Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The publisher has chosen to combine two novels (Tree and My Brother, My Executioner) in this second volume of the reissued Rosales Saga by Filipino writer Jos. The two works, first published in Manila in 1924, are loosely held together by geographyÄboth take place in the PhilippinesÄand by the presence of Don Vincente Asperri, a rapacious feudal landlord. In the first, less interesting, section, a middle-aged man looks back on his youth as the son of the overseer for Don Vincente. Characters amble across the stage, tell their story or anecdote, then disappear: an old priest lives in abject poverty in order to save money for church renovations; a young man learns he cannot fight the establishment when he is betrayed by the very people he wants to help. The longer section deals with Luis Asperri, the illegitimate son of the "all-powerful, all-devouring" Don Vincente. Luis and his half-brother Victor (same mother, different fathers) choose opposing sides in a peasant uprising. Luis, though Don Vincente's heir, considers himself liberal. He writes poetry and edits a left-wing magazine, but in many ways he is as heartless as his father. At Don Vincente's insistence, in order to keep the family fortune intact, Luis marries a cousin instead of his city girlfriend, with tragic results all around. When the chips are down, he will not divest himself of his lands as his brother Victor, leader of the revolutionary Huks, demands. JosÄfounding president of the Philippines PEN Center, bookseller, and editor and publisher of a literary journalÄfills the story with melodramatic events (a mad woman in an attic, a deformed baby) and with heavy-handed political rhetoric, perhaps better suited to essays. As a result, both narratives seem somewhat unsophisticated. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
The second in the prominent Filipino author's five-volume "Rosales Saga" (following Dusk), this two-part novel covers Filipino history in the 1950s, focusing on the social inequality rooted in the plantation system. Jos details the harmful effects for both the oppressed and their oppressors, chronicling the birth of an uprising to transform Filipino society. The unnamed son of a plantation manager narrates "Tree," the first part of the novel. He recalls awakening to his father's culpability in subjugating other Filipinos in his hometown. The father works for a more powerful landowner, Don Vicente, whose illegitimate son Luis gives voice to the second, definitely stronger part, "My Brother, My Executioner." Once a victim of the system, Luis goes to live with Don Vicente, reaping the benefits of his father's exploitation. He also suffers deeply when he must leave his family behind amidst harsh, impoverished living conditions. This intense work is recommended for most collections.ÄFaye A. Chadwell, Univ. of Oregon Libs., Eugene (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
The second volume of the Filipino author's celebrated Rosales Saga, whose initial volume Dusk appeared here last year, following such unrelated fiction as Three Filipino Women (1992) and Sins (1996). Jos's oeuvre, however, appears to be only too uniform: an ongoing song in praise of Filipino nationalism and independence, and a scathing indictment of these islands' Spanish, Japanese, and American oppressors and occupiers. His fiction is thus of very uneven quality: a deeply felt love of the land and its traditions, communicated through vivid characterizations and dramatic conflicts, and hamstrung by lengthy conversations and monologues in which characters are little more than mouthpieces. Jos's strengths are best seen in the (untitled) first section of this ``Novel in Two Parts,'' which relates its nameless narrators gradual alienation from his sheltered life in the village of Rosales (during the 1940s). There, his father manages a plantation, owned by the shadowy absentee figure of Don Vicente, that cruelly exploits native workers. The story is distinguished both by its narrator's eloquently conflicted feelings and by the facility with which Jos creates a rich parade of characters, each embodying some aspect of the struggles of Don Vicente's ``people'' to overthrow him. The much weaker (and longer) companion story, ``My Brother, My Executioner,'' contrasts the fates of (the selfsame) Don Vicente's natural son Luis, a poet and magazine editor bent on distancing himself from his father's world, and Luis's half-brother Victor, who joins an inchoate peasant revolt against their father's economic empire. Though Jos does make Don Vicente a complex, self-questioning character, his story sinks under the weight of repeated harangues about ``the rights of the nobility . . . [and] the responsibilities of serfs'' and related socioeconomic themes. Like the writer he most resembles, Indonesian dissident Pramoedya Ananta Toer, Jos is both a diligent, gifted chronicler of his country's sorrows and a scold whose tendency toward laxness and diatribe drains his colorful fiction of much of its inherent and expressive power.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
