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La Tercera
Gina Apostol’s novel pieces together a century and a half of Philippine history through the story of a single family over generations of colonization, war and catastrophe.
Rosario Delgado, a Filipina novelist in New York City, learns of the death of her mother in the Philippines, but puts off her return to the country by burying herself in an investigation her family's history—and her mother’s supposed inheritance, La Tercera, a place that may or may not exist. As Rosario tries to understand her mother’s past and her own, she documents generations of family bequests and detritus, from maps of uncertain purpose and the rusted remains of chicken coops to family notebooks and news clippings. She grapples, too, with less tangible legacies: the lasting effects of fifty years of American rule; Filipino puns and jibes that play off of shifting overlays of language (English, Tagalog, Waray, Spanish); and the sensibilities of generations of Delgados, a blend of despair and pride, venom and humor—“the wit of the hunted.”
Each question Rosario asks seems to lead to more questions, and each life she explores opens onto a multitude of other lives. But as the search for La Tercera becomes increasingly labyrinthine, Rosario’s mother emerges in all her dizzying complexity—victor and victim, rebel and traitor, the one who abandons and the one who loves. Meanwhile, another narrative takes shape, made up of fragments from the country’s erased history of exploitation and slaughter at the hands of American occupying forces.
Rosario Delgado, a Filipina novelist in New York City, learns of the death of her mother in the Philippines, but puts off her return to the country by burying herself in an investigation her family's history—and her mother’s supposed inheritance, La Tercera, a place that may or may not exist. As Rosario tries to understand her mother’s past and her own, she documents generations of family bequests and detritus, from maps of uncertain purpose and the rusted remains of chicken coops to family notebooks and news clippings. She grapples, too, with less tangible legacies: the lasting effects of fifty years of American rule; Filipino puns and jibes that play off of shifting overlays of language (English, Tagalog, Waray, Spanish); and the sensibilities of generations of Delgados, a blend of despair and pride, venom and humor—“the wit of the hunted.”
Each question Rosario asks seems to lead to more questions, and each life she explores opens onto a multitude of other lives. But as the search for La Tercera becomes increasingly labyrinthine, Rosario’s mother emerges in all her dizzying complexity—victor and victim, rebel and traitor, the one who abandons and the one who loves. Meanwhile, another narrative takes shape, made up of fragments from the country’s erased history of exploitation and slaughter at the hands of American occupying forces.
480 pages, Hardcover
First published May 2, 2023
62 people are currently reading
6151 people want to read
About the author
Gina Apostol
19 books344 followersGina Apostol was born in Manila and lives in New York. Her first novel, Bibliolepsy, won the 1998 Philippine National Book Award for Fiction. She just completed her third novel, The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata, a comic historical novel-in-footnotes about the Philippine war for independence against Spain and America in 1896.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 47 reviews
November 7, 2024
Filipino American History Month
I appreciate what was trying to be done here, but I couldn't connect with this story. And this is not because the book is littered with Tagalog and Waray. That never bothers me. I appreciate and love that.
Rosario is a Filipina novelist in New York. When her mother dies, she starts investigating her family's supposed inheritance. 1) Her mother is annoying as hell. 2) I thought this mystery element would interest me. It didn't.
I think this novel would've been made better by more familial connections. The meat is there. I just needed it to be fleshed out and more cohesive. I won't write off the author. It's not you, it's me.
🎧 Thank you to NetGalley and HighBridge Audio
I appreciate what was trying to be done here, but I couldn't connect with this story. And this is not because the book is littered with Tagalog and Waray. That never bothers me. I appreciate and love that.
Rosario is a Filipina novelist in New York. When her mother dies, she starts investigating her family's supposed inheritance. 1) Her mother is annoying as hell. 2) I thought this mystery element would interest me. It didn't.
I think this novel would've been made better by more familial connections. The meat is there. I just needed it to be fleshed out and more cohesive. I won't write off the author. It's not you, it's me.
🎧 Thank you to NetGalley and HighBridge Audio
April 25, 2023
I have GOT to read more of Gina Apostol! La Tercera is an eye-opening learning experience, and a great history lesson told in a much different voice. Wonderful words spew from her brain as she humorously recalls the sad insanity of family and country. The laugh-out-loud moments are fabulous.
June 15, 2023
gina apostol has done so much research. this novel was a labor of love, i can tell. unfortunately, i couldn't get into it or enjoy it. a lot of this novel is written in tagalog and waray. like, a lot. if you don't speak these languages, you're going to be incredibly lost. i have a decent idea of what happened, but my brain hurts.
June 1, 2023
Absolutely loved this book! Really reminded me of One Hundred Years of Solitude. It was neat recoginizing some of the same sources that I had used for my final paper in college
September 3, 2024
“A reader does not need to know everything… How many times has she waded into someone else’s history… yet she dives in, to try to figure what it is the writer wishes to tell.
She gets stuck in the faulty notion that everything in a book must be grasped.”
— Page 103, Insurrecto
I’ve left my copy of La Tercera unopened for a long time, intimidated I was by its heft. When I finally got around to it, it took two weeks to finish. Now, it's taken one week to review, and up until an epiphany I was scratching my head about the approach.
Dear reader, the book was much grander than I thought it would be when I was just daunted by the page count. Haha, page count. What a limited imagination! Laying behind the cover was, no exaggeration, a story more complex than Crime and Punishment, and a step above One Hundred Years of Solitude. I believe the thing standing between Apostol and international literary applause is the effects of the thing La Tercera reckons with: the war we lost and the years of systematic interference that followed.
La Tercera is dizzying, labyrinthine, articulate, high-minded. You’ve heard “the author is always a step ahead of the reader”, now get ready for “the author is so far ahead that it feels like they’re in a different realm entirely, leaving the reader far behind in a race they can’t even see.” Layers upon layers upon layers upon layers I get overwhelmed even just counting what they are. La Tercera is so rich, the paperback looks different to me after I closed the last page. Before, this was a collection of 455 pages. Now, three weeks later, it feels like a changeling’s disguise, with the Delgado family history and the landmass of Salogo hidden behind it, breathing in suspended animation. I run my hands through the endless tabs, a colorful structure established in vain. How do you review a living thing?
The comforting answer comes from another Apostol text. I came across the quote above in a bookstagrammer’s post about Insurrecto this morning, and just like Adino, sweet Adino’s roosters saving him from the typhoon’s path, this idea gives me permission to resign for everyone’s benefit. After all, to dissect a book like La Tercera with my clumsy hands feels like a disservice. I shall allow myself to revel in a literary genius without intellectualizing my love. Yeah. I hecking love this book.
April 25, 2023
I wanted to like this book. I just couldn't get over the rambling sentences and because a lot of it was written in Tagalong or Waray, I didn't always know what was being said. I would get the general gist of what was going on, but it was just like a random stream of consciousness. In the end, I just couldn't finish it.
Read
July 4, 2023Manila-born, New York-based writer Gina Apostol is one of the Philippines' greatest living novelists. Her first two novels, Bibliolepsy and The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata, were awarded the Philippine National Book Award for Fiction. Her third, Gun Dealers' Daughter, won the 2013 PEN Open Book Award.
La Tercera tells the story of Rosario Delgado, a Filipino novelist living in New York City. Learning of her mother Adina's death, she delves into memories of the past as a way of preparing for – and delaying – the funeral and its surrounding family entanglements.
La Tercera is about the inseparability of the self from one's family, and from one's country: The novel takes in American neo-colonialism; the polyphonic overlay of languages used in the Philippines; and the 1986 People Power Revolution (Leyte, Adina's childhood home, is home to the Romuáldez political dynasty, one of the families against which protestors fought and into which one of the country's most notorious figures, Imelda Marcos, was born).
When Rosario reflects on the whirlwind personalities of her family and the risks of her own nostalgia becoming a wedge – something that "keeps me from seeing more freely, even from loving enough" – I could not help thinking that it is precisely because of such nostalgia that we can maintain a defence against what is lost, as well as a bridge back to it.
Of the five novels Apostol has published, La Tercera struck me as especially personal. There is so much finely observed detail throughout this intelligent, generous, idiosyncratic, playful work. Its winding, evocative voice, and the book's multilingual and polycultural reference points, recall Japanese author Minae Mizumura's seminal 1995 classic An I-Novel. (Like Rosario, Mizumura's narrator delves into family memories as a way of both postponing and preparing for her journey from the United States back to her homeland in Japan.)
Much of the commentary on La Tercera has noted the decision to leave non-English words – from languages including Waray, Tagalog and Cebuano – untranslated. There is poetic justice in this: The languages of the Philippines are filled with English borrowings, not to mention those from Spanish; foreign words whose incorporation and assimilation most people never had a say in. By doing the same in reverse for Anglophone readers, Apostol engineers her own process of linguistic colonisation and (re)assimilation. Readers might see it as a gift – an invitation to contemplate history's strange reciprocities, as well as its injustices and one-way streets.
Read on:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-07-0...
La Tercera tells the story of Rosario Delgado, a Filipino novelist living in New York City. Learning of her mother Adina's death, she delves into memories of the past as a way of preparing for – and delaying – the funeral and its surrounding family entanglements.
La Tercera is about the inseparability of the self from one's family, and from one's country: The novel takes in American neo-colonialism; the polyphonic overlay of languages used in the Philippines; and the 1986 People Power Revolution (Leyte, Adina's childhood home, is home to the Romuáldez political dynasty, one of the families against which protestors fought and into which one of the country's most notorious figures, Imelda Marcos, was born).
When Rosario reflects on the whirlwind personalities of her family and the risks of her own nostalgia becoming a wedge – something that "keeps me from seeing more freely, even from loving enough" – I could not help thinking that it is precisely because of such nostalgia that we can maintain a defence against what is lost, as well as a bridge back to it.
Of the five novels Apostol has published, La Tercera struck me as especially personal. There is so much finely observed detail throughout this intelligent, generous, idiosyncratic, playful work. Its winding, evocative voice, and the book's multilingual and polycultural reference points, recall Japanese author Minae Mizumura's seminal 1995 classic An I-Novel. (Like Rosario, Mizumura's narrator delves into family memories as a way of both postponing and preparing for her journey from the United States back to her homeland in Japan.)
Much of the commentary on La Tercera has noted the decision to leave non-English words – from languages including Waray, Tagalog and Cebuano – untranslated. There is poetic justice in this: The languages of the Philippines are filled with English borrowings, not to mention those from Spanish; foreign words whose incorporation and assimilation most people never had a say in. By doing the same in reverse for Anglophone readers, Apostol engineers her own process of linguistic colonisation and (re)assimilation. Readers might see it as a gift – an invitation to contemplate history's strange reciprocities, as well as its injustices and one-way streets.
Read on:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-07-0...
March 14, 2025
"He’s grown up translating his world, servants’ tongue into sala’s mouth, Waray and Tagalog into glimmering, correct spelling in Spanish onto the schoolbook page: a kind of magic, or witchcraft, he thinks, as words transform from one meaning to another and yet sound the same, mimicking the mind’s process, the way the world shape-shifts as he observes it, his brother into a moth, the armored beetle, kagang, into a leaf, pahina."
La Tercera is a dense, and relatively unforgiving novel. Apostol cares little for whether you can follow the rapid language shifting, time shifting, place shifting and switching between the sprawling cast with their own sprawling family trees. But like many literary novels, Apostol rewards your investment with a tale whose emotional impact grows with what you have invested, and whose swooping, immersive descriptions and pithy one liners ("In my mom’s world, you could have no money, and a maid would still be washing your child’s hair.") can be enjoyed just as they are.
This is a book which uses language to immerse the reader in a world, to bring forth what being in a place, of a place (and not of a place) feels like. The book swirls with descriptions, dialogue, which often tumble out furiously with scant explanation of when, where or sometimes who, we are with. It is in turn exhilerating and exhausting.
This is also a book about language, and how we create our worlds through it. It is particularly a book about language, power, colonialism and class. Apostol's characters defend and attack through their languages, define themselves, take and surrender power in their choices of language. Some speak only in Waray, refusing the world which would colonise them. Others speak with a distinctive polyglot, effortlessly peppering words of Waray, Tagalog, Spanish and English together, to demonstrate their ownership of their own space. Characters use their language choices to create distance or eradicate it. Most of all, their choices define themselves. There is a lot readers without Waray will miss, but there is also plenty we don't.
Rosario, our central protagonist, is trying to untangle her own grief, and unease at how to define herself in a community that has set(s) of definitions she stuggles to navigate. As she delves into constructing the stories of her great grandfather and great uncle, brothers in a war no-one wants to admit happened, she also starts to peel back the layers of her unforgettable mother - the kind of women considered "too much" in most of my worlds, but whose vivacity is conditionally celebrated in her upper class filipino world. Just as Rosario gets into reconstructing her ancestors inner worlds, we start to see how little of her mother's she has understood.
But this makes it sound a lot more linear than the experience, which plunges the reader from frozen contemporary New York, to rivers of Layte Island, to the opulance of central Manila, and warfare-infested jungles. Much of the pleasure here is in the moments, and there a rather a lot of them, so it might be best to take this one slow.
August 9, 2023
“I still see myself in stilllifes, in print, my home is yet to be automated with ease even in my imagination. "
3.5 stars
I'll start by saying this book is LONG. Even as an audiobook which I tend to zoom through, it was an endeavor. However, La Tercera is interesting. Historically interesting, linguistically interesting, and when I could follow the story, it has an interesting plot. I would describe La Tercera as a giant knot of brilliantly selected words. It is only after finishing the book and noting my favorite quotes that the themes and big picture of it all appear. It just takes a lot of diligence to follow along. I saw a blurb about this book call it "Labyrinthine" and that hits the nail on the head.
The author is undeniably talented and I can't imagine the hours spent researching and crafting the narrative. She incorporates 4 different languages and well-designed and described characters. There are many beautifully written passages and phrases of wordplay. I would love to read more of her work. This book is recommended for fans of historical fiction, readers who don't know much about the history of the Philippines or love learning more, and literature appreciators who won't get angry at long sentences.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publishing team for this audio version of the book.
Other favorite quotes:
"But really Spanish was for the outside things, the things you could make, Waray’s kept their words for the inside, the things that made you up. I grew up with my mom’s way with words, the way she spoke Tagalog with indifference, and English with guesswork. For her, English was only this wartime novelty like chewing gum or tennis shoes, some foreign implement of insufficient relevance. Her Tagalog was tokenism, misrecognitions from her Waray, it’s her Waray that was the mineral hoard, a cave of treasure that if I were smart, I’d scrutinize carefully…..”
“Darkness seems to speak when you cannot see because your mind must imagine ”
“What the monsoon leaves America Occupies.”
3.5 stars
I'll start by saying this book is LONG. Even as an audiobook which I tend to zoom through, it was an endeavor. However, La Tercera is interesting. Historically interesting, linguistically interesting, and when I could follow the story, it has an interesting plot. I would describe La Tercera as a giant knot of brilliantly selected words. It is only after finishing the book and noting my favorite quotes that the themes and big picture of it all appear. It just takes a lot of diligence to follow along. I saw a blurb about this book call it "Labyrinthine" and that hits the nail on the head.
The author is undeniably talented and I can't imagine the hours spent researching and crafting the narrative. She incorporates 4 different languages and well-designed and described characters. There are many beautifully written passages and phrases of wordplay. I would love to read more of her work. This book is recommended for fans of historical fiction, readers who don't know much about the history of the Philippines or love learning more, and literature appreciators who won't get angry at long sentences.
Thank you to Netgalley and the publishing team for this audio version of the book.
Other favorite quotes:
"But really Spanish was for the outside things, the things you could make, Waray’s kept their words for the inside, the things that made you up. I grew up with my mom’s way with words, the way she spoke Tagalog with indifference, and English with guesswork. For her, English was only this wartime novelty like chewing gum or tennis shoes, some foreign implement of insufficient relevance. Her Tagalog was tokenism, misrecognitions from her Waray, it’s her Waray that was the mineral hoard, a cave of treasure that if I were smart, I’d scrutinize carefully…..”
“Darkness seems to speak when you cannot see because your mind must imagine ”
“What the monsoon leaves America Occupies.”
March 9, 2023
I found this book hard to follow. It jumped from topic to topic with no paragraph breaks and I feel like I needed some background information to get it. But her writing was beautiful, almost lyrical at points
October 7, 2024
DNF….why are you so difficult to read
May 27, 2025
This is the only Filipino read I chose for Asian Pacific Islander Heritage Month. Despite being Filipino, I tend to avoid the literature since it's all too close to literal home, and Gina Apostol's La Tercera was certainly a difficult read -- in more ways than one. The most difficult aspect, as I am seeing a lot of people touch on, is how Apostol shamelessly oscillates between a myriad of languages without giving the reader much context, warning, explanation, or room to think about what was just said before she switches to another language that pulls the rug completely from under you all over again. I grew up fluent in Tagalog, but that barely helped me with reading this novel since a good chunk of it is in Spanish, Cebuano, Waray, and other Filipino dialects that I'm completely ignorant to. As a Filipino, it was pretty embarrassing having to keep pulling up Google Translate all the time -- to the point I just permanently had it as an open tab on my phone that I'd go to with a heavy, frustrated sigh once I encountered words, sentences, and phrases that made zero sense to me. Though very irritating as a reading experience, I understood what Apostol was trying to do with this almost labyrinthine polyphonic setup and I do not wish she'd written her novel in any other way. She's 100% justified in how she presents the story on a linguistic and textual level, and, though I was ripping my hair out constantly while reading, I applaud her anti-racist and anti-colonial reversal of English + Spanish borrowings being assimilated into Filipino languages on Angolphone readers like myself. Apostol crafts her own process of linguistic colonization and (re)assimilation -- to both non-Filipinos and Filipinos alike, since, as she points out, we are oftentimes so divided and don't know much about our own histories or ourselves:
I wish I had the intelligence and organizational skills to fully convey how brilliant this book is on the subject of history and historical revisionism in the Philippines, but just take my word for it. It was really, really helpful to read even just the Wikipedia summaries of a lot of the events Apostol touches on. I wish the edition I had introduced these historical events naturally or at least had some supplementary notes I could've used to make sense of what was going on, but again, Apostol forcing you to look these things up and educate yourself is all part of why this book is so subversive and daring. In the book, the main character Rosario also tries to decode and unravel a found manuscript that's much more nonsensical than the one I was struggling with, so you get the story within a story within a story layering that reminded me a bit of Gabriel Garcia Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude: "Every word I collected was a mixed-up spell, but each was an object that granted me permanence." (I'm seeing a lot of people in the reviews compare LT with Márquez's writing as well, but other than the sweeping, dreamlike treatment of the family saga of the Delgados -- which really didn't cover that many generations compared to the Aurelianos in OHoS -- I didn't find a lot of similarities with Apostol and Márquez's styles).
Apostol's dizzingly slapstick, yet still sometimes tender, but always clever writing was what ultimately kept me reading this difficult novel. Her prose was lyrical and succinct, cutting you where it hurts with perfect accuracy and descriptions: "I learned these matters by osmosis, in the way biography in a family is kind of not really told, just in the air like mayflies you sometimes mistakenly breathe in." What an accurate way to put it! Her words sizzled, contracted, and throbbed -- and I don't just mean the unfamiliar words in Waray giving me a gouging headache; the way she illustrated scenes, flavors, sounds, music, feelings, and conversations made me homesick in a way I can't explain. Her descriptions of the Philippines and its people were so vivid and true to life.
In addition to clearly having done her research and her own painstaking soul-searching, Apostol's labor of love was delivered with a fabulous and sad insanity that recalls a lot of what makes up the quintessential Filipino humor: It was tragic, but also funny. The melodrama gave you second-hand embarrassment, but you were still ready to cry and/or laugh out loud at a moment's notice soap-opera style. I totally understood Rosario's exasperation, amusement, and grief with her relatives all wrapped up in one central feeling of constant aching that just never goes away. Whenever she reflects on the whirlwind personalities of her family and her own unreliable nostalgia that "keeps me from seeing more freely, even from loving enough," I felt a knowing quietness descend upon me at reading those words. I see her, I really do.
On top of her use of reading and writing stories as a defense mechanism against confronting the emotional weight of her past, I really identified with Rosario's oddball Delgado family clan of traitors, revolutionaries, poets, artists, abusers, stowaways, politicians, doctors, etc. Apostol captured the strange sort of mythos Filipino families construct of our ancestors and then retell to our children -- whether they're true or not is a whole different story: "And we remember the wrong people. The proper heroes -- no one bothers to tell a thing about them. I mean, their relatives do not even know their actual names." Though you knew Apostol's stance on the sociopolitical issues on race, anti-colonization, and war that the novel brings up, she still retains a dignified human understanding to the very end that really solidified how personal this book was:
However, I think LT would've been better if the familial connections and ties were explored deeper -- both emotionally and genealogically. We didn't really get much on Adino, sweet Adino, and the supposedly entrenched brotherly relationship between Jote and Paco felt one-dimensional and boring. Though I liked reading about Rosario's relationship with her mother, that was the only compelling dynamic in the novel. I get that the book is trying to talk about familial estrangement, but Apostol hinted at a lot of intimate, visceral themes concerning one's cultural identity: "I know what I lose. But what does the world lose with that void? Or -- what knowledge do you not have, of what I have taken for granted?" Rosario's introspections were interesting, but they weren't as fleshed out as I'd liked -- especially in relation to other characters, who are supposed to be her family.
I would say my favorite parts of this book were the later sections where Rosario ruminates on her late mother Adina an guapa: "No matter how much I stared at my mother in her coffin, I recognized, like too many daughters, that I will never know who my mother was . . . A mother is someone who is hard to know." It's such a classic, tale-as-old-as-time Joy Luck Club plotline: Immigrant child who's now a success overseas due to having subconsciously tried to erase their past as well as their parents has to now come back to the elusive homeland to bury a family member whose death catalyzes a book's worth of reflection on loss, intergenerational trauma, family ties, love, colonial legacy, trauma, etc. The end result is as devastating as losing a limb, because cultural and familiar displacement are their own kinds of amputation. I've read a dozen books with this same premise, but Apostol managed to put her own special and hard-hitting spin on it nevertheless: "My mother's gift to me was that she believed in all of my dreams, including the stupid ones . . . She kept up a perfect face no matter how ordinary or significant the moment, so that neither her illness nor her love sent me home." Like many other novels of its kind, LT is about the inseparability of one's self from family and from country, but Apostol makes it much more complicated with her exploration of the world as seen through the eyes of mothers and daughters.
I underlined and highlighted a lot of amazing lines in this book, but for most them I couldn't tell you why I liked them: "Is there a word for the feeling of being in someone else's clothes? To feel it when others touch something, and it seems like when someone swallows, his food is also going into your body, and pain has a color, like black for blood, and a purplish-beige tint for the lash of gihay." Apostol put into words a lot of my own mixed feelings as a first-generation Filipino immigrant who has spent most of my adult life in Canada, which in turn has virtually estranged from my parents and the life they lived back home. Rosario doesn't have as many degrees of separation from the Philippines and its history as I do, and while it was painful to be reminded of just how little I know and keep bottled up never wanting to touch, this book was very valuable for me to read because it made me reopen dusty rooms in myself that I usually keep closed -- rooms that look like my lolo and lola's attic in Tandangsora, or the sala in our house in Cavite, long rotted, that had held all my cousins, grandparents, parents, titos, titas, and family friends all together for a few brilliant shining moments of inconsequential gatherings that nobody but the photo albums swallowed by termites will remember. Once upon a time.
"Damage is in our genes, a cancerous lump. But who bothers to trace the source? It is nothing for us to be thrown to the winds. Nature is our unpredictable friend, the one we tolerate but do not like. We let nature do to us what we would do to nature . . . It destroys us in order to be free. We destroy it in order to live."LT invites readers to think about history's lingering traces in the words we speak today, which translates over to written text as well.
I wish I had the intelligence and organizational skills to fully convey how brilliant this book is on the subject of history and historical revisionism in the Philippines, but just take my word for it. It was really, really helpful to read even just the Wikipedia summaries of a lot of the events Apostol touches on. I wish the edition I had introduced these historical events naturally or at least had some supplementary notes I could've used to make sense of what was going on, but again, Apostol forcing you to look these things up and educate yourself is all part of why this book is so subversive and daring. In the book, the main character Rosario also tries to decode and unravel a found manuscript that's much more nonsensical than the one I was struggling with, so you get the story within a story within a story layering that reminded me a bit of Gabriel Garcia Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude: "Every word I collected was a mixed-up spell, but each was an object that granted me permanence." (I'm seeing a lot of people in the reviews compare LT with Márquez's writing as well, but other than the sweeping, dreamlike treatment of the family saga of the Delgados -- which really didn't cover that many generations compared to the Aurelianos in OHoS -- I didn't find a lot of similarities with Apostol and Márquez's styles).
Apostol's dizzingly slapstick, yet still sometimes tender, but always clever writing was what ultimately kept me reading this difficult novel. Her prose was lyrical and succinct, cutting you where it hurts with perfect accuracy and descriptions: "I learned these matters by osmosis, in the way biography in a family is kind of not really told, just in the air like mayflies you sometimes mistakenly breathe in." What an accurate way to put it! Her words sizzled, contracted, and throbbed -- and I don't just mean the unfamiliar words in Waray giving me a gouging headache; the way she illustrated scenes, flavors, sounds, music, feelings, and conversations made me homesick in a way I can't explain. Her descriptions of the Philippines and its people were so vivid and true to life.
In addition to clearly having done her research and her own painstaking soul-searching, Apostol's labor of love was delivered with a fabulous and sad insanity that recalls a lot of what makes up the quintessential Filipino humor: It was tragic, but also funny. The melodrama gave you second-hand embarrassment, but you were still ready to cry and/or laugh out loud at a moment's notice soap-opera style. I totally understood Rosario's exasperation, amusement, and grief with her relatives all wrapped up in one central feeling of constant aching that just never goes away. Whenever she reflects on the whirlwind personalities of her family and her own unreliable nostalgia that "keeps me from seeing more freely, even from loving enough," I felt a knowing quietness descend upon me at reading those words. I see her, I really do.
On top of her use of reading and writing stories as a defense mechanism against confronting the emotional weight of her past, I really identified with Rosario's oddball Delgado family clan of traitors, revolutionaries, poets, artists, abusers, stowaways, politicians, doctors, etc. Apostol captured the strange sort of mythos Filipino families construct of our ancestors and then retell to our children -- whether they're true or not is a whole different story: "And we remember the wrong people. The proper heroes -- no one bothers to tell a thing about them. I mean, their relatives do not even know their actual names." Though you knew Apostol's stance on the sociopolitical issues on race, anti-colonization, and war that the novel brings up, she still retains a dignified human understanding to the very end that really solidified how personal this book was:
"I don't know why I took it that way -- that I saw nothing strange in the double lives of these adults, my mom's family, the Delgados, the way that I loved them, though they were loving and scary, good and bad, giving and corrupt, and our role as children was to know such divided selves as one of the riddles of being alive . . . So many stories, inconsequential legends that we have repeated to ourselves, wrapped up in the house that right now, I know, we are destroying."These same words could perfectly describe my messy family history as well, but, as Apostol says, "[T]here are ways that people remain the same, and even in their transformations you know their kernel because you knew them too early . . . Your knowing is dangerous because they know the same about you." Family is so twisted and double-sided.
However, I think LT would've been better if the familial connections and ties were explored deeper -- both emotionally and genealogically. We didn't really get much on Adino, sweet Adino, and the supposedly entrenched brotherly relationship between Jote and Paco felt one-dimensional and boring. Though I liked reading about Rosario's relationship with her mother, that was the only compelling dynamic in the novel. I get that the book is trying to talk about familial estrangement, but Apostol hinted at a lot of intimate, visceral themes concerning one's cultural identity: "I know what I lose. But what does the world lose with that void? Or -- what knowledge do you not have, of what I have taken for granted?" Rosario's introspections were interesting, but they weren't as fleshed out as I'd liked -- especially in relation to other characters, who are supposed to be her family.
I would say my favorite parts of this book were the later sections where Rosario ruminates on her late mother Adina an guapa: "No matter how much I stared at my mother in her coffin, I recognized, like too many daughters, that I will never know who my mother was . . . A mother is someone who is hard to know." It's such a classic, tale-as-old-as-time Joy Luck Club plotline: Immigrant child who's now a success overseas due to having subconsciously tried to erase their past as well as their parents has to now come back to the elusive homeland to bury a family member whose death catalyzes a book's worth of reflection on loss, intergenerational trauma, family ties, love, colonial legacy, trauma, etc. The end result is as devastating as losing a limb, because cultural and familiar displacement are their own kinds of amputation. I've read a dozen books with this same premise, but Apostol managed to put her own special and hard-hitting spin on it nevertheless: "My mother's gift to me was that she believed in all of my dreams, including the stupid ones . . . She kept up a perfect face no matter how ordinary or significant the moment, so that neither her illness nor her love sent me home." Like many other novels of its kind, LT is about the inseparability of one's self from family and from country, but Apostol makes it much more complicated with her exploration of the world as seen through the eyes of mothers and daughters.
I underlined and highlighted a lot of amazing lines in this book, but for most them I couldn't tell you why I liked them: "Is there a word for the feeling of being in someone else's clothes? To feel it when others touch something, and it seems like when someone swallows, his food is also going into your body, and pain has a color, like black for blood, and a purplish-beige tint for the lash of gihay." Apostol put into words a lot of my own mixed feelings as a first-generation Filipino immigrant who has spent most of my adult life in Canada, which in turn has virtually estranged from my parents and the life they lived back home. Rosario doesn't have as many degrees of separation from the Philippines and its history as I do, and while it was painful to be reminded of just how little I know and keep bottled up never wanting to touch, this book was very valuable for me to read because it made me reopen dusty rooms in myself that I usually keep closed -- rooms that look like my lolo and lola's attic in Tandangsora, or the sala in our house in Cavite, long rotted, that had held all my cousins, grandparents, parents, titos, titas, and family friends all together for a few brilliant shining moments of inconsequential gatherings that nobody but the photo albums swallowed by termites will remember. Once upon a time.
December 28, 2024
“The world has no capacity for it—not for justice or peace.”
“You mean—-the country?”
“No—I mean the world. You know, like the one you’re going back to. Especially the one you’re going back to. Your America. But keep on writing, go ahead—keep writing as if it matters. Yours might be a better illusion than Sirit’s.”
“Thanks,” I said.
Right. Gear up, because this is not going to be an easy 1000 words.
In La Tercera, Apostol metafictions, metastasizes, and pseudo-memoirs the story of her life. Rosario is a middle-aged Filipino novelist, having found success in New York. Her mother just died back home in Tacloban and she cannot bring herself to go back, just yet. Instead, she unearths her great-grandfather's diaries. Ghosts of her past haunt her (her leftist-turned-corporate friend, Trina Trono, who wants to buy the diaries for a museum; her relatives urging her to return home; her past lives). Her great-grandfathers, Lolo Paco and Lolo Jote, practically founded the little provincial town she grew up in (Salogo). As she reads her Lolo Paco's memoirs of his and his brothers' roles in the 1899 Philippine-American War, she begins to confront their role as revolutionaries and collaborators, her childhood, and the mystery that was her mother. She begins to grieve not just the loss of her mother--but the fact that she never knew her at all, due to her mother's mental illness/es and obsession with La Tercera. What/where the fuck is La Tercera? is a running question, and it is never explicitly defined (for good reason, I think. Illusory land inheritances are common in the Philippines).
Rosario begins to tell the story of her slapdash childhood and her mother's reckless parenting. She ends up in UP Diliman, playing revolutionary under Marcos Martial Law, until she finds her way to America with the writing of her first novel. She's been there since. Now, she's coming home for her mother's funeral. The novel ends with an unprecedented storm that decimates Tacloban and Rosario writing her book on her family, accepting that that writing is her way of knowing, being, and loving them. That sounds a bit twee, sorry, but honestly any criticism and commentary I have feels reductive of whatever Apostol's aims are... but this is MY goodreads review, so.
Structurally and narratively, the novel overreaches in its grandiose scale with only the loosest, most literary-fiction of resolutions. For veeery long stretches nothing happens, then nothing much happens again, EXCEPT for Apostol's inventive writing. She's mentioned her love of craft and it shows: her writing, man. Linguistic mind-bending, polyglot structuring, aggressive non-linearity of the narrative. For all my non-enjoyment of the plot and content, her writing is cool-girl, forward-thinking, innovative, creative, obnoxiously intelligent, but never pretentious; because that's really what the book is. Intelligence shining through. The abuse of repetition as a literary device did drive me nuts at points, and I think it is far more effective in Gun Dealers' Daughter (my standard for Apostol's work). It is a feat to write, which is what I keep saying about difficult books that I know are brilliant in their own way but I didn’t enjoy reading; nonetheless, it is true.
There is an honesty and memoir-like quality to La Tercera. So much so that at times, I hesitated to read it because I felt like I was intruding on her privacy. However, I still found myself unattached or unconvinced of any character--best well-developed ones were Rosario and her mother. The rest are derivative from the ACU (Apostol Cinematic Universe). Apostol's best characters are the weirdest ones--Adina an guapa, Primi Peregrino and her older sister, Soledad Soliman. The rest are painfully ahistorical.
I appreciated the book because of the additional insight I’ve learned from the author’s live talks, such as the comparisons to Marquez’s Cien Años and the irony of Apostol’s hatred of family sagas. Had I read this just on my own, without any of that background, I would’ve been much less forgiving of what this put me through. The Marquez comparisons fall flat (not for bad reasons, though, just incomparable in terms of style). Only parallel I can think about is the ending, wherein a storm destroys the valuable personal historical papers. I thought this was effective and then less so, but very Apostol when she immediately retconned it. Metafiction, as is her eternal wont. Anyways, my point with the above initial comparison is that rather than Marquez, if you held this up to the light, you'll see that this is Nolledo through and through. If you did not enjoy But for the Lovers, you probably wouldn't enjoy this. Again this feels reductive to say: not all literature has to be enjoyable or palatable to be brilliant.
On this note: I've read every Apostol except Raymundo Mata, and already I feel like so much is lost on me. I do enjoy her refusal to cede to general palatability (foreign and intellectual). I remember her going (at her talk in UP): "Fuck you. Keep up. With me." and that is exactly what she does here. But again, read enough of her work and you realize you can gain some footholds. Repetition, memory, examination of who are the rightful keepers of memory, the 1899 Philippine-American War, Tacloban, UP Diliman, bildungsroman-ing under Marcos Martial Law, Duterte's drug war, making-it-in-America guilt, insane relationship with your mother, biblioleptic love of literature, metafictive qualities, and always these both liminal and oversaturated descriptions of space. Always, always Filipino. Calling it unapologetic sounds corny. It simply just is. That is the nature of any Apostol novel.
There are specific scenes that hit me right in the guts (the Philippine Airlines NY-Manila overnight flight). I wanted to vomit from emotional nausea. The experience of leaving is such that you never, never come home whole. Part of my soul is dissolved into New England's ether. For this specific scene I am attached to this novel--Apostol has crystallized a mundane experience that has destroyed me anyhow.
Again, this was not enjoyable. Dragged, obnoxious, obscure, unintelligible at points, stylized… can’t imagine recommending this to a foreigner. Or even just a casual Filipino. Definitely not for the faint of heart and weak of reading stamina. This is for an Apostolian scholar probably—because there is so much of this that benefits from reading all her other work. This is like a culmination of the Apostol Cinematic Universe. Despite it all, this is an expression of artistry I respect. Reading this is still a privilege. Existing in the same timeline, being able to go to her talks, and having SIGNED BOOKS is something I am grateful for every day. I treat this as I would Filipino canon fiction: maybe not with enjoyment and relish (like GDD), but with Respect. My star ratings are indicative only of my enjoyment but whenever I read Canon there are caveats such as this. This exhausted and annoyed me but what a work. What a work. Lush, unapologetic, ambitious, not tender but raw. The storm scene broke my heart all the same.
Words:
aporetic declension
comportment
plangent
termagant
cathexis
ave de rapiña
Too many of the pages are a chronicle of disjointed dreams.
It’s not our job to resolve others’ incomprehension of us: no one asked us to be conceivable, including us.
But there are ways that people remain the same, and even in their transformations you know their kernel because you knew them too early.
the surgical incision of grief
the bubbling kaldero of her kalamay inferno
I read it over— I try other translations.
Sometimes it is insane, returning to the Philippines.
Body of words.
Amen.
so that skyscape merged with landscape merged with love, a shimmering loss of perspective
and in the end the entire arrangement has this miraculous yet unstable quality of any act of reading, in which your vantage rewrites the page.
“You mean—-the country?”
“No—I mean the world. You know, like the one you’re going back to. Especially the one you’re going back to. Your America. But keep on writing, go ahead—keep writing as if it matters. Yours might be a better illusion than Sirit’s.”
“Thanks,” I said.
Right. Gear up, because this is not going to be an easy 1000 words.
In La Tercera, Apostol metafictions, metastasizes, and pseudo-memoirs the story of her life. Rosario is a middle-aged Filipino novelist, having found success in New York. Her mother just died back home in Tacloban and she cannot bring herself to go back, just yet. Instead, she unearths her great-grandfather's diaries. Ghosts of her past haunt her (her leftist-turned-corporate friend, Trina Trono, who wants to buy the diaries for a museum; her relatives urging her to return home; her past lives). Her great-grandfathers, Lolo Paco and Lolo Jote, practically founded the little provincial town she grew up in (Salogo). As she reads her Lolo Paco's memoirs of his and his brothers' roles in the 1899 Philippine-American War, she begins to confront their role as revolutionaries and collaborators, her childhood, and the mystery that was her mother. She begins to grieve not just the loss of her mother--but the fact that she never knew her at all, due to her mother's mental illness/es and obsession with La Tercera. What/where the fuck is La Tercera? is a running question, and it is never explicitly defined (for good reason, I think. Illusory land inheritances are common in the Philippines).
Rosario begins to tell the story of her slapdash childhood and her mother's reckless parenting. She ends up in UP Diliman, playing revolutionary under Marcos Martial Law, until she finds her way to America with the writing of her first novel. She's been there since. Now, she's coming home for her mother's funeral. The novel ends with an unprecedented storm that decimates Tacloban and Rosario writing her book on her family, accepting that that writing is her way of knowing, being, and loving them. That sounds a bit twee, sorry, but honestly any criticism and commentary I have feels reductive of whatever Apostol's aims are... but this is MY goodreads review, so.
Structurally and narratively, the novel overreaches in its grandiose scale with only the loosest, most literary-fiction of resolutions. For veeery long stretches nothing happens, then nothing much happens again, EXCEPT for Apostol's inventive writing. She's mentioned her love of craft and it shows: her writing, man. Linguistic mind-bending, polyglot structuring, aggressive non-linearity of the narrative. For all my non-enjoyment of the plot and content, her writing is cool-girl, forward-thinking, innovative, creative, obnoxiously intelligent, but never pretentious; because that's really what the book is. Intelligence shining through. The abuse of repetition as a literary device did drive me nuts at points, and I think it is far more effective in Gun Dealers' Daughter (my standard for Apostol's work). It is a feat to write, which is what I keep saying about difficult books that I know are brilliant in their own way but I didn’t enjoy reading; nonetheless, it is true.
There is an honesty and memoir-like quality to La Tercera. So much so that at times, I hesitated to read it because I felt like I was intruding on her privacy. However, I still found myself unattached or unconvinced of any character--best well-developed ones were Rosario and her mother. The rest are derivative from the ACU (Apostol Cinematic Universe). Apostol's best characters are the weirdest ones--Adina an guapa, Primi Peregrino and her older sister, Soledad Soliman. The rest are painfully ahistorical.
I appreciated the book because of the additional insight I’ve learned from the author’s live talks, such as the comparisons to Marquez’s Cien Años and the irony of Apostol’s hatred of family sagas. Had I read this just on my own, without any of that background, I would’ve been much less forgiving of what this put me through. The Marquez comparisons fall flat (not for bad reasons, though, just incomparable in terms of style). Only parallel I can think about is the ending, wherein a storm destroys the valuable personal historical papers. I thought this was effective and then less so, but very Apostol when she immediately retconned it. Metafiction, as is her eternal wont. Anyways, my point with the above initial comparison is that rather than Marquez, if you held this up to the light, you'll see that this is Nolledo through and through. If you did not enjoy But for the Lovers, you probably wouldn't enjoy this. Again this feels reductive to say: not all literature has to be enjoyable or palatable to be brilliant.
On this note: I've read every Apostol except Raymundo Mata, and already I feel like so much is lost on me. I do enjoy her refusal to cede to general palatability (foreign and intellectual). I remember her going (at her talk in UP): "Fuck you. Keep up. With me." and that is exactly what she does here. But again, read enough of her work and you realize you can gain some footholds. Repetition, memory, examination of who are the rightful keepers of memory, the 1899 Philippine-American War, Tacloban, UP Diliman, bildungsroman-ing under Marcos Martial Law, Duterte's drug war, making-it-in-America guilt, insane relationship with your mother, biblioleptic love of literature, metafictive qualities, and always these both liminal and oversaturated descriptions of space. Always, always Filipino. Calling it unapologetic sounds corny. It simply just is. That is the nature of any Apostol novel.
There are specific scenes that hit me right in the guts (the Philippine Airlines NY-Manila overnight flight). I wanted to vomit from emotional nausea. The experience of leaving is such that you never, never come home whole. Part of my soul is dissolved into New England's ether. For this specific scene I am attached to this novel--Apostol has crystallized a mundane experience that has destroyed me anyhow.
Again, this was not enjoyable. Dragged, obnoxious, obscure, unintelligible at points, stylized… can’t imagine recommending this to a foreigner. Or even just a casual Filipino. Definitely not for the faint of heart and weak of reading stamina. This is for an Apostolian scholar probably—because there is so much of this that benefits from reading all her other work. This is like a culmination of the Apostol Cinematic Universe. Despite it all, this is an expression of artistry I respect. Reading this is still a privilege. Existing in the same timeline, being able to go to her talks, and having SIGNED BOOKS is something I am grateful for every day. I treat this as I would Filipino canon fiction: maybe not with enjoyment and relish (like GDD), but with Respect. My star ratings are indicative only of my enjoyment but whenever I read Canon there are caveats such as this. This exhausted and annoyed me but what a work. What a work. Lush, unapologetic, ambitious, not tender but raw. The storm scene broke my heart all the same.
Words:
aporetic declension
comportment
plangent
termagant
cathexis
ave de rapiña
Too many of the pages are a chronicle of disjointed dreams.
It’s not our job to resolve others’ incomprehension of us: no one asked us to be conceivable, including us.
But there are ways that people remain the same, and even in their transformations you know their kernel because you knew them too early.
the surgical incision of grief
the bubbling kaldero of her kalamay inferno
I read it over— I try other translations.
Sometimes it is insane, returning to the Philippines.
Body of words.
Amen.
so that skyscape merged with landscape merged with love, a shimmering loss of perspective
and in the end the entire arrangement has this miraculous yet unstable quality of any act of reading, in which your vantage rewrites the page.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 4, 2023
An amalgam of autofiction (hints of autobiography); metafiction (the writing as part of the story); historical fiction based on real and imagined events, people, and primary source historical and family documents (US colonization and oppression of the Philippines, Philippine resistance and compliance and eventual nationhood as a country with its own flaws); and narrative fiction (the life, death, and its aftermath—including inheritance questions and disputes—of the author’s eccentric, colorful mother, a descendant of two influential families dating back to the late 1800s and the roots of the Philippine revolution). Sprawling over time and space—late 19th to early 21st centuries, diverse US and Philippine settings, though mostly the latter—I liked the home setting in Tacloban province on Leyte island in the eastern Philippines as one of the few closely examined Philippine settings outside of Manila I’ve read of. Also densely thicketed with characters and their names (family trees help) and languages—frequent passages in the Waray dialect, Tagalog, and Spanish (or more likely Waray and/or Tagalog variations on Spanish words and spellings) add some local color and chaos and perhaps verity to the larger composite picture, but one wonders how much language play might be missed by many readers. The sprawl and density for me compromised the sharper focus I found in Insurrecto and The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata, novels with similar subject matter from the history of Philippine subjugation, resistance, and independence and similar use, with variations, of the author’s own distinctive narrative, stylistic, structural, and linguistic techniques, but an impressive work nonetheless.
Read
June 29, 2023I tried so hard, but I couldn’t finish this book. I appreciated the look into a culture I don’t know much about, but I found the story confusing to follow, and without a glossary, the Waray and Tagalog made it very difficult to understand.
July 11, 2023
Thank you NetGaley for providing a free advanced audio-copy in exchange for an honest review.
La Tercera is really two books, united by a bloodline. On the one side we have Rosario's story, a Filipino-American writer, remembering her youth growing up in the Philippines (after a brief childhood in California). Thrust into a new land with different textures, tastes, smells and many different languages, Rosario struggles initially to adapt and make friends. Meanwhile her mother, Adina "an Guapa" (Adina the beautiful), an artist, a clueless yet also cunning entrepreneur, both ignores her children for long stretches of time and struggles to offer them everything they want or need. Adina was actually my favorite character. She is a survivor of ignorant medical practices and spousal abuse, but she is also a beloved daughter, a creative force, a doting mother who will give her children the gift of freedom even at the risk of her heart ache. We also become familial with Rosario's friends from school and several other family members, but for me the mother-daughter duo was the strongest part to the book. Rosario's trip down memory lane is triggered, as we find out early in the novel, by her mother's passing.
In parallel, we have the story of Adina's ancestors, the brothers Hotte, told in diaries that Rosario finds as a child and struggles to translate, jumping from language to language to language. Except, there is one more perspective to the story, one that only becomes obvious toward the end.
The novel, like the inhabitants of the Philippines is polyglot and jumps from language to language (primarily English, Spanish, Tagalog, Warai). This will surely be a novel that will fascinate linguists, and some of the beauty and exasperation of the act of translation was deftly captured in the novel. Primarily, La Tercera is a book about language and finding meaning. One of my favorite paragraphs in the book captures this exasperation as Rosario first moves to the Phillippinnes as a child:
"When we returned to the Philippines I was conscious of not knowing my mother’s tongue, though I was her daughter. I thought my ignorance was unjust. I wondered why I didn’t know the words in Warai when they were supposed to be my own. It seems like for some reason, on the tarmac I had dropped them, or someone had taken them from me. My ignorance did not make me feel guilty. It made me mad. I thought you were supposed to come into knowledge once you reached your mother’s country, that everything would click into place like my mom’s heels doing the tango, and when I grew up I would know how to dance that tango exactly like my mom. Athena came from Zeus’ brain, I sprouted from my mother’s words. That was the rule. I believed in these things. That my origins were a gift from my mother and all I had to do was receive them."
However, this jumping around was part of the reason why I ultimately did not enjoy this book as much as I would have liked. The code switching became a bit excessive toward the second half. But the biggest problem was the repetition. I can tell it was done on purpose, I can glimpse a meaning for the reason why most things were always repeated in three, but I was also EXASPERATED. If I hear another "Adino, sweet Adino" "Gracia Plena"....I had moments when, hearing the exact same phrasing for probably the 100th time, I curled my toes and fingers in frustration. And the audiobook narrator had a very odd cadence which made some of the experience worse for me. I loved the first part of the book, the story of Rosario's childhood--that one was 4.5 stars for me. I didn't enjoy the diary narrative, and I believe the author's decision to incorporate a ghost perspective actually damaged the novel. It decreased clarity and emotional investment on my part (I give that part 2 stars). And the book lost me twice at the exact same mark: 60%, before I was able to finish it.
If you decide to give this one a go, be prepared for very interesting characters, but also repetitive language that may not be easy to digest, as well as a complicated diary narrative. An interesting experience, but perhaps not very accessible to a lay audience, even a polyglot one, unless you happen to be intimate with the land of the Philippines.
La Tercera is really two books, united by a bloodline. On the one side we have Rosario's story, a Filipino-American writer, remembering her youth growing up in the Philippines (after a brief childhood in California). Thrust into a new land with different textures, tastes, smells and many different languages, Rosario struggles initially to adapt and make friends. Meanwhile her mother, Adina "an Guapa" (Adina the beautiful), an artist, a clueless yet also cunning entrepreneur, both ignores her children for long stretches of time and struggles to offer them everything they want or need. Adina was actually my favorite character. She is a survivor of ignorant medical practices and spousal abuse, but she is also a beloved daughter, a creative force, a doting mother who will give her children the gift of freedom even at the risk of her heart ache. We also become familial with Rosario's friends from school and several other family members, but for me the mother-daughter duo was the strongest part to the book. Rosario's trip down memory lane is triggered, as we find out early in the novel, by her mother's passing.
In parallel, we have the story of Adina's ancestors, the brothers Hotte, told in diaries that Rosario finds as a child and struggles to translate, jumping from language to language to language. Except, there is one more perspective to the story, one that only becomes obvious toward the end.
The novel, like the inhabitants of the Philippines is polyglot and jumps from language to language (primarily English, Spanish, Tagalog, Warai). This will surely be a novel that will fascinate linguists, and some of the beauty and exasperation of the act of translation was deftly captured in the novel. Primarily, La Tercera is a book about language and finding meaning. One of my favorite paragraphs in the book captures this exasperation as Rosario first moves to the Phillippinnes as a child:
"When we returned to the Philippines I was conscious of not knowing my mother’s tongue, though I was her daughter. I thought my ignorance was unjust. I wondered why I didn’t know the words in Warai when they were supposed to be my own. It seems like for some reason, on the tarmac I had dropped them, or someone had taken them from me. My ignorance did not make me feel guilty. It made me mad. I thought you were supposed to come into knowledge once you reached your mother’s country, that everything would click into place like my mom’s heels doing the tango, and when I grew up I would know how to dance that tango exactly like my mom. Athena came from Zeus’ brain, I sprouted from my mother’s words. That was the rule. I believed in these things. That my origins were a gift from my mother and all I had to do was receive them."
However, this jumping around was part of the reason why I ultimately did not enjoy this book as much as I would have liked. The code switching became a bit excessive toward the second half. But the biggest problem was the repetition. I can tell it was done on purpose, I can glimpse a meaning for the reason why most things were always repeated in three, but I was also EXASPERATED. If I hear another "Adino, sweet Adino" "Gracia Plena"....I had moments when, hearing the exact same phrasing for probably the 100th time, I curled my toes and fingers in frustration. And the audiobook narrator had a very odd cadence which made some of the experience worse for me. I loved the first part of the book, the story of Rosario's childhood--that one was 4.5 stars for me. I didn't enjoy the diary narrative, and I believe the author's decision to incorporate a ghost perspective actually damaged the novel. It decreased clarity and emotional investment on my part (I give that part 2 stars). And the book lost me twice at the exact same mark: 60%, before I was able to finish it.
If you decide to give this one a go, be prepared for very interesting characters, but also repetitive language that may not be easy to digest, as well as a complicated diary narrative. An interesting experience, but perhaps not very accessible to a lay audience, even a polyglot one, unless you happen to be intimate with the land of the Philippines.
September 20, 2025
I went into this purposely being a bit cynical, trying to scour the book for narrative choices I didn't agree with, or a turn of phrase that I didn't particularly like. partly because, I found it difficult to imagine that Gina Apostol could write five books that I would all rate at five stars—but here we are.
reading this was an absolute joy. even with (or indeed, because of) the passages written in waray (which, by the way, are translated when they're important to the "narrative flow"—and *right after* they're said too!), i never felt interrupted by the text, by a too abrupt shift of tone or sentence or whatever. in her own words, the book "never lost me". maybe that's a function of my having read so many of her books and being used to her particular style, but even this one takes kind of a departure from her previous works. never before has she been so bold with her play with language (save perhaps in Raymundo Mata, though that one was more about form) so as to incorporate trilinguistic puns. in terms of sentence structure, she frequently makes use of em dashes that give the writing a stuttering feeling at times, but this too immerses rather than interrupts.
this book also perfects her burgeoning use of meta-fiction, or nation-as-narrative, or whatever, already present in Raymundo Mata and Bibliolepsy. the intertwining of Rosario's personal life with the diaries of the revolutionary is so tightly knotted that to discuss one without touching on the other feels a crime tantamount to historical revisionism—much as discussing the current state of the Philippines without an informed perspective on our history and colonial / postcolonial / martial law circumstances *is* a crime tantamount to historical revisionism. because most of all, the book is about memory: specifically, how memory is simultaneously used as a tool to subjugate and liberate, how it is our most important heritage as Filipinos (widely shat upon by the American legacy in the islands), and our indelible duty to preserve it.
that is why, despite the premise reading like the classic immigrant rediscovery of a lost (familial or national; in this case both) history, it certainly doesn't read like one. the focus is not so much on the rediscovery and elaboration of that mystery—tainted and (mostly) unknowable as it is thanks to the Americans and/or collaborators and/or parasitic family members—but rather what the process of remembering demands of us. informed by the central image of the book, the instar of revolution: is revolt the end state, a point where all is remembered and perfect clarity is achieved, or is it this process of becoming, of dissolving ourselves inside out?
anyway, as much as I would love to write a hundred-page dissertation on this book, I cannot, and will have to content myself with this hundred(s)-word or so review on goodreads. this is definitely my favorite Gina Apostol book, and I can't wait to read its (I'm assuming, judging from the title and one of the primary characters in this book) twin whenever she decides to release that. but before that, I'll definitely revisit this one.
reading this was an absolute joy. even with (or indeed, because of) the passages written in waray (which, by the way, are translated when they're important to the "narrative flow"—and *right after* they're said too!), i never felt interrupted by the text, by a too abrupt shift of tone or sentence or whatever. in her own words, the book "never lost me". maybe that's a function of my having read so many of her books and being used to her particular style, but even this one takes kind of a departure from her previous works. never before has she been so bold with her play with language (save perhaps in Raymundo Mata, though that one was more about form) so as to incorporate trilinguistic puns. in terms of sentence structure, she frequently makes use of em dashes that give the writing a stuttering feeling at times, but this too immerses rather than interrupts.
this book also perfects her burgeoning use of meta-fiction, or nation-as-narrative, or whatever, already present in Raymundo Mata and Bibliolepsy. the intertwining of Rosario's personal life with the diaries of the revolutionary is so tightly knotted that to discuss one without touching on the other feels a crime tantamount to historical revisionism—much as discussing the current state of the Philippines without an informed perspective on our history and colonial / postcolonial / martial law circumstances *is* a crime tantamount to historical revisionism. because most of all, the book is about memory: specifically, how memory is simultaneously used as a tool to subjugate and liberate, how it is our most important heritage as Filipinos (widely shat upon by the American legacy in the islands), and our indelible duty to preserve it.
that is why, despite the premise reading like the classic immigrant rediscovery of a lost (familial or national; in this case both) history, it certainly doesn't read like one. the focus is not so much on the rediscovery and elaboration of that mystery—tainted and (mostly) unknowable as it is thanks to the Americans and/or collaborators and/or parasitic family members—but rather what the process of remembering demands of us. informed by the central image of the book, the instar of revolution: is revolt the end state, a point where all is remembered and perfect clarity is achieved, or is it this process of becoming, of dissolving ourselves inside out?
anyway, as much as I would love to write a hundred-page dissertation on this book, I cannot, and will have to content myself with this hundred(s)-word or so review on goodreads. this is definitely my favorite Gina Apostol book, and I can't wait to read its (I'm assuming, judging from the title and one of the primary characters in this book) twin whenever she decides to release that. but before that, I'll definitely revisit this one.
January 31, 2023
Goodreads Giveaway Win
I don't normally recommend reading the back cover synopsis however, in this case, it'll give you some hints about what you're in for.
"... assembles a vision of Philippine history from the 19th century to present day in the fragmented
story..."
"...catalogs generations of family bequests and detritus..."
"...opens onto a multitude of other lives and raises a multitude of questions..."
"...emerge in all their dizzying complexity..."
"...most ambitious, personal, and encompassing novel—a story about the impossibility of
capturing the truth of the past..."
These lines are obviously written to market the book; to make people interested. However, if you read between the lines it's saying this book is confusing, all over the place, complex, broken-up, plotless, etc..
The amount of detail and description made this book impossible to get into. This is my short-coming but I didn't understand many of the places and the words. This prevented me from any enjoyment.
Objectively I have to give Gina Apostol credit for her ambition and talent for description. She really is a good writer. I'm just not a good enough reader.
I don't normally recommend reading the back cover synopsis however, in this case, it'll give you some hints about what you're in for.
"... assembles a vision of Philippine history from the 19th century to present day in the fragmented
story..."
"...catalogs generations of family bequests and detritus..."
"...opens onto a multitude of other lives and raises a multitude of questions..."
"...emerge in all their dizzying complexity..."
"...most ambitious, personal, and encompassing novel—a story about the impossibility of
capturing the truth of the past..."
These lines are obviously written to market the book; to make people interested. However, if you read between the lines it's saying this book is confusing, all over the place, complex, broken-up, plotless, etc..
The amount of detail and description made this book impossible to get into. This is my short-coming but I didn't understand many of the places and the words. This prevented me from any enjoyment.
Objectively I have to give Gina Apostol credit for her ambition and talent for description. She really is a good writer. I'm just not a good enough reader.
June 24, 2023
So, when a book is described as "ambitious" that almost always ends up meaning "confusing, contradictory, and full of tangents."
I gave up a quarter of the way through this book. I just have no clue what these extraneous characters have to do with the narrator?! It just isn't clear. I thought the first section was so compelling but I just got sick of the laundry list of new names and new faces every few pages.
I love books told in a chorus of voices; this book, however, attempts to tell many stories filtered through the limited, closed-minded eyes of the narrator. There is no chorus, only chaos.
I do not recommend.
I gave up a quarter of the way through this book. I just have no clue what these extraneous characters have to do with the narrator?! It just isn't clear. I thought the first section was so compelling but I just got sick of the laundry list of new names and new faces every few pages.
I love books told in a chorus of voices; this book, however, attempts to tell many stories filtered through the limited, closed-minded eyes of the narrator. There is no chorus, only chaos.
I do not recommend.
July 30, 2025
I read half the book and tried to give it a chance. I wanted to like it. It’s a maze of plots and is definitely confusing, jumping from present to flashback—difficult to keep characters straight and have not reached a point of conflict even in middle of book. sometimes, I don’t know what I’m reading but disjointed random snippets of Philippine history and random characters from friends to families making appearances. I wanted more dialogue—and structure was not my favorite. I had to stop reading bc I lost steam… and interest… Monsoon Mansion was more relatable for me.
October 27, 2023
I didn’t finish this book, which is extremely rare for me. And I’m only leaving a (neutral) review to remember later. I’m sure this book is too brilliant for me, but I couldn’t get through it (and it’s a long one) when there are so many books on my want to read list. I wish I had more context about the Philippines or spoke Tagalog so I could have gotten more of the story because a lot of comprehension is dependent on that.
March 21, 2024
It did not bother me that I did not understand the Waray and the Tagalog: Apostol is a deft enough storyteller to bring me along this ride that dips into the minutia of family and place one moment and zooms out into the repercussions of politics and history the next. Here are the wordplay, the slapstick, the meta dimensions that one has come to expect of an Apostol novel, but also here, fresh as a cut, are the unfathomable depths of love and the unbearable pain of loss.
August 12, 2023
I read it while you on vacation, and it’s a difficult book to read. Luckily, I was able to move from print to the audiobook version. Listening to the Waray language was a treat, especially since it’s close to Ilonggo (my mom’s primary language, and her side of the family). Anyway, the ending felt like a let down (parang bitin), but overall I enjoyed the cryptic style of writing.
October 29, 2023
Great premise and key characters Rosalia and her Mum, Adina a guapa (the beautiful), loved the opening 70-80 pages then after than I was just bewildered by the cornucopia of characters progressively introduced into the story. I liked the idea of weaving Tagalog and Waray through the story, but theses languages plus the sheer volume of characters just left me completely lost.
October 5, 2023
I wanted to love this book, but I really just lagged in the middle, and was very uneventful. It had some pretty descriptions which kept me going for a while, but ultimately it locked story in a timely manner.
April 3, 2024
I wanted to like this book so badly, the intergenerational nature set in the landscape of the philippines, all things that I was interested in reading about. This book didn't land, it felt confusing, boring, and overly long at 500 pages.
June 20, 2024
dnf @ 25% audiobook- giving up for now. breaking from english too much for me to follow, i hated the second hand child perspective of adult conversations.
chaotic repetitive storytelling,
need a deeper streamlined story
chaotic repetitive storytelling,
need a deeper streamlined story
March 17, 2025
I think it's good. Maybe even really good. But it's a bit above my level of concentration. Definitely not a beach read, and maybe a little too byzantine.
Put uncharitably, it's maybe a little self-indulgent. But the prose and the scope of history covered is still impressive.
Put uncharitably, it's maybe a little self-indulgent. But the prose and the scope of history covered is still impressive.
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