The Builder

by Edith L. Tiempo

As he ends his Physics class one morning, Professor Felix Acuña is jolted into the daylight violence across the street in the university town of Dumaguete and his life begins to unreel with detective purpose. But dare he put his own life to a standstill when he must build a house while awaiting the birth of his firstborn? While he prods his students to speed up their work, he must also take on responsibility for the school administrator's middling son. Now he must run after an enigmatic outlaw and two purloined documents in forging a compelling punishment to an unsettling domestic crime.

Readers will welcome this gripping novel by Edith L. Tiempo, her most recent after being named National Artist for Literature. The Builder assembles a cast of indomitable characters, replete with wit, cleverness, and most amazingly, with sudden unexpected depths. Here is a work which abounds with the clear surprises of inversion and moral ambiguity, where the consummate artist meditates on the human leaning for rootedness - as in life's rooms, the seekers come and go, ripening into wisdom and discovering that time is the one firmament building the house of conviction and faith, slaking our thirst for truth.

Genres: Fiction

145 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 2003

About the author

Edith L. Tiempo, poet, fiction writer, teacher and literary critic is one of the finest Filipino Writers in English whose works are characterized by a remarkable fusion of style and substance, of craftsmanship and insight. Her poems are intricate verbal transfigurations of significant experiences as revealed, in two of her much anthologized pieces, "Lament for the Littlest Fellow" and "Bonsai." As fictionist, Tiempo is as morally profound. Her language has been marked as "descriptive but unburdened by scrupulous detailing." She is an influential tradition in Philippine literature in English.

Together with her late husband, writer and critic Edilberto K. Tiempo, they founded (in 1962) and directed the Silliman National Writers Workshop in Dumaguete City, which has produced some of the Philippines' best writers.

She was conferred the National Artist Award for Literature in 1999.

(from wikipedia.org.)

Reviews

[DC · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was, at first, impressed. After all, it starts out as a murder mystery in Dumaguete. A rich, smart girl with a bright future suddenly lying in a heap on the street? Not expected.

However, as the story moves forward, the details get obscure, confusing and, frankly, too much. I felt that a number of instances here may not have been necessary to forward the story. I also had to stifle a yawn here and there, when the story deviated to deadened and probably unnecessary paths. I also got surprised at the time lapses, which honestly made me wonder - what happened between those unmentioned months?

(I remembered Mr. Tiempo's Farah, which I didn't enjoy very, very much as well, since it also seemed full of unnecessary detail.)

Still, it's an interesting mystery to chew at, with a smart Physics professor at the forefront. That he was also in the process of building his house for his family was also admirable, and I love the little quirky details that came with it - the buying of furniture, choosing the right location so as not to be directly beside the raucous neighbors, and getting suggestions from architects to have porches.

Otherwise, I thought that the other characters were not very special, though they do mirror reality in their own right.

The story is, actually, not a very unique one, but I found it funny that the why of whole matter has been given enough care as not to be divulged immediately to the reader, as if the mystery behind the mystery cannot be revealed so easily. There is also another storyline present, one involving a past, and a future.

There are notes of school politics, family, and legal issues. Detectives and police are present, as well as bigwigs and common men. The setting is provincial in nature, featuring Dumaguete most of all, and hints of Davao, Cebu and Manila.

If you're in the mood for a mystery story, go ahead and indulge. Beware, though, because if you're like me, you might end up frustrated with the pacing and other seemingly unimportant details. Still, decent writing, a different setting, and the secrets behind the secrets are here to beckon you.

[Alibiserver · Rating 1 out of 5]

Well, after a few months containing my disdain for the book (and just to add to my reviews and narrow down the reviews-ratings part in my profile) I decided to write a review for this book. As one could notice, some of my most scathing reviews are given to locally made books. While this trend, as one would follow, continues to be an ongoing plague (blame it prolly on my bad picks or simply because each book I got never held me) I am constantly reminded that there might be a pile of gold somewhere that I might fancy. I picked up this book, since it was Edith Tiempo, the great Edith Tiempo, and hoped I could get some of her styling in writing, hoping to scrape at least a mote of her writing greatness.

Then I was wrought with some begrudging feel that never left me, just as when I finished the book and shipped it away to Davao. This was a Tiempo creation, but why does it feel so lacking? It had the elements- Anvil published it, it was published in newsprint and charged me 200 pesos for it, and it was a slim volume. Why, even if I elevate its greatness, it doesn't seem to shine?

I let the thoughts simmer, gave it a two when I joined Goodreads, but when my thoughts conjured and books began piling up again in my bookshelf, now read from cover to cover, my love for books slowly coming back in a feverish pace, I revisited this book back and subtracted one star.

Why get off that single STAR!

Now let me explain before you scream that this is a Tiempo book. Your argument surely couldn't hold water to its greatness. Yes, it may not be, but right after I graduated and worked hard to buy a book for my own pleasure, for my own education, just to support our fledgling industry, I couldn't bear to like it. Yes, the book was well-written, careful, well-edited. Yes it has the literary elements that you may have overseen. You are a boor sir! A boorish boar I must say.

The problem is that I read it with the intent of getting out more than my 200 pesos.

Let me count the ways of how it got all wrong:

FOCUS - The story starts off with a promise. One of Felix Acuna's students in his Physics class, a daughter of a prominent family whose father recently passed away, was struck in the head with a rod by some assailant riding a motorcycle. The woman immediately died and what happened were events that catapulted into the hunt for the killer, the gathering of the evidence and, you know the drill.

Then, right in the middle of the story, Acuna reminisces his younger days, how his father bought a house in Leyte. It's the follow-up to the beginning of the story, where the Acuna kids play name the capitals in their tiny cot in Manila. Surely, this cannot go on. They may be integral to the story you'd ask me. You will ask yourself and you relinquish your disbelief. Read on.

But it continues.

Soon, the assailant's case mixes in with the building of the new house, the corruption inside the university, the family life that Acuna builds and such and such. Just where is the basic premise in the tale? You were promised with excitement right in the start of the story but in the very middle of it the killer gives himself off. The thrill wears thin. you skim the book. Skim until the last part. The entire piston that jolts the engine of this tale literally explodes. You get the Deus Ex Machina at the very end of it.

You may say "oh, it's just verisimilitude, yeah" but compare it to other Nordic thriller titles, or what about our very own "Smaller and smaller circles" by Batacan where yes, there's verisimilitude but you are gripped right from the start. You know that the book steers you clear.

So you ask, does the book give that kind of thing?

PREMISE - Just as I explained the story in the first part, a killing of a woman right in the middle of the day is a good start to a good read, but because of the so many things that Acuna is preoccupied on- the house, his students, his own higher-ups, the premise gets buried, and right in the end, you get a very long-winded explanation from someone whose existence in the story was just to tell the story to them. If I was there, I would've hacked this guy to pieces.

BELIEVABILITY - So did Tiempo made me believe that Acuna was a physics teacher? No. Next time, DON'T MAKE HIM READ "DISTANCE TO ANDROMEDA" BY GREGORIO BRILLANTES! MAKE HIM DO EXPERIMENTS! SHOW HIM AS HE TEACHES!

I have no idea what the teachers in Silliman are doing but while I was reading this tale it doesn't escape me that Tiempo wrote it with the idea that the teachers were from her own university. Sure, it beats me, but as I read a book, it would've been better if he would've been made as a writer.

And what about the plausibility of the explanation of the dude at the end? Ridiculous.

So when I made the thought of giving it just a single star, I didn't dwell on the fact that I was reading an established writer. Tiempo made more brilliant pieces, more brilliant than this piece of shite. I don't care whether you are a good writer and your other pieces made it well and that it is part of that accepted canon in that limited circle of writers. You write a book to tell your readers what you have accomplished, and how eager you are to share it to everyone. Prolly because of age, or the limits of space that this book was such a major disappointment.

[Reshel Gare · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice

[Joel Nadal]

this is a very exciting.

[Luke Samuel]

k

[Ronalyn Rabacal]

where s the copy