But For the Lovers - Wilrido D. Nolledo
(Foreword by Robert Coover)
"You never actually bury a volcano. There's always a resurrection."
Last year I posed a question to Rise, meister of the wonderful in lieu of a field guide blog. What book by a Philippine author would he recommend? This was the book and you can read his better informed blog by clicking the link to his blog. it is a while since I read it and I could easily leave this patchy, unfinished post in my drafts folder but I have attempted to put some shape on it because I believe this novel deserves more attention. It deserves a better post but this, I hope, is better than nothing. I intend reading it again at some point in the future and maybe I can make a more coherent and considered case then.
Barring Rise's introduction this is not a novel or writer that I have encountered anywhere else, an obscurity that seems thoroughly undeserved and unfortunate. This is a sprawling; energetic; humourous; mysterious; sometime brutal; poetic book that brought to mind Kenzaburo Õe, Gravity's Rainbow, Juan Carlos Onetti and Julio Cortazar's Hopscotch, just for starters. And I haven't come across so much shapeshifting since reading Asturias, especially in the poetic, dreamlike opening section.
