Review by Booklist Review
In this deeply disturbing novel, Hamilton-Paterson paints a haunting, violent tale of anarchy and depravity, set in a city infamous for its brutality. The story begins in a factory where skeletons are assembled from the discarded bodies of vagrants and victims of police death squads. This sets the tone for the rest of the tale, in which horrifying, brutal acts are commonplace and anything can be accomplished for a price. The characters interact with one another to relate the stories of their lives--tales of pain, corruption, and yet stoic courage. The fates of an anthropologist studying societies that have run amok, a fake priest who advises people to live morally and intelligently despite the chaos, a basically good policeman working within a viciously treacherous system, and a squatter family leading a tenuous existence in a barrio are entwined as those people struggle to an understanding of life and destiny. The eloquent prose compels the reader onward despite the inherent harshness of the subject and
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
``The Spanish Inquisition taking place in a Dunkin' Donuts'' is how focal character John Prideaux, an Englishman and burned-out documentary director, encapsulates his impression of the Philippines in this novel-cum-travelogue about a Third World country run socially and economically amok. Assorted characters-including Prideaux, a slum seamstress, a marginally corrupt cop and two female archeologists-separately explore the ways of the dead in Manila (bodies turn up as finds in archeological digs, as dumped police victims, as casualties of construction accidents in the Marcoses' public works projects and as victims of simple random violence). These story elements converge in the novel's grotesque centerpiece, detailing a shantytown annexed to a cemetery where the dead are better cared for than the living, the locals claim to see vampires and a Chinese drug baroness operates from her family mausoleum. Throughout, Hamilton-Paterson proves himself an expert travel writer, scattering anecdotes and observations like seedy landmarks along his pages and offering an atmospherically rich portrait of the Philippines (where he lives part of the year). But his characters, though well drawn, get short shrift in this docufiction approach, popping up like periscopes to view the landscape from their assorted removes but then resubmerging into the background as the book's real protagonist-the chaos that is modern Manila-reclaims center stage. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
In Hamilton-Paterson's Manila, role-playing and deception are part of the national fabric. As an ex-American protectorate, the country's entire administrative structure is simply a copy or "ghost" of the American system. Philippine shops are so permeated with counterfeit brands that the originals themselves are suspect. Through a sort of cultural Gresham's law, fakery has driven authenticity out of the marketplace. Adrift in this tawdry world, John Prideaux, a burned-out television journalist covering an outbreak of vampirism in the barrio, begins to write an anthropological dissertation on amok, a form of homicidal frenzy. For Prideaux, objectivity in either field is illusory. His work will be a Castaneda-like exercise in fictional scholarship. Hamilton-Peterson (Gerontius, LJ 4/1/91) plays a dazzling set of variations on the ghost metaphor. A virtuoso performance, recommended for all fiction collections.-Edward B. St. John, Loyola Law Sch. Lib., Los Angeles (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Set in post-Marcos contemporary Manila, this novel from versatile British writer Hamilton-Paterson (The Great Deep, 1992, etc.) is riveting as a work of docufiction but less satisfying as a conventional novel. A part-time resident of the Philippines, Hamilton-Paterson has a familiarity with local politics, customs, and history that gives his subtext--a country infected by deadly corruption--an impressive journalistic authority. The Manila he describes is a wasteland of cesspools, slums, sexual exploitation, and sweatshops where, with rare exceptions, everything and everyone has a price. Former British filmmaker John Prideaux, in his 40s, has taken up anthropology and is in Manila to explore what makes a society run amok. Fellow Brit, aristocratic Ysabella Bastiaan, an archaeologist, has come to work on a local dig. More a vehicle for the plot than a credible character, she is thinly drawn, as indeed are most characters except for Inspector Rio Dingca, Manila's only honest cop. The story, in which desperate squatters living on the margins are deliberately murdered and terrorized by a ``vampire'' employed by Lettie Tan, a local bordello owner, drug dealer, and entrepreneur, is secondary to Hamilton-Paterson's indictment of the Philippine government. Characters describe how children are kidnapped for prostitution; how hundreds of workers are left buried in concrete in Imelda Marcos's grandiose cultural center; how the important archaeological find located in the squatters' slum will be cynically preserved in the midst of the planned upscale mall; and how police, tired of corrupt judges and lawyers, take justice into their own hands and deliver criminals they have executed illegally to a Chinese ``pie-factory'' that renders their bodies into skeletons for export. Memorable insights and much vivid writing are not enough to give life to a flimsy story overwhelmed by an enormous and urgent mission. A pity.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
