Forgiving Imelda Marcos
A Novel
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
Nathan Go’s taut meditation on forgiveness and regret is told in the indelible voice of a Filipino chauffeur nearing the end of his life.
After suffering a serious heart injury, Lito Macaraeg reaches out to his estranged son—a journalist who lives in the United States, far from his father’s Manila nursing home—to promise him a scoop: the story of a secret meeting between Imelda Marcos and Corazon Aquino. Imelda, best known for her excessive shoe collection, was the flamboyant wife of the late Philippine dictator; Corazon was the wife of the opposition politician who was allegedly killed by the Marcoses. An unassuming housewife, Corazon rose up after her husband’s death to lead the massive rallies that eventually toppled the Marcos dictatorship.
Lito was Corazon’s personal driver for many years, and her only companion on the journey from Manila to Baguio City to meet Imelda. Throughout the long drive, Lito’s loyalty to his employer is pitted against his own moral uncertainty about her desire to forgive Imelda. But as Lito unspools his tale about two women whose choices shaped their country’s history, his own story, and failings, slowly come to light. He delves into his past: his neglectful father, who joined a Communist guerrilla movement; their life in a mountain encampment headed by a charismatic priest; and Lito’s struggles with poverty and ambition. In the end, it is Lito himself who must contemplate the meaning and possibility of forgiveness.
In Forgiving Imelda Marcos, Nathan Go weaves a deeply intimate novel of alternative history that explores power and powerlessness, the nature of guilt, and what we owe to those we love.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Go's timid debut, told through the eyes of the personal driver of former Philippine president Maria Corazon Aquino, explores the limits of forgiveness. Lito Macaraeg, near the end of his life, writes a series of letters to his estranged journalist son, José, offering to share a scoop and hoping for some reconciliation. The letters are centered on a trip Lito takes from Manila to Baguio with Aquino in 1992, shortly after her retirement from office, to meet Imelda Marcos, wife of the dictator Aquino had succeeded after her husband's killing in 1983. Interwoven are stories of Lito's childhood growing up with an often absent father who takes Lito to join a communist village, where he studies under the mysterious leader Ka Noel, as well as Lito's meditations on family, philosophy, and Filipino politics. The novel progresses at a steady pace, unraveling the mystery behind Aquino's motive to meet Marcos, initially unknown to Lito, and its thematic links to Lito's father's quest to avenge his mother's death. Though Go evokes the country's messy recent history, the promising premise is bogged down by overly didactic narration and strained prose—"Humor, I guess, is a kind of laxative—prying loose the most constipated of people," Lito muses. Go shows potential, but this one misses the mark.