Love and Other Rituals: Selected Stories

by Monica Macansantos

A man imprisoned by taboo learns the price of love. A child visits the grave of a cousin she's never met; another absorbs the fallout of her parents' divorce. Friendships rupture beyond repair, and family members collide when it comes to caring for their ageing father. These vivid stories of yearning, loneliness and resilience navigate the naivety of childhood, the complications of young adulthood and the politics of marriage. Monica Macansantos is a powerful new voice bringing us the raw and darkly beautiful perspectives of characters lost both in and out of their homeland, the Philippines.
'I loved these beautiful stories by Monica Macansantos, who writes with such beauty and delicacy about desire, home, longing, loneliness, duty, and hope-that is, what it means to be human. Every story is terrific, different, surprising. I can't wait to see what she does next.' - Elizabeth McCracken, author of The Souvenir Museum , Bowlaway , The Giant's House and Thunderstruck & Other Stories ; winner of the 2015 Story Prize

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories

220 pages, Paperback

Published September 16, 2022

About the author

Monica Macansantos is a 2025 Marguerite and Lamar Smith Fellow with the Carson McCullers Center in Columbus, Georgia, and was a 2024-25 Shearing Fellow with the Black Mountain Institute at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Born and (mostly) raised in the Philippines, she is the author of the essay collection, Returning to My Father's Kitchen (Northwestern University Press/Curbstone Books, 2025), and the story collection, Love and Other Rituals (Grattan Street Press, 2022). She was a James A. Michener Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin, where she earned her MFA in Writing, and also holds a PhD in Creative Writing from the Victoria University of Wellington. She is a recipient of fellowships and awards from Hedgebrook, Storyknife Writers Retreat, the I-Park Foundation, Monson Arts, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, and the Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi. More at monicamacansantos.com.

Reviews

[PattyMacDotComma]

I've read about half of these stories, but I just can't get into them enough to want to continue at the moment. I know other readers will really enjoy them.

The ones I've read take place in different parts of the world and are told by Filipino characters, which is a very different viewpoint for someone like me. I like that. I may pick it up again later and read the rest, but I know myself well enough that I won't do them justice if I continue right now.

[Erica · Rating 5 out of 5]

Evocative, rich, deeply human characters and stories.

[Isabel Howard · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't always read short story collections, but I've come across a few recently. This is definitely one of my favourites, and not just because I can relate to parts of it. Macansantos shares a real depth of perspective into the inner worlds of the main characters in each story, in a way that makes us aware of their flaws as well as sympathetic to their decisions. It also emulates how we see, understand and don't understand the other people in our lives. It left me with a lot of questions about the complicated things that happen over time, and how we deal with them.
Personally, my favourite stories were Playing with Dolls, Stopover and Inheritances.

[Angela Buenaventura · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading Macansantos’ collection of stories was like reading the stories from my own titas, titos and pinsans. Each equally devastating but revealing a truth in the Filipino experience. As with other cultures, there are experiences that are distinctively Filipino and Macansantos so skilfully manages to capture the most poignant.

Macansantos manages to turn the peeling of a mango to a child trying to resolve their differences with their father, but mostly a child mourning a parent they once knew.

This is a book for the Filipino or child of an immigrant trying to understand the sharpness and softness of family and home.

[Patty Enrado · Rating 4 out of 5]

Monica Macansantos captures the quiet longing of her characters in her short stories. I was particularly drawn to The Feast of All Souls, Love and Other Rituals and Leaving Aukland. She has a way of getting readers to the heart of her protagonists, sometimes with their growing self-awareness of their situation and what they need to do and other times in complete blindness, which leads to inevitable tragedy. There's a quiet desperation to belong, especially for the characters who are far from home, and oftentimes, having to reconcile their lives with this unrequitted belonging is both unsettling and bittersweet. I was rooting for Paolo in Leaving Aukland to make that leap, but the ending was just the right ending. I really enjoyed reading these stories, and I look forward to her next work.

[Ellen Neuborne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Monica Macansantos deploys rich detail and measured pacing to bring her characters to life. Each story is almost a novel as it paints a world and delivers interactions so that we feel we know these people. We root for them to be successful and we mourn with them when life disappoints. Highly recommended.

[Jacqueline · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked some stories better than others, but throughout the collection the author’s writing illustrates characters’ lives and thoughts very effectively. The numerous settings and viewpoints make this collection interesting as no two stories are alike, yet they all feature Filipino characters, which is a nice connecting thread.

[Vanessa · Rating 4 out of 5]

STRONGLY recommend this book of spell-binding prose!!!!!!

[Monica Macansantos · Rating 5 out of 5]

For professional reviews of this book, check out this review in Colorado Review by Bianca Melendrez Valenzuela (https://coloradoreview.colostate.edu/...) and this review in Meanjin Quarterly by Dr. Tinashe Jakwa (https://meanjin.com.au/review/a-life-...).