come-lately carnapper’s entry to the story seems to simply make a point about the randomness of life rather than anything more substantial.

Ridiculous side trips and all, however, does not deter from the fact that the accolades have been deserved. The story never runs out of twist and turns, examining pertinent and often sensitive issues like the Philippine Diaspora, crime and corruption without sinking into sermons or invectives.

Cynical yet still hopeful, audacious as it is fumbling, it is a sincere ode to our own glorious mess of a city, of a culture, of a country. Everything is left to the imagination, with only a quiet but steely optimism. Ironic for a novel that starts with a dead body in an airport.

Read more.

[Krizia Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked "Soledad's Sister". I just love the familiarity of the book. I find myself at times trying to connect to a book but I can't because it happened in New York, Egypt or Hogwarts, somewhere I've never been to. But this one is just too close to home. I find myself saying "Been there and done that", like when Walter and Rory ate at Aristocrat near Malate Church. How many times have I eaten chicken BBQ at Aristocrat in Malate? I also love how Butch Dalisay narrate personal histories. Even minor characters are given life by Dalisay by letting us take a peek at their lives, something that will make you connect to them more. The story itself is so personalized and well-thought of that you'd think its non-fiction, that it really happened. I can just imagine myself watching TV at home while Walter and Rory are filling a complaint at the police station. However, I still felt at times that it would have been best if conversations were in Filipino because I find myself translating the dialogue.

The story was open-ended, a lot of questions left unanswered like what happen to Soledad? What will happen to Rory? How about Walter? I'm very much intrigued. I do hope Dalisay would make a short story just to satisfy my curiosities especially about Soledad and her time in Hong Kong and Jeddah.

[Rise · Rating 3 out of 5]

"The Woman in the Box", the title of the first chapter of the second novel by Filipino writer Jose Dalisay, recounts the story of Aurora Cabahug's journey as a corpse in a casket from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, to her home country. Aurora was one of millions of Filipino workers scattered all over the world who left the Philippines in droves in order to bring home the dollar, or riyal or whatever currency can fill empty pockets. Lacking sufficient source of income at home, they were swayed into working day jobs abroad to earn enough for a few years and then come home to live the Filipino dream. There's a profession for every determined person.

These were the maids, cooks, drivers, dancers, plumbers, draftsmen, welders, able-bodied seamen, and other purveyors of sundry services and trades who had left their kitchens, pigsties, classrooms, fruit stands, videoke bars, shoe factories, and vulcanizing shops in search of better jobs—in roiling sea and burning sand, from Singapore to Stockholm, London to Lagos, Riyadh to Reykjavik, in backstreet bar and oil rig, in nursing home and cannery, in wave after leaping wave across all the seas and oceans that ringed their island.

In exchange for financial gain, they had to make the sacrifice of leaving their children, spouses, parents, siblings, and friends. They had to brave the discrimination and abuses that some intolerant foreigners heap on them. Sometimes Filipino women who were taken in as domestic helpers were maltreated by their employers. Along with hard-earned dollars, some were unlucky enough to also earn bruises, scratches, and marks of flat iron on their back. Some had to escape their place of work and run to the Philippine embassy to report the physical assault and torture they suffered under their cruel employers. One also hears of news reports of a Filipina leaping from a high building in order to escape male employers who were about to rape them.

The government, instead of creating attractive jobs at home, was complicit in this diaspora. Grateful for the cash that their Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) bring home, the government hailed them as bagong bayani (modern-day heroes). Their sacrifices and martyrdom were a big factor in bolstering the economy. Those who were hardworking and lucky managed to come home moneyed and triumphant. But some 600 of them—the likes of Aurora Cabahug who was dead from a mysterious drowning and Filemon Catabay who was beheaded for some reason—yearly arrived in Ninoy Aquino International Airport in boxes, sealed tight and properly tagged with names and other identifying information.

Soledad's Sister is a darkly comic novel of Aurora's premature homecoming. The tragedy is not lightened by the frankness of the telling but the comedy is so potent it brings silent chuckles with its prose alive with brilliant asides, snides, and scathing ironies.

And so it happened that a family of seven had come all the way in a jeepney from Lingayen to meet and to claim the two segments of Filemon Catabay, who had been executed three months earlier. They had learned of his death the way many others did—after it happened, from a routine news report on DZXL, between an involved discussion of a movie star's rumored abortion and a commercial for a new and more potent livestock dewormer. The man's mother was gutting fish when her grandson ran in with the news; the fish she was holding trembled in her hand and then leapt out altogether in a final spasm, as though it had come back to life.

It was a case of corpse switching. It was a mistake, like every mistake and quirk of fate that materialized in the rest of the novel's trajectory. The body in the box was that of Aurora's, not Filemon's. The cause was a switching of the documents in the hands of an inconsiderate and vengeful vice-consul.

Dalisay used an irreverent omniscient narrator so powerful that he (the narrator) had recourse to every detail from what's being reported in radios to what the fish did after its last moments on earth. The seamless enjambment of scenes delineates the fickle narrator's switching from one detail to another. The narrator did not lack for things to say about certain characters introduced in the novel. In fact, new characters are still introduced even until late in the game. The narrator was without let up in describing things and people and their background and their circumstances in life. At the same time, he seems to be the harbinger of the fateful happenings in the story. Just like what the real Aurora, Soledad's sister, observed:

Who knows why people do what they do? Every day we do things we ourselves don't understand, although they seemed to make sense when we did them. Why is that? Can you tell me?

Who knows why novelists do what they do? The narrator will not tell but he sure will describe every nook and cranny of whatever, whatnot, anything his mind alights on. The rest of the novel's plot ambled along according to this principle of random-like addition of story elements. But instead of swiftly panning from one area of interest to another, the narrative started to linger longer on every character. This had the effect of killing the steam of the story. The pace rather flagged in the end such that the masterful, darkly comic start devolved into a solemn exercise in writing descriptive passages. It became a bit monotonous when its embrace of its initial conceptual framework began to loosen.

Nevertheless, Dalisay consistently cultivated at the heart of his tale a paradox as universal as it is inscrutable. Something to do with a person's pining for and expectation of something right, something better, something that will improve her station in life. When the overseas worker is far from home, there is no contingency for which she is ever prepared for. Her loved ones, for their part, are no less ready for any externality. Just like that.



Soledad's Sister is in the shortlist of the inaugural 2007 Man Asian Literary Prize .

[Fantaghiro23 · Rating 3 out of 5]

(Review adapted from my original review, published at Coffeespoons: http://fantaghiro23.blogspot.com/2011...)

This is the first Philippine novel to be shortlisted for the distinguished Man Asian Literary Prize in 2007. I remember reading about the Man Asian at that time and finding out about Dalisay's shortlisted novel. And I recall thinking, "Well, that sounds about right." After all, Butch Dalisay is one of the country's premier writers.This much is evident when you read Soledad's Sister.

The summary for Soledad's Sister is entrancing. A coffin arrives at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport in Manila, but the name on the coffin, Aurora Cabahug, is not the actual identity of the body. Rather, Aurora is the sister of Soledad, the body in the coffin. Soledad used her sister's name to acquire a job in the Middle East as a nanny, leaving behind her son in order to earn more money to secure their future. There, however, she died, and though there are traces of foul play, her death is unsolved and her body is sent home.

Rory, the sister, receives the news in her far off province where she works as a club singer. She sets off on the long journey to fetch her sister's body and is accompanied by Walter, a policeman who exiles himself to Rory's province after he was left by his wife and son. When they finally get the body, however, it is stolen from them and, according to the back cover, "things get even more confused than ever."

What I liked about Soledad's Sister is the lyricism of the writing, the surprising turns of phrases that I would stop at and think about, such as this one referring to Walter's hesitance to answer his sister's calls:

"He rarely answered and never instantly; sometimes he called long-distance when he was in strange places and assaulted by a sudden fear of being devoured headfirst by yawning oblivion."

Moreover, Dalisay has created wonderful character studies for all of his characters, main and minor alike. I felt like I knew them all: Soledad, who has to leave her child and family to seek her fortune in foreign lands; Rory, who dreams of making it big through her innate singing talent; Walter, the down-and-out and all-too-fallible cop who still tries to act according to his principles. Even the airport personnel, the local politician, and the body thief are painted excellently. We know their background and motivations, and these people seem very real.

The narrative shifts point-of-view from one character to another, so we enter even Soledad's thoughts during her first trip abroad to Hong Kong. This also allows us not only to know the characters themselves, but to know how the characters perceive each other. In my opinion, it all aids to the roundedness of Dalisay's creations.

Everything seems to be revealed. Except, of course, the ultimate knowledge--why did Soledad die?

And this is where I felt that the book could've been much more, could've said much more. It felt like the story was just beginning. I've read other reviews saying that the way it ends reflects our lack of identity. But if I had a peso for every writer, professor, or personality who talked about lack of national identity... Does the unending discussion about lack of national identity actually help find national identity? Or does it just perpetuate this perception and leave no resolution?

Personally, I don't mind books without a resolution. If it makes sense not to have one (e.g., McCarthy's No Country for Old Men, Tana French's In the Woods). But given that everything else was revealed, that there was no constraint about point of view, that we were given access to Soledad's thoughts and experiences, the holding back of this last piece of information--why and how she died--did not seem organic to the entire story.

Who knows, though? Mayhap Butch Dalisay will write a sequel or an epilogue to the story. Because, if we're going to talk about Filipino identity, I think we deserve to be known and to know ourselves. I think our story needs to be told. And I, for one, would like Soledad's story told until the tragic end.

Setting aside my preferred story changes, though, I still think Soledad's Sister is a book that people should read, particularly those who are into literary fiction. The writing itself is both beautiful and accessible. And for Filipinos, it presents familiar characters and situations that may evoke unity and compassion for fellow countrymen. For non-Filipinos, it speaks of the third-world, postcolonial experience in our part of the world. Moreover, however you want the story to end, I think it's the kind of book that will leave you thinking about it way after you're done.

[Gunnar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ein Sarg trifft am Flughafen Manila ein. Eine tote philippinische Gastarbeiterin in Saudi-Arabien. Das Schild sagt, in ihm liegt „Aurora V. Cabahug“. Doch der Polizist Walter Zamora in der Provinzstadt Paez, der ein Telegramm erhält, um die Angehörigen zu informieren, weiß sofort: Das kann nicht stimmen. Denn Aurora, genannt Rory, ist die Sängerin und Hauptattraktion im „Flame Tree“, im örtlichen Nachtclub. Dort hat er sie erst gestern quicklebendig gesehen.

Und so macht sich Walter auf, um hier Licht ins Dunkle zu bringen – auch wenn ihm nur bedingt gelingt. Irgendwann machen sich Walter und Rory auf nach Manila, um den Sarg abzuholen und dabei geschehen weitere unvorhergesehene Dinge. Währenddessen wird in Rückblicken die Geschichte von Soledad erzählt, Rorys Schwester, die mit dem Pass ihrer Schwester als Arbeitskraft nach Saudi-Arabien gegangen und nun in einem Sarg zurückgekommen ist.

Das war es, worum es in diesem Land wirklich ging: Distrikte, Grenzen, Absperrungen, die dich daran erinnerten, wo du hingehörtest und wo du standest. Diese Dinge zu vergessen, war der Anfang vom Ende, und Walter hatte nicht vor, noch einmal diesen Weg zu gehen, Besonnenheit war nun seine Parole, Besonnenheit und Umsicht, das Vermeiden von unnötigen Konflikten – von denen es, Gott wusste das am besten, mehr als genug gab in Walters Welt. (Auszug Seite 88)

Autor Jose Dalisay ist in seiner Heimat einer der bekanntesten Autoren und Herausgeber und schrieb diesen Roman bereits 2008. 2023 erschien „Last Call Manila“ in deutscher Übersetzung, laut Tobias Gohlis, Chefjuror der Krimibestenliste, der vermutlich erste übersetzte philippinische Kriminalroman. Obwohl man den Begriff schon weit dehnen muss, zwar kommt ein Kriminalbeamter, eine Leiche und eine Reihe von Verbrechen vor, aber ansonsten geht es hier eher nicht genretypisch zu.

Aber das soll hier nicht als Kritik gemeint sein. Lakonisch und mit schwarzem Humor erzählt der Autor über den schwierigen Alltag, vor allem über seine Hauptfiguren. Walter ist ein besonnener, abgestumpfter Polizist, der sich möglichst konfliktfrei durchs Leben manövrieren will. Rory ist die junge Frau mit Talent und Träumen, die es aber bisher nur in den Nachtclub ihrer Heimatstadt geschafft hat. Und Soledad erzählt vom unglaublich entbehrungsreichen Leben der Filipinos, die im Ausland harte Arbeit verrichten, um die Daheimgebliebenen zu versorgen. Mit möglichem bösem Ende inklusive. Jose Dalisay hat hier einen kurzweiligen Roman verfasst, der interessante Einblicke in die philippinische Gesellschaft bietet.

[Denise Nayve · Rating 4 out of 5]

I got this at a discounted price because the cover was folded. I am very glad I grabbed this book by impulse.

An OFW's body gets sent home from Jeddah with the name Aurora Cabahug. Her cause of death is unknown. Apparently, the real Aurora Cabahug is very much alive singing in bars and entertaining customers. The dead woman is her sister Soledad who took on her identity. Aurora then retrieves the body with Walter, a policeman. The body goes missing along the way.

Basically, the teaser at the back said it all. I kind of expected a bit more after the body got stolen.
The story focuses on relationships, life and death as well as the realities faced by our OFWs.

The exposition is amazing. The way things were introduced and exposed were smooth and neat. The story doesn't get draggy and it encourages you to keep on reading. The reader is introduced to characters that come and go, characters that have passed but are gone now.

This book is very close to home , close to the situation of OFWs and people who live in the Philippines. The book plays out like a film with different perspectives and focuses. It also tackles the realities in relationships.

It leaves us with question of
"Do people just really disappear that easily from our lives?"
It delves into the thoughts and memories we have of people we have lost in our lives. It actually hurts at some parts when they actually try to recall how they have lost the important people in their lives.

I love this book. The ending was really a cliffhanger for me. I felt I needed to know more. However, I think that was the point of the book. It's a great read.

[Kareen Jean · Rating 4 out of 5]

A BOOK REPORT ON “SOLEDAD’S SISTER”
By Jose Dalisay

The novel starts with a woman in the box identified as Aurora Cabahug arriving at the Ninoy Aquino International Airport. Her death certificate would simply say that she had died because of “drowning” in Jeddah. However, the real Aurora also known as “Rory” is actually alive, and works as a singer in one of the karaoke-bars in the town of Paez. Walter, a Paez policemen, has delivered the telegram to Rory and she has known the news about her sister’s death. Soledad, Rory’s older sister, has borrowed Rory’s name so that she can work in Jeddah after having been blacklisted on her first job in Hongkong. The story tells us that Soledad came back to Philippines pregnant after she had an affair with the son of the couple she worked for. The story continues when Rory and Walter claims the body and somewhere along the way back home, their car is stolen by “Boy Alambre”, a well-known carnapper. When Boy Alambre finds out the casket inside the car, he pushes it into a black river, about six feet above the landing’s edge. However, the thief is taken along and drowns with the corpse. In the end, Soledad died in the water having no identity.

The story is set in Metro Manila and one of the Southern provinces in Luzon named Paez which will take 6 hours of travel to the capital. As they travel to claim Soledad’s body, Walter and Rory passed by Laguna described as a “concrete arch on the highway with a seamless stretch of rice fields fringed by coconuts.” The narrator has also compared Paez from other places in the Philippines using the point of view of Walter. He has said that Walter thinks “there were Filipinos who grew up and grew old dreaming of mountains and oceans of places like Paez on the far side of a big island – but he knew, in the same way, that one could drive for hours and see nothing but ocean on the one side and coconuts on the other, so large was the land, yet so familiar.”
The time in the story is in the early 2000’s where the first models of Nokia phones are still a trend, where newly developed subdivisions named as Bagumbayani Village are constructed and where some parts of the place are still dark with the rebels hiding and somewhere in the place of Paez. There’s also “The Flame Tree”, a karaoke-bar with a large concrete-girdled hall on a hilltop overlooking Tanglawan Beach. The Flame Tree are usually visited by most of the cops, the town’s vice-mayor and Koreans which has become their past time as they drink their beers and listen to Rory singing their favorite songs.
As you read the story, you’ll noticed that the characters are portrayed to be ordinary Filipinos living a simple life. Soledad who has an introvert personality has always tried to be a good sister to Rory. After the fire which caused the death of her parents and her younger brother, she has always blamed herself about the accident and has promised to take good care of Rory. On the other hand, Rory grows up to have an opposite personality of Soledad. She likes singing and has many friends and suitors. Soledad is the witness of how good Rory has become.
These sisters may have different personalities but has given us insights how sweet and caring Filipinos are. Despite being orphans, they still learn to live and love with each other’s helping hands. Soledad decided to work abroad in order to send Rory in college and buy a house in Bagumbayani Village. To help her sister, Rory took good care of Nathan, son of Soledad. However, she has not told Soledad yet that she stopped schooling and is already working as a singer in The Flame Tree.
Since Rory lives in Bagumbayani Village, we think that people who live in a “village” are the average and rich status. The Bagumbayani Village first opened as Candiville named after the wife of the mayor of Paez, Candida. Then, the village has become a place for the mayor and his family, the mayor’s relatives, businessmen and those rich people in Paez. Politicians are usually rich and in order to maintain their status, they have the tendency to control the place they’re governing at. The Candiville Village was then changed by the mayor’s new wife to dispose the predecessor’s legacy and expose her historical awareness naming it “Bagumbayani Village” as an honor for the “bayanis” or heroes in the Philippines. However, Filipinos usually name their businesses based from the owner’s name. This practice is still very present nowadays.
Moreover, Filipinos have shown very much importance in helping those in need and not giving up easily despite the difficulties. Walter who is a policeman has done his job well. Though we often think of policemen as “pulis patola” – a good-for-nothing cop, Walter has helped Rory despite the trouble that they get through. We would know that Walter was left by her wife and son because of another woman. He may have a bad past, but he has shown us that people change.
Rory has thought of him as a “good-for-nothing cop” but has assured herself that Walter is certainly unlike any policemen she had met. She said “Not that she had met many in Paez, or even in Del Monte; but those she had were either potbellied, gun-happy porkers or rheumy uncles put out to pasture, all of them with noisy and long-winded stories to tell about bank robberies and whorehouse raids, after they’d had a couple of beer. SP02 Walter Zamora was unlike that.”
Rory has also pointed out that “English is what makes us Filipinos world–class.” In her conversation with Tenny, the town’s vice-mayor, she has said that “in this world, you can’t get very far without English.” That’s why she always try to pronounce the words properly every time she sings in the karaoke-bar. As we can see, most of the Filipinos think this way. We usually consider those people who speak English well as educated. English has become our basis in classifying how educated a person is.
On the contrary, we may also be wondering why Soledad did not take courage to fight and tell the boy not to “touch” her. I was really confused if she likes the boy that it was okay for her that they’ll have sex or she just really felt powerless that she wasn’t able to fight. However, I cannot also blame Soledad for that. She grew up to be alone and had no friends or suitors. After what the boy did to her, I think Soledad decided to just obey what the owners tell her and has expected that she will lose the job soon.

As we read the story, there are instances that make us wonder why the characters have decided to do this and that. In case of Soledad who had been deported in Hongkong, she was very brave that she was really willing to travel abroad for the second time using Rory’s name. If you consider the period she lives, a lot of Filipinos want to go abroad because most of them think that they would get much money compared here in the Philippines. Soledad has even said to Rory, “I want you to finish college. I want to keep the house, I want Nathan to grow up and become an engineer.” These have become the reasons why Soledad has to work again in another country.
Rory obeys her sister that she willingly stands as a mother of Nathan. She must have lied to her sister about her schooling but I think she is happy for what she decided. Soledad wanted to let her study “Accounting” because I think it’s a practical job but Rory stopped and decided to follow her passion which is singing. However, “Privately, Rory still wished that she could finish at least a computer or tourism course at a vocational institute, just to have something to put in that space on the resume sheet that always wanted to know about your “Education,” even for a job that only required you to sit with strangers and endure their runny after-shaves and even runnier palms.”
The news of knowing the death of a few Filipinos abroad must be very painful to the families and also to us, Filipinos. Since we value family so much, we always want the best for our family. To repay Soledad’s noble deeds, Rory has promised that she’ll give a proper burial to her sister. However, in the end, both Rory and Walter have lost someone they loved. Walter lost his wife and son who are now in England. Also, he is still not sure where to find his mother and sister for they have transferred a new house. While Rory, Soledad’s sister, doesn’t know where and how to find the body of her sister. Soledad is just like a bubble who vanishes in a thin air, that no Filipinos except from her relatives or families, have not known her death.
Literature is one way of defining our country and its people. The novel has become a means to share to the world about the Philippines, the Filipinos and its culture. Through the novel, the Filipinos are portrayed to be on its search for “identity” that will differ us from Asians or other nationalities. This novel has become one of the important contributions in the Philippine Literature for it has successfully expressed to the world about the Filipinos and has left us a question to critically think and answer. “Who really are we?”

The ending of the story has given us something to think about. It tells us that Soledad is just one of the OFWs who were unfortunate in going abroad. And it’s true because it happens for real. It may not be an OFW’s death, but oftentimes most OFWs are abused by the owners they work for. Then, their death has reminded us to ask “Who is he/she?” and “Why did she/he die?” However, as time goes by, we forget what happens to them especially if they are not our family or relatives. In the end, Soledad died being unknown in Jeddah and also unknown in the Philippines. For short, she’s gone and people won’t remember her death.
The ending may be that way but the novel has given us “bond” that Filipinos share. As we read, we’ll know that this is Filipino culture or this is Filipino tradition. By reading the novel, I understand that I am Filipino because this is our culture and our tradition that we practice. I can relate to the stories because I have learned, heard and experienced those. I may not have met other Filipinos abroad, but we become one because we share the same culture, and practice the same tradition.
Philippine Literature let the Filipinos realize that we should be proud of who we are because our country, the Philippines, has ancestors who had fight thousands of wars in order not to be slaves of their own land, OFWs who have worked very hard just to support their loved ones, heroes who willingly sacrificed their lives to free us from the enemies and the younger generation who will shape the future. And through literature, it has successfully shared the meaningfulness of “who really are we?”

[Andrea Aguas · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the type of story you hear from OFWs, airport workers, police officers, and those who dream of distant lands—creating a fantasy of an easy life for the sake of themselves and their families.

The best thing about this novel is how solidly the characters are written. Everyone has a background, even the minor ones who appear in only one or two scenes. These details do not make the storytelling boring or dragging. In fact, they enrich the mise-en-scène, grounding each part of the story and showing its relevance to the character currently in focus.

Another thing I liked about this novel is how it tackles such a niche topic—ironically so, in a country where many people work abroad to provide for their families. Why aren’t the dangers of working overseas discussed as openly as they should be? Because doing so destroys the fantasy of attaining a life of abundance in exchange for hardship. That concept still runs deep in Filipinos who endure low wages and unfair treatment in the workplace.

All in all, this book highlights not only the hardship of choosing to leave one’s family to care for another, but also the extent of the sacrifice one must bear—not for their own benefit, but because someone at home needs nurturing, care, and above all, a better, more comfortable life.

[Rafael Cañete · Rating 4 out of 5]

A flight from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia arrives at the Ninoy Aquino Airport and unloads its passengers and cargo, among them a casket containing a dead woman.
The overseas workers’ office in Manila then sends a notice to the police in the woman’s home town, a certain town by the sea called Paez, to inform her family and fetch the body from the airport.
Paez policeman Walter Zamora is surprised to read the notice. For the Aurora Cabahug he knows is very much alive. Actually, he just saw her last night.
Such goes the inciting incident of Soledad’s Sister, the second novel of UP professor and Philippine Star columnist Jose Dalisay. An earlier short story, The Woman in the Box, served as the basis of the novel; it was actually included as a part of the first chapter. In 2007, Soledad’s Sister was shortlisted as for the Man Asian Literary Prize, the Asian counterpart of the Man Booker Prize in Great Britain.
There are actually other reasons why one should read Soledad, other than its international recognition and the subject matter of overseas contract work that is too familiar for Filipino readers.
First, there are Dalisay’s elegant use of language and detail-rich narrative. Dalisay is fond of using compound sentences, reminiscent of Nick Joaquin’s kilometric sentences that are packed with information as they are long, so sentences seem little stories by themselves. However, Dalisay’s sentences never lose their focus. When read aloud, they smoothly roll off the tongue. For instance:
“… Rory had to remind herself that the word ‘love’ went around the Flame Tree like a five-peso coin given in change and then left on the plate, a paperweight on the receipt, for the waiter’s tip; it wasn’t event enough for Rory’s tricycle ride home.”
The Rory referred to in the excerpt is the 21-year-old star singer of the town nightclub, that is frequented by the vice mayor and Korean engineers alike, the Flame Tree. Rory is nickname for Aurora Cabahug. Yes, she’s the real Aurora, and the dead woman is actually her elder sister, Soledad. Soledad had “borrowed” Aurora’s identity so she could work in Jeddah as a housemaid in the home of a Saudi royalty.
So this novel is basically Soledad and Aurora’s story. However, Dalisay gives even minor characters their own stories: the security guard in the airport, the overseas work agency officer who sent the claim notice, the family who arrives in the airport to claim the body of a kin who was beheaded in Saudi Arabia – which make the novel read like a narrative collage with Soledad and Aurora’s story as the centerpiece.
Other writers would have rendered the story in social realism of the dead serious kind. Dalisay takes another path instead, opting to inject humor in the narrative. The humor comes as depictions of Filipino contemporary life that are inherently comic, for example, the municipal council meeting sounding like an orchestra, what with the members’ cellphones ringing with fancy tunes. Moreover, the depictions don’t strike as satirical, meant to criticize, as what humor in high literature is often used. They are simply depictions of the way of life of a people who never forgets to laugh even in the midst of tragedy. Efforts like these are a breath of fresh air for a literary tradition that has taken itself a little too seriously.
With all these, Dalisay seduces the reader farther into the narrative, offering promises.
When Rory asks Walter to help her find how her Ate Soli died, I expected the rest of the story to be Rory’s quest for justice for her sister: police investigation, a string of new names, an overseas trip abroad.
Then the casket containing Soledad’s body slips into the river along with its thief. I though it simply as a plot twist to complicate things. Rory and Walter would surely find ways how to dredge the casket up from the river bed.
The last two chapters of the novel tell about Soledad’s stay in her employer’s home in Jeddah. There were insinuations that she was murdered. The novel ends with the assistant coroner chatting with his friends at a lounge on the subject of the dead woman washed ashore from the sea. How and why Soledad murdered – and who – no one would ever know.
The novel has ended when it should be just starting.
Until now, I am still reading between the narrative’s words for Dalisay’s intention with the abrupt ending, to no avail. All I can think of why the novel ended that way is that Dalisay is probably on a deadline, no time left to do research. Sol Stein said: don’t write a novel on a deadline.
Soledad’s Sister has done what overseas work has done to Soledad and to the rest of the 600 OFW’s who had gone home as bodies in boxes: it promised a lot but failed to keep them.

http://mithibookblog.wordpress.com/20...

[Serg · Rating 2 out of 5]

the plot is all too familiar to any pinoy. the characters are like someone we know: kamag-anak, kaibigan, kakilala, kamag-anak kaibigan or kakilala ng kakilala ng kakilala! its all too realistic that at times i felt i was not reading a fiction but learning something more about persons i know or i thought I knew. and that's the way life is in our social and political millieu. it is so real even in the slow, and sometimes dragging unfolding of events or facts of life that i begun to yawn towards the middle... only to be waken up by a startling revelation about soledad and aurora, two of the main characters, at the point that i was already tempted to call it quits because of sheer buryong. and then it gets even more exciting only to find yourself in the last pages... bitin! but such is life with all the loose ends crying out to be completed!

[Talya · Rating 4 out of 5]

The novel starts with a dead woman on her way back to the Philippines. She died while working as a maid in Saudia Arabia. When her body makes it home a police officer recognizes her name as a singer in a club and goes to find the real Aurora M. Cabahug and tell her about the body. The dead woman is Aurora's sister, Soledad, who took her name so she can go abroad. The story is told by many flashbacks of the characters lives. The flashbacks, especially the dead sisters bridge together to make the story. I hope to find this book in US bookshelves soon as I think it is an important work. Filipino migration is a theme in the book.

[Aloysiusi Lionel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stream of consciousness at its sophisticated wrench! A character would come over, and his life would penetrate your being, like how a jeweled dagger could slit a throat longing for some violence. Words came out and they overshadowed the reader whose wild wandering was guided by the authorial pen's command of metaphors and allusions. I'm glad my hands had the opportunity to have savored a gem of letters.

[Marien · Rating 3 out of 5]

Soledad's Sister was a story full of investigative thoughts that you really have to ride on with, it wasn't really hard to understand though. And the story is acceptable enough for me who doesn't really read local books. But I should admit that Filipino books/novels are good too. and it made me proud!
:)

[Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this book as it shows what lengths Filipino Oversees Workers go in order to have a job abroad and by extension Mexican immigrants face the same challenges in the US without the government protection because they are there illegally. While the Filipino Oversees Workers are in their hosts legally, they are treated as 2nd class people in which they have no rights to protect themselves in case their employers decide to hurt them.

Domestic workers are treated badly by the host country, as if they have no rights (like Mexican migrant workers in the US). Meanwhile, the airline made a mistake and sent the wrong body home to the Philippines and the man's family made a 6 hour trip across rough terrain to get the body only to be told be security it was the wrong body they got mixed up. As usual, it turns out the Philippines system of tracking patients was not streamlined since the computer used was not working. Just as predicted, public restrooms in the Philippines are dirty.

Walter is a policeman whose wife, Bessie and son left him for England. B/c he had an affair with a 17 yrs old girl named, Noemi, his wife begged him to go abroad with her to start a new life. When he hesitated, Bessie decided to take matters into her own hands and leave him anyway. He was a smart cop who was interested in the world events and could not care less about police departmental politics.

Meanwhile, Rory is a night club singer whom Walter has a crush on. Rory had success as an entertainer of Korean men. She would sit with them and talk with them much to the chagrin of other workers. She was not a good student so he channeled her ambitions towards something she was good in, namely singing. Her voice made clear she had a future as a singer but her adamant insistence that she kept her father's last name was holding her back from stardom. The 60 yrs old Nick was Rory's mentor in matters of music who traveled the world as an cheap Asian musician and told her of her untapped potential. Although the place where she worked tacitly condoned prostitution off hours, Rory rebuffed suitors and used the excuse that she had to care for Nathan, her nephew. Although Rory did not like the fitness buff Vice Mayor, she was flattered that a man of his stature would want to be seen with her and she liked to think that he told her things that he would tell no one else. She wanted Tenny to trust her as a woman. Suddenly, her life flashed before her eyes as the successful singer she was born to be.

So Walter and Rory went on the 6hrs drive towards Manila with roads that are not so well made and new constructions of roads just to remind the Filipino's that the government is doing something in an election year. Rory asked Walter to investigate Soledad's death for Rory. Walter comments on the tricycles as the bane of every driver in the provincial road. Soledad was a DH who was good with people and an excellent caretaker of people so she stopped school though she was smart and went abroad so that Rory could continue her schooling in the Philippines. Walter could not understand how anyone could leave their child alone. He was also surprised by Rory’s genuine grief.

Whereas Soledad was compulsively and crippling pious and felt she deserved to be punished and to atone for some unspeakable heinous sin b/c their mother gave her a nurse figurine, Rory wanted to have fun and lived the care free life she once had as a girl. Since their mother knew that Rory had a natural inclination towards music, their mother gave her a music box and she secretly knew that Rory's love for music would take her far. Solidad was jealous of Rory's could fortune and the fact that her mother favored her. Rory describes the time when her mother found out that she had breast cancer and her father knew found out and had a lot to say to her but no amount of words could adequately convey the feeling he felt for his wife. B/c Solidad felt unfairly dissed by her parents, she accidentally burned their house down and killed her parents and brother in it, she has ever since tried to do penance for her actions. In the end, their common misfortune tied the two sisters together despite their different temperament. While Solidad was fatalistic about her destiny since she believed she did not deserve a good life after accidentally killing her parents and brother, Rory believed that she was destined for greater purpose since she survived a fire that consumed the rest of her family.

After the fire, Soledad retreated into herself and became the extended family's doormat since she never complained about anything and people thought she was happy serving others and reading books. Even though her mind was excited by travel and other places, her family was shocked when she dared to go to Hong Kong to be a maid. When she was the Lau's maid, Hendison, a horny 17 yrs old boy who spent his time looking @ porn at night b/c he did not have the experience nor the money to enjoy himself with other women, mated with Solidad. Their mutual curiosity of what the pleasures of the flesh would bring forced them to have sex. I like how Solidad thinks of the male flesh as simply the scope of God's creation to be enjoyed.

Soledad was amazed at her boldness in accepting Hedison's advances and welcomed subsequent couplings until she became pregnant. Nancy meanwhile blamed Chester for their maids pregnancy. After becoming pregnant, Soledad went home and began building her home piece by piece to replace her old home she burnt down. She spent all her time indoors praying and reading the world news whereas her sister Rory was trying to defend her honor. Soledad always took care of Rory's needs and thought duty to ones family as the highest form of love one can execute. So, Soledad decided to go to Saudi since her savings were running out and she still needed to spend for Rory's college education and finance her home. Soledad told Rory about a DH who was raped by her boss and as a revenge killed his 13 yrs old daughter then killed herself. Apparently, in the Philippines, there is a sorority of grief where women would tell their depressing stories and cry over them.

In Jeddah, SA, Soledad felt excitement in the new adventure that she was about to undertake in Jeddah as nanny to a Saudi princesses children. Despite horror stories of the golden cage which DH are subjected to in foreign places, Soledad went for the money that she would receive in funding her dream house and her family back home. That is the reason that the US has to develop Mexico so the influx of immigrants could be nullified b/c it is the promise of gainful employment that makes them leave their families and go to the US.
Although their passports were immediately taken from them once they arrived Jeddah, the princess was nice to Soledad at first thus making her worry less about the horror stories of Jeddah. Although Soledad felt a pang of regret not being able to be next to her son, Nathan, she believed in God's will being done even if she has to live in Saudi Arabia to fulfill it. Despite Soledad's filling of loneliness for a man by her side, she thought that her duty to serve supersedes all other considerations even personal companionship.

The prince kept a mistress in Paris while the princess a deeply unhappy woman who was kept in the house but was schooled in the US attempted suicide. Meenakshi wanted Soledad to come with her to meet the princes, manservant, Yusuf. So, they met Yusuf and suffered from an untimely death just like the help before them. B/c they were poor servants and nobodies, their death was not investigated. Yusuf apparently kills the maids in order to steal from his master and blame it on the "runaways".

Rory sensed she could trust Walter though she also sensed that he had a certain disquiet that was eager to be released with the right penetrating questions. His silence consoled her. Rory began to see his silence as a challenge to tease him out of his shell. At age 21, Rory, who was used to men incessant pawing at her, was a virgin who was ready to lose her virginity to the right man at the right time. She wanted to give her virginity up to their local Vice Mayor, Tenny Yap.

Meanwhile, Walter was reminiscing on how he met Noemi when he was part of Metro Manila's anti-kidnapping task force who he promised protection b/c she was involved with the unseemly drug lord named Charlie Uyboco who was kidnapped by 4 armed men. Noemi was working at a massage place named Joyluck Steam which specialized in a happy endings and became the favorite place for Charlie to visit. To Walter, the Philippines is about sharp demarcation of where people stood and the prudence to avoid unnecessary conflict. Noemi disappeared from the Walter's life never to be seen by him again. Walter wants to know what happened to his sister and mother so he called the Sarge and asked him to find the envelope containing information regarding his family members.

Walter thought it is interesting how fate threw them together in a forced togetherness. While the force of Rory's loss hit her belatedly, Walter thought Rory's helplessness was endearing. But Rory suddenly noticed that the van with their dead sister was now gone.

It was Jomar, a thief who hated police men and who wanted to be a sailor all his life, who stole the Tamaraw with Soledad's body in it to sell to a gang who needed his services. When Jomar discovered Soledad's body in the back, he was instantly revulsed since he feared the dead who haunted his waking hours. But cold calculated reason of job well done combined with the promise of money made him rethink running away but instead get the job done. He tried to tie the casket so he could get rid of the dead body but inadvertently tied the rope to his ankle so he drowned when he pushed the casket over into the river.

When Rory snapped out from her sadness b/c of her sister's death, she vowed to go abroad and be better than her sister in making something out of her life. Since she wanted to go abroad and could no longer use her name, she thought of paying an unemployed person so she could use that person identity to go abroad. She wondered that if the music box went to Soledad instead of her if that would make a difference in the outcome of her sister's tragic life.

[Hanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I decided to read more Filipino literature this year, and this was the first novel I read that wasn’t because of a requirement for school. I chose this since I’m already a fan of Jose Dalisay’s Facebook posts (I highly suggest you give him a follow if you want a reprieve amidst the endless video ads.) I find them to be endearing snapshots into his everyday life, and I’m enamored by his prose. It’s fluid but has a sense of rigid structure at the same time.

This novel centers around three characters. Aurora is a bar singer in a small town called Paez and she’s joined by Walter, a world-weary cop who treats this far-flung place as his personal limbo. However, the story starts off with neither of them. We begin with the third character, a dead body arriving in NAIA’s cargo bay. The corpse is tagged as Aurora but we quickly find out that this is Soledad, her sister who left home to work as an OFW in Saudi.

One might think that this would turn into a mystery novel, but it is nothing of the sort and I don’t think it pretends to be that. It’s not an action-packed story and Walter’s gun remains holstered the entire time. We are treated to a road trip instead as Aurora and Walter leave their sleepy seaside town and descend into the madness of Manila to pick up her sister’s body. Dalisay’s writing style has a hint of nostalgia, and as their van moves forward we inversely work backwards and catch glimpses of their past lives that tie the story together. The real mystery is not a whodunnit for the characters to solve, but a puzzle for the readers to put together.

Another thing I liked about this book was how familiar it was for me. I finally got to read a story where the setting and nuances were things I’ve encountered in real life. At the same time, his writing is slightly reminiscent of Western authors that I admit I’ve spent more time reading. You would be surprised to find that joining two familiar elements together does not immediately make for a boring story. The novel is still very much a stranger that you can get acquainted with as you go along reading.

Overall I felt like the novel was able to get its message across despite being quite a short story. In many ways, we are all a faceless speck in a sea of so many. We can be nothing more than a statistic in the grand scheme of things, but to our loved ones we are their whole lives. This novel takes these two sisters from being just a number and brings them up close, right under our noses, and asks us to take a good look. It demands that we don’t shy away from the harshness and vagueness of a reality that might not be ours but is very close to home.

[Bea · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Rory had to remind herself that the word love went around the Flame Tree like a five-peso coin given in change and then left on the plate, a paperweight on the receipt, for the waiter's tip; it wasn't even enough for Rory's tricycle ride home."

This book follows Police Sergeant Walter Zamora as he escorts the body of a woman—mistakenly identified as his sister, Soledad—back to their provincial hometown. The real protagonist is Soledad’s younger sister, Aurora, a bar singer whose life has been shaped by Soledad’s disappearance abroad. As the truth about the dead woman’s identity unfolds, Aurora confronts her sister’s sacrifices and the harsh realities faced by many Filipinos working overseas. The novel becomes is a powerful reflection on family, loss, and the search for dignity in difficult circumstances.

I had to pause every time I read a revelation about one of the characters. Although I was quite confused in the middle with the turnout of events, I enjoyed the impact this novel left on me as I reflected on what love can make a person do and the extent of what can be done for the people we truly cherish.

[Pep · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a lovely book. Best to go into it knowing little about the main plot, which is quite thin anyways. The book is really more about slowly uncovering the motivations of its characters, whose layers are continually peeled back over the course of the book until we realize that we have only scratched the surface of their stories and aspirations. There is a deep empathy also shown towards all the bit part side characters, given their own little backstories and motivations. You get hooked on one small character's life before being whisked back away to the main plot, never to see them again.

It took me a while to get into the style of the book, with its long, drawn-out sentences and non-linear style. But by the end, I was really hooked, and the central mystery of the story felt almost irrelevant; this book was more like a snapshot of a particular moment in time rather than a neat, self-contained story.

[Achim ('akim) Schmidt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Was tief verwurzelter Katholizismus gepaart mit Korruption aus einer Gesellschaft macht ist allgemein bekannt. Wenn jedoch noch systematischer Sexismus und Armut auf der einen und dekadenter Hyperreichtum auf der anderen Seite dazu kommt, führt dies zwangsläufig zu Verhältnissen, wie in diesem Buch beschreiben.

Dass Saudi-Arabien wenig Rechte und unendliche Doppelmoral aufweist, sollte allgemein bekannt sein. Wie prekär jedoch die Situation für viele Sklavinnen dort ist, insbesondere wenn der Katholizismus, Korruption und systematische Armut dazu kommen, schildert dieses Buch.

Leider ist der Schreib- & Erzählstil schwer zugänglich und erinnert an einen zu heissen Sommerabend. Traum, Wirklichkeit, Gegenwart, Vergangenheit: Alles vermischt sich irgendwo in einen Art Fiebertraum, der aber regelmäßig durch brutale Tatsachenbeschreibungen wieder geerdet wird.

Ich würde gerne mehr Punkte vergeben, aber der Schreibstil und die teils wirre Struktur hat es mir nicht einfach gemacht.

[Jom · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’d give it a 4 if only I didn’t feel like the ending was rushed. Blow after blow, we are presented with the tragedies of poverty; the plight of the OFWs, of being a woman, of being a Filipina. I’m not sure why the main conflict just arrived 2/3 in the book and got ambiguously ‘resolved’, but I’m guessing it’s to make us feel of the author’s value: to the corpses’ life over her death; to what happened before to what happens now.

Soledad’s Sister can easily become a cinemalaya classic, depicting the gritty truth of working abroad and working as a GRO. It’s hard to finish the book, not because it is bad, but because you know this small account of abuse and murder happens on a daily. To the readers; it’s a text to consume, to most; it’s a reality to live.

[Cleo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dalisay writes like a 19th century poet where the plot itself is not the story, but rather the lives of each individual character provides texture and color, and ultimately drives the story forward.

I like the visceral storytelling. It evokes memories of places familiar in a bygone time. Nostalgic and relevant at the same time. But the original mystery that drew me to the book doesn't get resolved and I wonder what's the point of that. It's an unsatisfactory ending in that it teases questions that doesn't get answers. Is that the point? That the dead are ultimately mysteries... That each person has a truth that is unique to them. Who they are is privileged information made up of flashbacks and thoughts and interactions.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

A compressed, lyrical novel that nevertheless deftly manages a large cast. I most admire how carefully even the most periphery character is humanized, which puts me in mind of Edward P. Jones. It's tender and thoughtful, and I think its brevity works beautifully. It's a snapshot of these characters at a meaningful moment; while we may not know what's going to happen to them, we have a sense they'll keep enduring beyond the last page.

[Rayji · Rating 2 out of 5]

Love the first chapter. Prose was weird afterwards, since it struggled between a foreign audience and a Filipino audience. It uses description to make local terms understandable, sometimes even more confusing, resulting in an odd image. Tabo as spooned laddle? Far from it.

[Franny · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Borrowed from my university's library.) I read this because I need to revise my literary tradition for my thesis. Thesis things do not make me a happy reader. But I read it because I need to. I loved stories about Rory and Soledad, the sisters themselves, but I loved Soledad's stories more.

[emil · Rating 4 out of 5]

okay, ganito: may kulang. parang may kulang. kasi medyo uncertain hanggang sa wakas nga e ...

[Ron Heoll · Rating 1 out of 5]

it so inspirational to me ang i love it is like in a real life

[Shekinah · Rating 4 out of 5]

good

[Marianne Lorene · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was very promising at some point but it kind of fell short in the end. I love butch dalisay though