Salamanca

by Dean Francis Alfar

Dean Alfar's first novel is about the sorcery wrought by love, lust, and literature, by friendship, family, and the Filipino nation. Salamanca streaks across decades and spaces, tracking the stormy relationship between polymorphous-perverse Gaudencio Rivera, whose passions ignite prodigious feats of writing and wandering, and Palawena beauty Jacinta Cordova, whose perfection transmutes walls into glass and adoration into art.

Tracing the arc of an imperfect marriage sundered by acts of nature (not least human) and sutured by acts of will (not least nonhuman), and vividly peopled by a multigenerational and multinational cast of kith and kin, this work of imagination takes the reader on a magical excursion into Philippine life and history while setting new standards for the Filipino novel along the way.

Genres: Magical Realism, Fantasy, Fiction, Novels, Asian Literature, Speculative Fiction

168 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

Reviews

[Jerard Eusebio · Rating 5 out of 5]

11 April 2014, 1:20 p.m.

I only suspect that not a lot of people would cry after reaching the last page of this modern masterpiece by Dean Francis Alfar. Not me, though. Not on this day. Not in this hour when all I see around me are the browning leaves and cracked barren earth. Not when love is as elusive as a summer rain and my heart is dying, burning in ardent but nonviable hope.

I guess I’m crying because my heart breaks at the thought of real, pure love and how it has been meticulously and subtly laid out here in the novel’s 159 pages, how love is always at the brink of grand fruition and, at the very same time, standing perilously close on the precipice of hopelessness—how it can only be real and pure after it has managed to go back and forth and still be, well, there. It breaks my heart that all the brilliant minds of this earth can only come so close to understanding just what it takes to define love—something we start and maybe never ever finish.

After this book and having read all the books that came to my grip before it, I am compelled to believe that everything we write is our own conjecture of love, our own brave but futile attempt at wrapping our heads around something as unfathomable and as vast as the expanding universe. And with Salamanca, Dean Francis Alfar purports that love, more than being reached, more than being felt, really, is lived.

[K.D. Absolutely · Rating 3 out of 5]

Reading this book feels like reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera (4 stars). It has the magical realism, the sexual characters, the use of Spanish-sounding names (full names instead of first or last only or even nicknames) and the events in the novel happening while some important political/historical milestones are on-going as backdrops.

It is a easy read. Short but full of subplots and secondary characters that can sometimes be confusing. The main plot, however, is about a bisexual man Gaudencio Rivera who falls in love with a beautiful maiden, Jacinta Cordova who lives in Tagbaoran (Palawan), in a house that has glass walls. Gaudencio Rivera wins the heart of Jacinta Cordova through his poems. They get married but don't have sex because Gaudencio Rivera is secretly attracted to a man, Cesar Abalos. So the two men go to Manila and live together until they realize that they are not for each other. So, Gaudencio Rivera goes back to Tagbaoran to have a child with Jacinta Cordova with the condition of giving her freedom. Jacinta Cordova agrees so they go back to Manila, live in Gaudencio Rivera's ancestral house and start raising a family. I will not tell you the rest of the story because I don't want people to put a comment that I should put a spoiler in this review.

I like the manner of storytelling. The style approximates that of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The prose is incandescent and the use of flash-forward (as opposed to flashback) is very interesting. You will be proud of having a local book in your hands that is world-class in storytelling style and can be put side-by-side with a Marquez or an Allende book.

I just think that the development of the main plot got compromised along the way. The many subplots affected the quality of the main plot. In a number of pages, I thought that the author is losing his track by telling unimportant or irrelevant sub-plot that has nothing to do with the main plot, the love story of Gaudencio and Jacinta.

I also think that the relationship between Gaudencio and Cesar was left half-baked maybe for fearing that this could be seen as gay lit. Sure, the two men eloped from Tagbaoran to Manila to live together but they never had sex. While Gaudencio slept around with men and women. I think the author played it safe and left us wondering what is the true (of dominant) sexual preference of Gaudencio.

Anyway, thank you to Kristel for giving my copy of this book during my birthday celebration in 2010. I took me five years to finally pick up this book and read and it was all worth the wait.

Dean Francis Alfar's first novel and I can't wait to read another one.

[Rise]

A fecund, oversexed imagination is on display in this first novel by Filipino writer Dean Francis Alfar, the main proponent of speculative fiction in the country. The sorcery of the title refers to the fuel that powers an imaginary Spanish galleon to soar through the skies. The galleon is a fixture in certain fantastical short stories written by Gaudencio Rivera, the bisexual male lead of the novel. His fount of creativity is derived from his love affairs, betrayals, and promiscuity. Lovemaking fuels Gaudencio's haphazard literary activity.

Sometime in the 1950s, Gaudencio runs away from Manila to Palawan Island to escape a love affair gone wrong. There he encounters Jacinta Cordova, a young woman of peerless beauty. "Her beauty was of such purity and perfection that the walls of the house she lived in had turned transparent long ago, to allow both sunlight and moonlight to illuminate her incandescence." This is a love story.

At the moment that their eyes met through the see-through walls of the inconceivable house, Gaudencio dropped the cigarette in his hand as he was devastated by exposure to Jacinta’s luminous beauty. He felt an almost unbearable torrent of words rise up through his body: inarticulate syllables swiftly welled up from the soles of his feet; combining into nouns at his knees, verbs at his loins, adjectives and adverbs by the time they reached his heart; joined by prepositions and conjunctions from his hands and arms; becoming phrases, clauses, then whole sentences when they reached his head, threatening to erupt not only from his lips but also seeking immediate egress from his eyes, ears, and nose; before finally causing his hair to writhe as whole paragraphs, chapters, short stories, novellas, and novels recoiled backwards, suffusing his entire being with the terrible power of unspoken expression.

The magical absurdity of that passage is consistent with the novel's use of lust and love as materials for fictional creation. It is a creative act that expands fictional boundaries, for we are in the territory of magical realism. It is easy to fall prey to the trappings and overused routines of magic. Alfar's beautiful sentences, however, are the building blocks of a luminous structure that is this very novel.

Salamanca manages to convey significant aspects of postwar Philippine history while telling an exuberant tale of love, identity, and exile. The way Alfar intertwined the landmarks and history of the Palawan Island setting into the novel's larger story is particularly awesome (at least to me, who has been living in Palawan for some time now).

The novel deploys magic as more than an instrument of speculation. Magic is here a transgressive force. The early scene of a powerful storm for instance—wherein the characters, together with their freely flowing hormones, are carried aloft by an accelerating whirlwind—is an outrageous, comic set piece. Unlike the barren magic of certain popular novelists (for instance, Haruki Murakami), the magic in Salamanca has been disabused of its knee-jerk reactions.

The seemingly whimsical telling of the plot creates, well, magic. Gaudencio exploits his experiences, his loves, and his many betrayals of them—like his betrayal of Jacinta that resulted to their short-lived wedding—as materials for his writing career. Similarly, Alfar churns up new plot elements and characters with the spontaneous resolve of an aesthete. Part of his strength lies in the efficiency of his quick character sketches. Characters are added incrementally, and despite their brief appearances and the spare details about them, the readers feel invested in their stories.

There's a lot to unpack in this short novel which in its own way offers a synthesis of post-war Philippine history, not a magical slice of that history but the whole cake. At the start of the novel, Gaudencio is in the United States, homesick and planning to return to the Philippines to impregnate his estranged wife Jacinta.

Seven years after the complete destruction of Manilaville in Louisiana, the dissolute author Gaudencio Rivera decided to settle the matter of his incoherent sexuality and beget a child. His sudden announcement—made during a dinner party held in Los Angeles—was greeted first with laughter, then moments later with stupefaction, when a minor earthquake struck to seal the veracity of his declaration. As the small party sat under the shuddering table watching the room sway, Gaudencio told them that there came a time in every man’s life to part the gossamer curtain that separated childhood from the real world; that in his case, the moment had been too long in its postponement; that artists—especially gifted writers like himself—while often able to crystallize miraculous observations of mundane things, were sometimes blinded to more important matters; and that, ultimately, women were necessary to continue humanity’s existence, even if, occasionally, men proved to be better bedmates.

Manilaville is a settlement for Filipinos in Louisiana, later destroyed by a powerful hurricane. Gaudencio mirrors the experience of immigrant Filipino writers, those who continue to long for their country even as they seek to establish their literary careers abroad. The name has a correlate with Vietville which also figures in the novel. Vietville is also a settlement community, the first generation of which were Vietnamese refugees who fled their country during the Vietnam War. They arrived by boat to Palawan after a long journey at sea. The plight of exiled citizens and writers, what defines their rootedness in a certain home country, is one of the novel's dramatic strands.

This novel is also notable for its bending not only of genre but of gender. "Men, Women and Other Fictions" is the title of the second of three chapters of the novel, indicating how gender is here (almost) ignored as a deterministic criterion in choosing the sexual orientation of characters. The bisexual Gaudencio fills a gender gap in the characterization of male lovers in Philippine literary novels, at least novels of "epic and sprawling" ambition like Salamanca, novels which consciously integrate historical details and markers in their text.

The novel also makes reference to the use of magic as a political strategy of writers during the period of dictatorship after Marcos declared Martial Law in the country in 1972. The opportune use of fantastical elements in stories "permitted veiled criticisms of the nation's dictatorial regime without risking a visit from the police and an interminable incarceration in Fort Bonifacio, or any of the other venues where enemies of the government were routinely tortured, earning the sad victims the appellation 'desaparecidos,' the Vanished Ones."

Most significantly, Alfar makes a metaphoric case for sexual appetite as the "life force" of literary imagination.

"Do you still write?" Gaudencio asked him.
"No," Antonio replied with a mischievous smile. "I make babies."
"You really are an artist," Gaudencio said, blinking his eyes ... "Possessed by an imperative to create."

The imagined leap from the promiscuity of procreation to the promiscuity of creativity is one way of looking at art as perpetual giving birth to and bringing forth of artworks, the progeny of the imagination. Sexual reproduction as the mode of literary production: the prolific outputs of Gaudencio are direct products of his sexual proclivity. "His muse was the instant of passion", that instant when he "experienced his body's familiar transubstantiation of carnal lust to sublime vocabularies, and he would mentally partition texts as they were composed in his mind". Alfar seems to be hinting that, in the continuing process of national imagining and becoming, the liberal attitudes toward sexuality is the liberating force that makes us aware of the mystery of love and existence.

Self-awareness is that other modernist quality of the novel that makes it refreshing. Salamanca is a highly aware novel, aware of its opportunistic "exploitation" of human experience as fictional material, of magical elements as a creative force, of the politics of literary creation, of the national literary tradition it seeks to be an essential part of, and of the debilitating histories of colonialism and dictatorship. The witty self-references and historical asides, on top of transgressive magic and emotional subtlety, make for a novel of verbal and sensual riches.

One character in the novel describes salamanca as the thing that makes one see what is being described. This is the power of imagery to reveal images from words alone. This is also the power of fiction to portray ideas that reflect the sheen of reality. Through some hitherto unheard of black magic sourced from some enchanted cave, Alfar shows that the novel is a magical thing too—salamanca itself.

[Dante · Rating 3 out of 5]

Salamanca is a novel about love.

Basically, the plot goes like this: Gaudencio Rivera, the main character in the story, announces to his friends one day in a dinner party in Los Angeles that he wants to go back to the Philippines and return to his wife. He has abandoned her many years ago for a man (Yes, a man!). He wants to apologize to her and renew his commitment of love to her and raise a child with her. He wants to make right the great wrong he has done, and start anew.

He then relates to one of his artist-friends the story of how he first met his wife in Tagbaoran in Palawan.

He ended up in the town of Tagbaoran after fleeing Manila because of a love affair gone wrong. He wanted to become a teacher in the town. However, such a position wasn't needed. So he ended up doing odd jobs just to survive. He wasn't able to make use of his education and talent in writing.

His fate changed the moment he saw Jacinta Cordova, the most beautiful girl in the town, and perhaps even in the "whole of creation." He first heard about her the day he entered Tagbaoran:

"The first two things Gaudencio Rivera was made aware of -- within hours of arriving by carabao-driven cart at the secluded town of Tagbaoran on the island province of Palawan -- were these: that the most beautiful woman in creation dwelt by the river, and that it was pointless to even dream of being loved by her. He was informed that her name was Jacinta Cordova, and that her beauty was of such purity and perfection that the walls of the house she lived in had turned transparent long ago, to allow both sunlight and moonlight to illuminate her incandescence."

He saw her while he was out strolling in the woods and along a river. She was inside her transparent house while he was outside looking in, out of curiosity. He was absolutely stunned the moment he saw her face. He couldn't speak, and all sorts of emotions welled up inside him. The next moment, he was running away from the glass house and away from Jacinta, because he was swept away by his feelings. He then spent the next days and weeks, barely sleeping, feverishly writing short stories, poems, novellas, novels and dedicating all of them to Jacinta. He would go to her house before dawn every single day and plaster his literature on her transparent walls. Jacinta, it so happened, was struck the moment she saw him, too. She, too, was inflamed with emotions for him, and each day she would wake up before sunrise and remove the stories and poems posted on her wall, for fear that her aunt, Apolinaria, might see the unbelievable sight.

Eventually, they got married, but their union only lasted for several days, and wasn't even consummated, for he ran off with Cesar, a friend he met while earning his living in the town. They went to Manila, and Gaudencio began his life as a writer. He stunned Manila's literary scene with his prodigious writing. He got published in all the magazines and newspapers, and won awards left and right. He became successful. But he also entered into illicit relationships with different people, men and women alike. He gave in to carnal pursuits for he felt that lust was the fuel that drove his creative output.

Meanwhile, in Tagbaoran, Jacinta nursed a broken heart. She endured years of sorrow, and occupied herself by helping the Abalos family, the family whom Cesar abandoned. She became friends with Lucio, Filomena, and Gilberta, and their other relatives. She adjusted to a new life.

After the success, Gaudencio's life became empty. He was haunted by guilt. He realized that the only thing that can make him happy is to see Jacinta again, ask for her forgiveness, start a family with her, and grow old with her.

Hence, while in L.A., in the dinner party, he announced to his writer-friends that he will be going back to the woman he has betrayed and abandoned.

So he returned, but was rejected and hated, especially by the people who cared for Jacinta. He then proposed to her that he can free her from him on the condition that she gave him a child.

To cut the long story short, Gaudencio and Jacinta traveled back to Manila and they lived with his mother and brothers. They had children, but one died because of a freak accident.

Jacinta planned to give him only one son, as they had agreed, and return to Tagbaoran to marry a man who understood, respected, and loved her.

However, Jacinta became totally occupied with being a mother, and she realized she can't just leave her son to him.

So they both grew old together. Gaudencio ended his illicit relationships and remained loyal to her. He devoted all his time to his wife and family, and to his writing and teaching.

Shortly before she died, she wrote him a letter, saying, "After everything, you must know that I love you."

When she died, blinding light shone forth from her body and she was transformed into the beautiful woman she once was. And, just like before, the walls of their house in Manila became transparent because of her sheer beauty, just like 'salamanca' (magic).

I like how Alfar told his story. It kind of reminds me of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. In fact, the story itself reminds me of Love in the Time of Cholera. The protagonist in that story is also a man possessed by feelings of love and desire, and he, like Gaudencio, slept with different people. I find that disturbing, and no less disturbing, and no doubt objectionable, is the fact that he slept with other men!

Salamanca also reminded me of The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. The main character of that story was also a playboy!

I think what's beautiful about Salamanca is that it's honest about how lust, carnal pursuits, selfishness, and uncontrolled fame and success, etc., eventually leads to emptiness and meaninglessness. Only love and self-sacrifice gives life meaning. Gaundencio realized this when he day-dreamed that his true happiness rested in being with Jacinta and have children and grandchildren with her.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dean Francis Alfar's novel Salamanca (2006) is a (quite short) piece of magic realism that stretches across much of the life of its central protagonist and through several decades of the Philippines' history. I've been slightly imprecise in that sentence because, while one spends perhaps as much as the first three-quarters of the book believing that, even during some longish periods when he is off-stage, the central protagonist is the oversexed writer Gaudencio Rivera, towards the end of the book, in a feat of tricksterism that made at least this reader grin appreciatively, one discovers this assumption was misplaced.

The book is full of plots, but the one that holds the others together concerns Gaudencio Rivera's discovery in Tagbaoran, a remote small town in the Philippines' island province of Palawan, of Jacinta, a young woman of such incandescent beauty that she has turned all the walls of her house to glass; of his desertion of her eleven days after their as-yet unconsummated marriage; of his decision years later to have children of whom he determines she must be the mother; of her initial reluctance to countenance the prospect; and of her eventual rediscovery of happiness through this unorthodox relationship so that, finally, she rediscovers also the beauty of her youth. There's a very, very great deal more to the book than these bare bones; indeed, it's astonishing how much Alfar manages to stuff into 160 pages or so.

It's a very writerly novel, too, despite that brevity, and I can't imagine any writer reading it without at least sneakily identifying with Rivera on occasion -- as when, in his youth, his lust (or could it possibly be love?) for Jacinta causes words and phrases and imagery to erupt orgasmically from every part of his body. Yet, as I say, at the end of the novel you realize the story isn't really about him at all.

Another discovery is the meaning of the book's title. I'd assumed it was a placename, and was slightly bemused by the fact that no reference to the Spanish city ever turned up, or even seemed remotely likely to do so. It was only on page 126 that I came across this passage:

He [Rivera:] created powerful fantasies set in a reimagined Philippines, circa the time of Spanish rule, imbuing the land he called Hinirang, the Land Longed For, with tikbalang half-breeds that warred against their greedy oppressors; natives who went on impossible quests in the name of unattainable love and other abstract ideals; and wondrous galleons that soared through the skies fueled by salamanca, the mysterious magic of the gods of sky, field, and sea.

So in a way the title is yet another of Alfar's conjuring tricks.

[Athena · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm just not a fan of stories in which women play the part of mystical, unknowable beings who are merely instruments for egocentric male protagonists and authors to realize their own selfhood, especially not in the form of excessive homages to Gabriel Garcia Marquez such as this.

[D · Rating 1 out of 5]

Seriously can't get into this book at all. Might come back to it when I have more time in my life.

With that, I leave you with a little anecdote:

It was my last year at uni and I went to this lecture about experimental fiction by {author redacted}. This guy has been to some of my class workshops and I like the way he thinks. His work can be somewhat too experimental for my taste, but at least he's pushing the boundaries (whatever that means.

When he mentioned Dean Alfar, he said that Salamanca was like singing karaoke. I had no idea what he was talking about at that time, but reading this, I realise that he was right. This reads like he's following a format, following lyrics written by someone else. The flamboyant events, the purple prose: very Latin American. Is this really Pinoy? Hmm, what with the insidious Americanisation of our country, I can say that yes, Salamanca is still representative of Philippine literature. BUT IT'S NOT REPRESENTATIVE OF FILIPINO LITERATURE AS A WHOLE. This serves as no new standard in magic realist novels anywhere. Don't even point to this novel when talking about Philippine Spec Lit with me. It might be enjoyable, but I don't see it as anything new. Frankly, I like his short stories better.

[Jason Lundberg · Rating 5 out of 5]

A luminously sensuous family chronicle that could easily sit next to the best of Gabriel García Márquez. The evolution of Gaudencio from lustful bisexual philanderer into content family man is filled with tragedy and wonder, and Alfar's light touch with the fantastic here elevates the narrative to mythic proportions. Simply put, I didn't want the book to end, but it does so on exactly the right note. Dean Francis Alfar is a wizard of prose, the possessor of a very special kind of narrative salamanca, and his voice deserves to be heard the world over.

[deletedaccount · Rating 3 out of 5]

Salamanca was awarded the Grand Prize for the Novel in the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature in 2005, and was first published by the Ateneo Press in 2006. It is, for the most part, a love story, and its appeal is in the interrogation of who that love's between, or what.

General/Language

Like with most of Alfar’s work, language in this novel is strange, almost whimsical, but underscored by something heavier, a certain darkness—the setting is familiar but made new, and the actions of the characters are quite bizarre, almost scandalous, when held against its more formal, even “serious” counterparts. It’s quite a shock to read, but this shock is tempered by the lightness of space. Palawan and Manila are brought to life here, teeming with various characters, loud and sure and doubtful and real. Places are characterized either by its people or as people, very much characters themselves in this story. Manila is described here as,

For it was Manila’s curse ever to grow beyond the imposed formalised and ritualised characteristics of her initial masters of three centuries, take what she came into contact with, and move towards whatever she needed to be in bursts of haste—fully aware that her energies were not infinite, and that her people, once they reached a certain level of comfort, ceased to think of tomorrow. (47-48)

The passage is telling of the tone of the story, matter-of-fact but conversational, vaguely aware of secrets kept, and vaguely inclined to spill them. And yet, even for the vivacity of its characters and the sure deftness of its language, Salamanca fails to some degree in justifying the tone it had set. One criticism of the novel is that while it is obviously Filipino, it is also very obviously an homage to writers such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Milan Kundera. Perhaps it is most pressing issue, that it's too much of one thing—a text clearly informed by some place else's traditions, maybe—and not enough of what it is.

The narrative is too invested in its language that motivation is left almost flimsy. Gaudencio Rivera, the protagonist, is transposed in the narrative by these lines,

The first two things Gaudencio Rivera was made aware of—within hours of arriving by carabao-driven cart at the secluded town of Tagbaoran on the island province of Palawan—were these: that the most beautiful woman in creation dwelt by the river, and that it was pointless to even dream of being loved by her. (2)

This passage should drive his misadventures forward, but while the notion remains overhead throughout the story, it feels as if it is only returned to when the drama from elsewhere falls short of sustaining the voice. It is not effortlessly crafted into the core of the story, that it is easy to see where it doesn’t stand. The novel ends with an emotional “My dear Dencio, After everything, you must know that I love you” but it reads like a summary.



The novel as a whole is a sturdy text. It carries itself well as it stands, and the language is rich enough to appeal to a more intellectual appreciation of the text. But as for what it set out to do, that is, to present a narrative that weaves and unravels the histories of its chosen settings, it isn’t a strong enough example of alternative world fiction. It doesn't necessarily possess a certain gravitas rooted in the earth of its locale.

[Jessie Jr · Rating 5 out of 5]

My Dear Mina,

Thank you for the bandi you sent back with Tonio. I did not realize how much I missed the taste of it.
I am happy that he was able to meet Cesar, and that Cesar is well.
Sometimes when I think of everything that has happened, I ask myself the same question Tonio asked me a long time ago. Is it true?
But as I continue to grow older, I realize that it doesn't really matter. I remember what I remember, and for me that is the truth.
Perhaps that is the same for everyone? I don't know.
I know that I have not been the most capable of letter writers, but I want you to know that when I think of the times that I was happy, you face and voice are always there.

Kindly Give my regards to everyone.
Yours,
Intang

I have waited too long for to read this, and that waiting may have been one of the reasons I liked this book, or no. For times will come and waiting in vain will result to none. And this book will tell you how.

Salamanca is a love story. But spare the words romance, for this is beyond that. (And I believe that's
where love has lost its meaning, in overly romanticizing things, but let us not dwell on that.) Telling a story of a lifetime folded by chapters of rise and fall, of heartbreaks and redemption, of love. Of waiting for love.

Comparable to Gabriel Garcia's writing, it is. But this does not mean that it is not written by a Filipino. One thing I liked about the writing, both Gabriel and Dean's style, is how they tell a story to come, not spoiling the readers but rather setting the readers mood, yet will invite us, readers to read the story and experience paragraph by paragraph.

"The correspondence between Jacinta and Filomena would last thirty years, a chain of Staccato letters and photographs broken only three times, in its consistence rhythm of news, gossip, and intimacies; twice by birth and finally by death."

Finally the conclusion, it was just well put. It's as if that after polishing the figurines, everything was set back to a place where they have been all along.

[Lynn Hazel · Rating 2 out of 5]

I teared at the ending.
My dislike for Gaudencio is so strong that I have personal bias as to where the story went.
I didn't like how Jacinta became a figure of lust - only because of her mesmerizing beauty.
I didn't like how Gaudencio gets his inspiration for writing.
I didn't like how Gaudencio still got back together with Jacinta despite his betrayal.
I liked though, how it showed Gaudencio as a changed man, but I didn't like how the novel didn't highlight how Gaudencio was changed.

There were too much happening aside Dencio and Intang's story - some were so colorful to one's mind, and some so disgusting and disapproving to my own heart and principles.

"After everything, you must know that I love you."

Reading those lines made me tear.

This novel is not for readers who read for escapism like me. This showed how love could be something so hurtful, how love could be a sacrifice for one's freedom, how love is a choice and not only a feeling.

[Miguel Carlos Lazarte · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book shared a lot of the feeling with Love in the Time of Cholera and reminiscent of the style of the referenced Without Seeing The Dawn by Javellana.

The perfectly molded world by Alfar came wondrously at Tagbaoran and Manila, both being tastes of the simplicity and fecundity of life. Filipino culture, even politics and history, was greatly reflective of the long post-Japanese and Marcos dictatorship era. Less of those, but Gaudencio's life affairs and search for himself came through tough. A short novel but explorative of a whole lifetime for all characters beautifully written in the many backstories and quick wit.

I enjoyed this very much, with the magical going lesser by the end. Similar to how a child's maturity goes. Just as quick. But definitely worth the magical and odd ride in Salamanca!

[Earl · Rating 5 out of 5]

I initially thought that the narrative was a bit hurried at the last part; however, I still find the way time was narrated in this novel as something splendid. Indeed a story of how love survives and strives in the calamities of life.

[Jelyn Antoinette · Rating 4 out of 5]

I never thought that I will cry because of this book. 😭😭 so much emotions specially in the last part.

[Majuchan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book has its working on me... my tears just flowed with that ending. Its awards are well deserved.

UPDATE:

“What happens to memory when it vanishes? What happens to events when everyone who remembers them ceases to remember?”


It rekindled the passion of writing in my journals. Thank you Dean. You sowed within my heart the importance of writing once again. Even writing for people I cherish.



So now, with the review proper. The flow of the story is a masterpiece. It reflects the characters perfectly. It was told with colorful and creativity and lots of salamanca, when the characters are still young and as they grow old, the salamanca in it is diminishing little by little. But in the end, it all fall back to the start with all the magic!

The last few pages struck me. I wish to stop reading to halt the impeding flow of tears, but the pull of salamanca in the book is much stronger than my will.



I clung to the book until the very last letter. That ending, that letter is the perfect finale. The brief content of the letter answered all my questions. It’s just the mother of all endings!

[Dean Harvey · Rating 5 out of 5]

kjiuhnkjioj

[JB Beltran · Rating 2 out of 5]

While it's definitely a clumsy (especially in the beginning), obvious attempt to mimic One Hundred Years of Solitude, the novel comes through with a creative, sometimes poignant, and ultimately unique take on life and love, on memory and magic.

[upʞ · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars, decided to go up for 4. First time to read from author Dean Alfar, I am just amazed on how he wrote this award-winning novel in a span of a month for the NaNoWriMo. The blurb best describes the contents of the novel: "... sorcery wrought by love, lust, and literature, friendship, family, and the Filipino nation."

There are heartbreaking points, most especially in Part 3 - Letters from Intang (the last part is a total tearjerker). I love the part where an excerpt of Dencio's literature gave a twist to a cliché(ish) romantic scene. Dencio and Intang's reunion could have been depicted better.

The wordsmith could have delved more on the characters of Cesar Abalos and Bau Long Huynh as the alternate love interests of Dencio and Intang; on the mystery behind the mystical beauty of Intang and how and why it transmutes walls into glass; and maybe an episode where Intang tried to go back to Tagbaoran at least once in her motherhood.

[Nemo · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a requirement from my college literature course. To be honest, i never read much Philippine Literature. This book for sure is one of the best and I'm glad i had a chance to read it.

“The first two things Gaudencio Rivera was made aware of--within hours of arriving by carabao-drawn cart at the secluded town of Tagbaoran on the island province of Palawan--were these: that the most beautiful woman in creation dwelt by the river, and that it was pointless to even dream of being loved by her.”
― Dean Francis Alfar, Salamanca

[Annabelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Almost midway through my reading of From Dawn to Decadence, I realized I needed something lighter to tide me over...

While browsing through NB's Filipiniana section I came across this one, yet again. But this time I started reading the first few pages. In no time I realized I'd found just the story to serve as buffer for Jacques Barzun's heavy (literally and figuratively speaking) book.

Magic and fantasy. And realism too, as it ends. What took me so long?

[Earnest · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maybe 3.5 stars

It was great in the beginning where I thought the Philippines finally had its magical realist novel, had the right ingredients for it but in the end the entire whole comes off too much as Love in the Time of Cholera rip-off. Even the writing style was very similar. I did not juat believe in their love story as much.

I hated the ending. Can't a woman have a better ending than being with a cheating wastrel of a man. The male protagonist really irritated me haha😂

[Eugene · Rating 3 out of 5]

epic like and tragic, this is my first philippine historical fiction read, and it was good but not spectacular, i find the characters development were brief because the author made the story shorter than the average novel, but it was easy to understand and the prose was somewhat erotic and magical and at the same time, for adult readers only. It was a fun read, not bad at all.

[RJ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just like magic, the novel opens up all of love's faces - mysterious, unexpected, scary, but will always leave us awestruck and wanting more. A good mix of fantasy and an atypical Filipino love story, Salamanca was such a pleasure to read.

[Lenn ♡ | anatomyofabooknerd (IG) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Our professor required us to read this book back when I was in college and this could totally be a really weird book for some, but it really is sort of good. I could really refer to it as a "high magical fiction" because Dean Francis Alfar has this very, very wide imagination.

[Decolonize D Native · Rating 1 out of 5]

Watered down magic realism. Then add some historical details then call it speculative fiction. One brilliant passage of American woman screaming obscenities in multiple tongues, but lazy moments too, especially the summary-like ending. This text won an award? How?

[Danel Olson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stunning, surprising, and straight from the soul. Every page has a truth about the human condition that is hard to forget.

[Lennie Daluz · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is somehow odd, but the middle part to the ending was really good.

[Meesh Salazar · Rating 5 out of 5]

"After everything, you must know that I love you."

This ending. I'm so huhu

[Kathleen Mirano · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think this is a very good book :)

[Leah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read it. It's not all happy but for all its supernatural elements it's quite raw and real. I did not expect to be in tears by the end of it but I was hahaha.