Reviews + News
February 22, 2024
Weaving the Filipino Narrative in La Tercera. By Muahammad Jawad, BNN Breaking News.
February 21, 2024
Meet Fil-Am Literary Star Gina Apostol. By Danton Remoto in Philippine Inquirer
January 2024
Dan and Maggie Inouye Distinguished Chair in Democratic Ideals Spring 2024
December 29, 2023
Our Favorite Filipino Books of 2023. Esquire Philippines.
November 28, 2023
Longlist Announced for the 2023 Joyce Carol Oates Prize
September 13, 2023
Short Reviews of Modern SEA Fiction by Tom Pepinsky
July 20, 2023
9 New Books We Recommend This Week. La Tercera is a NYT Editors’ Choice.
July 14, 2023
“Acrobazia e geometria” by Cristina Marconi. On La rivoluzione secondo Raymundo Mata in Il Venerdi.
July 9, 2023
“Il lettore e la gioia della liberta.” On La rivoluzione secondo Raymundo Mata in Avvenire (Italy’s Catholic newspaper).
July 8, 2023
La rivoluzione secondo Raymundo Mata is on bestseller list of la Repubblica Robinson.
July 7, 2023
Review in Internazionale of La rivoluzione secondo Raymundo Mata.
July 2, 2023
“La storia nella storia.” Review of La rivoluzione secondo Raymundo Mata in la Repubblica.
June 30, 2023
“The best new books released in June.” Including a comment on La Tercera by Declan Fry. ABC Australia.
June 28-July 6, 2023
Italian independent bookstore tour of La rivoluzione secondo Raymundo Mata. Milan (Bocconi at Egea Libreria & Libreria Tempo Ritrovata); Torino (Libreria del Golem); Padova (Libreria Zabarella); Firenze (Libreria Malaparte); Roma (Libreria Altroquando).
June 2, 2023
Who is Raymundo Mata? Review of Raymundo Mata in filamnet by Allen Gaborro.
June 2, 2023
Filipino books to complete your reading list in 2023. Business Mirror, Manila.
May 25, 2023
4 new books by Filipino authors to read this spring. NPR.
May 3, 2023
Best Books May 2023. Ms Magazine.
April 30, 2023
Review of La Tercera in the New York Times. “A Complex Family History in a Nation of Many Tongues” by Hari Kunzru. Online April 30. In print July 16.
April 29, 2023
Gawad Pambansang Alagad ni Balagtas (Fiction). Awarded by UMPIL (Unyon ng Manunulat ng Pilipinas). Manila, Philippines
February 1, 2023
Lithub Daily: The Best of the Literary Internet, Everyday.
November 17, 2022
Finalists for the 41st Annual John Dos Passos Prize Announced.
October 26, 2022
Bibliolepsy chosen one of The New Yorker’s Best Books of 2022 So Far.
October 21, 2022
9 Books about Filipino Family Bonds. Electric Literature.
July 30, 2022
Personal and Collective Grief. Review of Insurrecto in Manila Times by Danton Remoto.
April 25, 2022
Winners of Rome Prize announced: in LitHub and by American Academy in Rome.
February 17, 2022
Bibliolepsy reviewed by Norah Piehl in Book Reporter.
February 7, 2022
Bibliolepsy is Briefly Noted in The New Yorker. In print: issue Feb 14 & 21, 2022.
February 2022
Bibliolepsy reviewed by Klarisse Dugar in San Francisco Book Review.
January 14, 2022
Bibliolepsy reviewed by Alice Martin in Shelf-Awareness.
January 13, 2022
Most Anticipated: The Great First Half of 2022. Bibliolepsy in The Millions.
January 10, 2022
January 2022 Reads for the Rest of Us. Bibliolepsy in Ms Magazine.
January 4, 2022 (pub date of Bibliolepsy)
Craving Books, Sex, and Revolution. Review by Idra Novey in the New York Times.
January 1, 2022
34 Best Books of January 2022. Bibliolepsy in Bustle Magazine.
December 26, 2021
The Complete Review on Bibliolepsy.
December 17, 2021
ABC Australia’s “Best Books of 2021 for your summer reading list.”
December 13, 2021
“Vassar Writer in Residence to Read from and Discuss her Work.”
December 2021
Southern Bookseller Review on Bibliolepsy.
December 1, 2021
The January 2022 Indie Next List Preview. Bibliolepsy is on the list of 25 IndieNext books of the month.
November 30, 2021
International Examiner. “Fact and Fiction in Raymundo Mata.” Review by Peter Bacho.
November 21, 2021
Notable Asian Writers on Literature’s Role. Kim Hae-Yeon in Korea Herald.
November 19, 2021
Raymundo Mata in Paperback Row. The New York Times.
November 6, 2021
Philippine Star. “Bibliolepsy Goes to the World.” Review by Danton Remoto.
October 2021
Publishers Weekly: Bibliolepsy.
September 25, 2021
Philippine Inquirer. “Martial Law Books You Shouldn’t Skip.” On Gun Dealers’ Daughter.
June 30, 2021
The Nation. “In the Archive of the Filipino Revolution.” On Raymundo Mata.
June 3, 2021
NYPL’s The Librarian Is In Podcast discusses Insurrecto.
May 31, 2021
“Asian-American Pacific Islander Writers to Check Out.” Operation 4 Magazine.
April 17, 2021
"The Heart of Grief." Review of Insurrecto by Danton Remoto in Philippine Inquirer.
April 13, 2021
Review of Raymundo Mata by Sarah Kerr in BookPost.
March 8, 2021
International Women’s Day: Quotes from 5 Filipina Fictionists. In Asia Tatler.
February 25, 2021
9 Books by Fil-Am Authors for your 2021 Reading List. In Asian Journal.
February 22, 2021
Notable Books. Philippine Star.
February 21, 2021
Books by Filipino Authors to Discover in 2021. Philippine Inquirer.
February 4, 2021
"A Translated Being." Phil Christman writes on Finnegan's Wake, Raymundo Mata, William Melvin Kelley, CLR James, and Toussaint Louverture. (I love the mix.)
January 19, 2021
Review of Raymundo Mata by Mark Athitakis in On the Seawall.
January 13, 2021
Raymundo Mata in Ms Magazine's January 2021 Reads for the Rest of Us.
January 13, 2021
Raymundo Mata in Buzzfeed's Most Anticipated Books of 2021.
January 12, 2021
Review of Raymundo Mata in the NYT by Randy Boyagoda. "Hilary Mantel on acid" is my quote of the day.
January 12, 2021
The Millions Tuesday New Release Day.
January 11, 2021
Raymundo Mata in The Millions' Great First Half of 2021.
January 8, 2021
Review of Revolution According to Raymundo Mata in Ploughshares by Michael Adam Carroll. "Hyper metafiction that is playful and ironic like Cervantes’s Don Quixote and satirizes social critiques and political violence like Roberto Bolaño’s 2666."
December 18, 2020
The Paris Review Staff's Favorite Reads of 2020. " I read Insurrecto like some dogs destroy a stuffed toy; it was my favorite thing to do."
November 29, 2020
Two reviews of Insurrecto in Halo-Halo Review.
November 9, 2020
Starred review of The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata in Publishers Weekly.
October 23, 2020
TOFA100. Philippine Inquirer.
June 10, 2020
Insurrecto on The Lift-Up Pod. With Vina Orden and Tamara Crawford.
May 6, 2020
Katie da Cunha-Lewin reviews Insurrecto in Splice (UK). "Cut, Cut, Cut!" ..."When a novelist like Apostol writes of an imagined film, the questions she raises are about both aesthetic form and possibility. 'Imaginary films', as Massimo Fusillo writes, 'are a part of a broader fascination with the realm of the potential'. Although the work of cinema depicted by Apostol may be an amalgam of other films...its existence lies purely in language: its visual power becomes possible only with the input of the reader..."
May 3, 2020
Insurrecto: A Postmodern Lens on Conflicting History. Lara Norgaard in Jakarta Post.
March 25, 2020
Stephen Poland in medium.com cites Insurrecto to talk about intriguing postcolonial/anti-imperialist critical readings of the t.v. show Westworld. (I admit, I like interdisciplinary, multi-genre theses like this.)
December 20, 2019
The Paris Review Staff's Favorite Reads of 2019. "Gina Apostol’s brilliant Insurrecto deconstructs plot to critique the white gaze in art and ask important questions concerning just who is telling the story."
December 2019
Delightful Diversions and Holiday Drinks.
"Insurrecto will make you think and ask questions about representation and identity. Enjoy this layered cocktail as you discover the culture clash in this novel.
Insurrecto
1 ½ oz Mizu Lemongrass
Stir in a mixing glass serve up with a dehydrated mandarin wheel garnish
December 5, 2019
From Insurrecto to the Bambook Stalk: 12 must-read Filipino stories. List by James Gabrillo in The National (Abu Dhabi).
December 2, 2019
Mairead Small Staid on Insurrecto in Jezebel.
November 4, 2019
JS Tennant on Insurrecto in The London Magazine.
August 28, 2019
Tash Aw reviews Insurrecto in The Guardian.
July 28, 2019
In brief: Insurrecto and others. In Guardian.
July 25, 2019
Arvyn Cerezo at Bookriot: "Five Must-Reads of Philippine Literature."
May 7, 2019
NYT T-Magazine: "Why Are We Living in a Golden Age of Historical Fiction?"
May 7, 2019
Review of Insurrecto by F. Sionil Jose.
May 1, 2019
Kendra Winchester on Insurrecto in Lithub. "Reading Women: What to Read for Asian Pacific Heritage Month."
May 1, 2019
NBC's "Asian Pacific American Heritage Month Reading List."
May 1, 2019
BosFilipinos: "Buried Histories: Historical Books and Memoirs About Life in the Philippines"
April 5, 2019
Diaspora and Migration: A Reading List. By PEN.
April 3, 2019
Bookseller reports: Fitzcarraldo Editions buys Insurrecto rights for UK/Commonwealth.
March 1, 2019
King County Library system: These are the 5 books you should read for Women's History Month.
February 26, 2019
Who to see at Adelaide Writers’ Week.
February 11, 2019
Ruel De Vera in Philippine Daily Inquirer.
February 7, 2019
Jen Mediano in Public Seminars. "A Place of Grief and Revolution."
February 4, 2019
Serena Kim in Character Media. "A Bitingly Vicious...Romp Through...History."
January 17, 2019
Eileen Tabios in FilAmnet. "A touch of humor in Insurrecto."
January 3, 2019
11 New Books We Recommend This Week. Editors’ Choice, NYT.
December 30, 2018
Jen McDonald in New York Times: "Apostol is a magician with language (think Borges, think Nabokov)..."
December 27, 2018
Bookscrolling: Best Fiction Books of 2018—Year-End List Aggregation.
December 13, 2018
Cecily Saller in Dallas News. "A beautifully bewildering, time-bending tale of US-Philippine history."
December 7, 2018
Buzzfeed News: This is The Best Fiction of 2018.
December 6, 2018
Anthony Domestico in Boston Globe: A trippy, cinematic novel of American atrocity in the Philippines.
December 6, 2018
Rigoberto Gonzalez in Los Angeles Times: Narratives and History Collide in Gina Apostol's Stunning Insurrecto.
December 6, 2018
Peter Gordon in Asian Review of Books calls Insurrecto "the literary equivalent of pinball."
December 3, 2018
Fiction Advocate's Ten Best Books of 2018.
November 30, 2018
Nilanjana Roy in Financial Times on Insurrecto.
November 28, 2018
Fresh Air's John Powers reviews Insurrecto on NPR. Witty And Stylish, 'Insurrecto' Offers An Inside View Of The Pain Of Colonization.
November 26, 2018.
Leah Milne on Gun Dealers’ Daughter in Melus. “Disloyal to Civilization: Metafiction as Protest.”
November 16, 2018
Maya Gittelman on Insurrecto in Book Reporter.
November 16, 2018
Booklist Reader. Five More to Go: Gina Apostol's Insurrecto; via Smithsonian's BookDragon.
November 15, 2018
Self Magazine's 21 Best Books to Buy in 2018.
November 15, 2018
Casper Star-Tribune: Book Tells Differing Stories of the Bloody Bells of Balangiga
November 12, 2018
The Morning News Tournament of Books Longlist for 2019.
November 6, 2018
November 1, 2018
Entertainment Weekly's 20 Books to Read in November: "Apostol interrogates the traumatic, mostly forgotten U.S.-Philippines War in this dazzling two-hander, following an American filmmaker and a Filipino translator on a road trip as they clash on matters of art and genocide. What results is a tender character study erupting with blazing insights on the ethics of storytelling."
October 24, 2018
Win a Book Wednesday, Arlington Public Library: "always compulsively readable."
October 15, 2018
Insurrecto, Booklist Starred Review
September 26, 2018
Publishers Weekly's Best Books Issue (cover author)
September 3, 2018
Insurrecto, Publishers' Weekly Starred Review
September 1, 2018
Insurrecto, Kirkus Review
August 31, 2018
Buzzfeed: These Are the Best Books of Fal
July 17, 2018
The Millions: Most Anticipated Books of the Second Half of 2018
March 12, 2018
Filipino Food Finds a Place...
By Ligaya Mishan.
I just like that Ligaya Mishan quoted me. "Of all Filipino dishes, adobo 'has the most leeway for a cook’s imagination, hubris, art or bigoted sense of one’s own mother’s love-and-greatness,' the novelist Gina Apostol said..." :)
August 15, 2016
8 Philippine Novels that would make awesome movies
Philippine comment: RJ Firmeza on Gun Dealers' Daughter
"Gina Apostol weaves a poignant novel about Sol, a rich girl turned Communist rebel. Apostol delivers a mesmerizing account of the ruling class using the clouded youthful lens of Sol as it shows a glimpse of the revolution during the Marcos era. The richness of the topic alone would make a film version as absorbing as the book."
December 16, 2015
David Hebblethwaite writes a book blog, David's Book World. "This cracker of a story appears in A Kind of Compass, a new anthology of “stories on distance” edited by Belinda McKeon and published by Dublin-based Tramp Press. ...I was sold on the story from that opening paragraph, to be honest...
And so it continues, layer on layer.
There are other types of distance in ‘The Unintended’: between Chiara and her parents; between the beginning and end of her parents’ relationship; between Magsalin and Chiara – and between reader and event, because all we have in the end is a broken-up narrative filtered through the viewpoint (perhaps even in part written by) Magsalin. Distance all the way down. One thing I do know: I need to read more of Gina Apostol’s work."
October 3, 2015
Comments on The Unintended in Irish Times (these excerpts are early versions of Insurrecto)
Review of anthology, A Kind of Compass, edited by Belinda McKeon and published by Tramp Press. Excerpts from The Unintended are anthologized in the collection. "Gina Apostol’s 'The Unintended' is the first example of something truly remarkable. It appears as a series of fragments – of letters, memories, stories – but Apostol never loses hold of the mood, which is nostalgic, gilded even, but poisonous too. On the surface of things, the daughter of an Italian film director hires a Filipino mystery writer to be her translator and guide as she makes a film of her own, literally and artistically following in her father’s footsteps. Memories of her mother break through the narrative arc, interrupting it, almost abstracting it. Such a summary rings hollow; the story’s richness is in the way it moves elegantly around, from the faded light of old, almost aristocratic cinema – great men at work, revolution in the air – to a modern day that is more stark, somehow unyielding in its cold reality. It’s a romantic patchwork of sound, colour and tone, and it electrifies the book."
n.d.
The Map is Not, an essay on Borges by Jonathan Basile
This has nothing to do with me (it is about Borges and maps), but I loved the reference to the essay, "Borges, Politics, and the Postcolonial" here. I love the way he reuses it for his own purposes to make a point that adds to a way for "an endless re-reading of [Borges's] work"—
..."In this respect, the brilliant analysis of postcolonial themes in Borges’ stories by Gina Apostol provides the matrix for an endless re-reading of his work, one which transforms this piece as well. In “Borges, Politics, and the Postcolonial,” she describes the postcolonial condition as that of finding oneself living within another’s fantasy, dream, or text, an almost universal condition for Borges’ protagonists. ...
[n.d.]
Essay by Epifanio San Juan. "Only perhaps in Apostol’s Gun-Dealer’s Daughter and the Mayi Theater’s plays (collected in Savage Stage) do we encounter a less exhibitionistic and more ethically committed grappling with the moral and political issues of colonial war and its offshoot in civil war in the neocolony....In Apostol’s novel, the killing of the American Colonel Grier testifies to the rearticulation of war as a deadly game conforming to Clausewitz’s instrumentalist view. In 1981, a CIA officer advising the AFP (Armed Forces of the Philippines) was killed by urban guerillas; while earlier, in 1974, three US Navy officers were gunned down in Subic Naval Base by suspected leftists (Jones 247). However, the theme of revenge and its ambiguous repercussions in Apostol’s fiction complicates the picture. Whose will is being imposed on whom, remains blurred since the enormity of destruction resulting from secret government maneuvers eludes the traumatized psyche of the central protagonist, the mentally unhinged narrator of the novel: …"
November 5, 2014
Outrageous-Writer reviews Manila Noir. (pretty amusing). DEAD LINK.
Sept 11, 2014
A drawing of a reading from Gun Dealers' Daughter at Word Bookstore, NJ.
5 Pinay Stellar Novels You Need to Read
Comments on Gun Dealers' Daughter on Pinay.com (Philippine review)
June 2, 2014
Juaniyo Arcellana in Philippine Star
on Gun Dealers' Daughter: "More than anything, however, Gun Dealers' Daughter is a tale of friendship, and how faithful companionship transcends and outlasts any ideology. One can read it in the lingering detailed descriptions that are Apostol's stock in trade, the clever repartee between the main characters and even the minor ones. The fine unmitigated sense of irony and delicate humor leave no doubt the author is firmly in control. In gist this is the writer's craft: control and irony, and the no-man's land between...Gun Dealers' Daughter [tells us] that the revolution not only devours the innocent but that no one is safe in the fallout of our collective apathies...we might be wise...to heed it..."
and on Revolution According to Raymundo Mata:
"Trust Apostol to take the novel where it hasn't gone before..."
May 6, 2014
William Saroyan International Prize Shortlist
Gun Dealers' Daughter is nominated for the 2014 Saroyan International Prize.
Manila Bulletin: "The Write Stuff"
Newsfeature by Ronald Lim
November 1, 2013
Review of Gun Dealers' Daughter by Alan Caruba
October 5, 2013
Blog post, review of Manila Noir by booktrek
October 2013
Manila Noir contributor named a recipient of Pen Open Book Award
Akashic Books news
October 20, 2013
"What I'm Reading Now" by Cyrus Cassells
Cyrus Cassells talks to Drunken Boat about Gun Dealers' Daughter
October 2013
"You will read Gun Dealers’ Daughter wondering where Gina Apostol novels have been all these years (in the Philippines, it turns out). You will feel sure (and you will be correct) that you have discovered a great fiction writer in the midst of making literary history. Gun Dealers’ Daughter is a story of young people who rebel against their parents, have sex with the wrong people, and betray those they should be most loyal to. At its essence this is a coming of age novel, albeit one where rebellion is part of a national revolution and where sex with another girl’s boyfriend leads to assassination. This is coming of age in the 1980s, Philippine dictatorship style, where college students are killed for their activism. The telling is fractured, as are the times. The reveal of information happens in a nonlinear manner, reflective of the mental breakdown suffered by the main character, Sol. We flip between Manila, where Sol is in school, and New York, where she goes to escape the madness that she has done and that has been done to her. Through this novel we see how fiction can scrape out a future, demand a re-look at the past—it is a reckoning kind of book. Not only does this novel make an argument for social revolution, it makes an argument for the role of literature in revolution—the argument being that literature can be revolution."
July/August 2013
American Book Review: "Revolution from Above"
Review by Martin Joseph Ponce of Gun Dealers' Daughter
"Gun Dealers’ Daughter marks Apostol’s U.S. debut and carries forward the combination of literary play (punning and allusion, metafictional reflexivity and humor) with historical reconstruction and political irreverence featured in her previous novels, Bibliolepsy (1997) and The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata (2009)..."
May 26, 2013
Blog post, review of Gun Dealers' Daughter by stillthehellkitten DEAD LINK
April 14, 2013
Revolutions and their Children
Review by Luis Francia in Philippine Inquirer
March 20, 2013
Positively Filipino: "Rebels from the Ruling Class"
Review by Benjamin Pimentel
March 1, 2013
"I Want to Know the Whole Story: Eight Filipino Fictionists Everyone Should Read"
Column by Luis Katigbak in Philippine Star
"Apostol's writing is marked by a fierce intelligence, uncommonly delicious language, and a dark undercurrent of humor. As others have observed, she is a master of delineating the personal with the political, and how they are inextricably entwined. Also—and this is no small feat—she seems incapable of writing an unimpressive sentence."
December 2012
“Finding Ourselves in History.” Review by Trish Crapo in The Women’s Review of Books. On Gun Dealers’ Daughter.
December 12, 2012
Public Books: "Revolution Amnesia"
Review by Paul Nadal of Gun Dealers' Daughter
"...Sol’s 'mad, syllabic combinations' and “sudden dysgraphic bouts” become both traps and clues in this psychological thriller. The result is a stunning and lyrical word-portrait of a 'martial-law baby' whose story of teenage romance and rebellion allows Apostol to braid together a wider set of issues: memory, history, language, nationalism, exile, and revolution. These may be familiar themes in postcolonial fiction and Philippine literature, but they gain a renewed significance in Apostol’s hands. By routing the narrative through Sol’s mind, Apostol furnishes an ironic, often satiric, frame for looking at the retinue who profited from the US military–backed Marcos dictatorship. This is history from above—atop the mansions of Manila’s wealthiest neighborhoods and inside the wrecked psychology of 'a spoiled brat [with] a split soul.' Surprisingly, the unlikely vantage point of Manila’s highest class strata enables Apostol to present a profound critique of this period in contemporary Philippine history."
November 19, 2012
L.A. Review of Books: "Empire at the End of Time"
Review by Brian Collins of Gun Dealers' Daughter
"In her brilliant new novel and American debut, Gun Dealers’ Daughter, Filipino writer Gina Apostol creates one of the most compelling characters in recent fiction: Soledad Soliman, daughter of a wealthy arms merchant during the Marcos years, useful fool and maybe worse....It’s as deft a sketch as something from Fitzgerald, and the happy accident of the able storyteller is contrived with so much greater grace than in too many new books...What can’t be conveyed as well with an excerpt or two is the unusually close relationship between the personal and the political here — not the foreground and background of a period piece, nor even the intersecting lines of the canonical historical novel, but something more like dialectical counterparts, where the one is well-nigh unthinkable without the other, something Frederic Jameson posited as characteristic of third world literature more generally...There is a clue for Gramscian readers who might otherwise find themselves wondering about the fatalism of the novel’s end...I’m thinking of the scene where doting Uncle Gianni, who never visits Soledad without bringing her some gift, hands her a book by the great Marxist philosopher. It’s an arresting moment...The period Apostol is writing about in Gun Dealers’ Daughter is yet another dumbfounding example of this politics of transformismo, whereby, in Perry Anderson’s words, “radical pressures are gradually absorbed and inverted by conservative forces, until they serve the opposite of their original ends...” Only when the repercussions of Marcos’s 30-year tyranny threatened the Filipino oligarchy itself was he driven from power, leaving the opposition to settle for neocolonialism with a different face or a death squad. And so while her comrades end up body parts on the killing fields, Soledad serves out an equally dark fate as a latter day Bertha, the mad prisoner of gothic privilege. If all this seems rather distant from the here and now, one only has to reflect on how our own political institutions have kept us from reckoning with the root causes of the current crisis...Apostol has given us a tour de force tale about late-20th-century Manila, but Gun Dealers’ Daughter is also a book for our times."
November 1, 2012
Hyphen Magazine: "A Casual Revolutionary"
Review by Jee Yoon Lee of Gun Dealers' Daughter
September 9, 2012
PopMatters: "A Fever Dream of Would-Be Activism"
Review by David Maine of Gun Dealers' Daughter
August 29, 2012
Straight.com: "Gun Dealers' Daughter Examines Revolt of Young and Rich"
Review by David Chau of Gun Dealers' Daughter
August 17, 2012
Counterpunch: "Students Dabbling in Revolution"
Review by Charles R. Larson of Gun Dealers' Daughter
July 13, 2012
Shelf-Awareness, Gun Dealers' Daughter
Review by Kerry McHugh
July 9, 2012
The Daily Beast: "This Week's Hot Reads"
Review by Jimmy So of Gun Dealers' Daughter
May 1, 2012
Library Journal, Gun Dealers' Daughter
Review by Ashanti L. White
April 20, 2012
Commentary Magazine, Gun Dealers' Daughter
Summer reading list of D.G. Myers
May 7, 2012
Publishers' Weekly, Gun Dealers' Daughter
First review of Gun Dealers' Daughter
December 8, 2011
Philippine review: Comment by Edgar Calabria Samar on
The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata
"Invoke Rizal & narrative postmodernity and you’ll have a rewriting of history & hilarity that is often only possible in a novel. Here: the novel as a book is foregrounded; issues of language, translation & textuality move the plot forward via competing interpretations; names & varying points of view present moments of irony; and anachronisms play with truth & meaning. Here is an archive of a revolution based on recollections, collations & annotations of one person’s blindness. Here is a novel about how Rizal is read, interpreted & plagiarized: the highlight is its use of his unfinished novel Aftermass."
and Bibliolepsy
"Here is a novel that is openly in love with words. The narrator is Primi Peregrino, who at age 4 went over the twenty-volume set of the Oxford English Dictionary with her older sister Anna. The book is Primi’s personal history of reading, where the canon is mixed with popular texts; memories of childhood run as synchronic dichotomies of places & books; & other authors, books & imagined characters resonate emotional turning points. The prose here reads like poetry, & the latter half of the book dealt considerably with poetry & poets—their tragedy & hopes, disillusions & madness."
January 20, 2011
Review of The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata
November 13, 2010
Philippine National Book Awards citation: Juan Laya Prize for the Novel
"Gina Apostol tells our revolutionary history – or fragments of our history – using a pastiche of writing from the academe, a diary, stories within stories, jokes, puns, allusions, a virtual firecracker of words. Her novel is fearlessly intellectual, anchored firmly on the theories of Jacques Lacan. But it is also funny and witty as it picks – lice, nits, and all – on the hoaxes in our history. It affirms, if it still needs to be affirmed, the power of fiction to shape and reshape the gaps in the narratives of our history as a nation. The main character here is History, and its protagonist, Imagination. For this audacious sword-play of a novel, the National Book Award is given to Gina Apostol’s The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata."
February 2010
Nino Soria de Veyra: "History in Footnotes"
Philippine review: Note by Nino Soria de Veyra on The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata
"...For Raymundo Mata is a footnote in the annals of the Katipunan, the Philippine revolutionary group that fought for independence against Spain and later America. He is mentioned only in passing...But Gina Apostol recuperates this character in her recent novel, The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata. She lets Raymundo Mata speak for himself through what is purported to be his notebooks or, as the historian Estrella Espejo describes it, more of 'an assortment of unpaginated notes and mismatched sheaves packed in a ratty biscuit tin and stuffed in a tattered medical bag, the edges of the papers curled up in permanent dust' (2).... This ...contentious scholarship is what Apostol mimes and mines in her own explorations into the Filipino identity. And what a rollicking heteroglossic carnival she presents us readers..."
December 27, 2009
Philippine Star: "A Rich Harvest of Books"
Comments by F. Sionil Jose on The Revoluton According to Raymundo Mata DEAD LINK
September 30, 2002
Philippine Daily Inquirer: "A Love Story—of Sorts"
Review by Luis Katigbak of Bibliolepsy
"For those of us who have gotten down on our hands and knees to thoroughly search bargain book bins—from the clean and well-lit to the downright grimy, from Morato to Recto—we will find our fervor echoed in the character of pale bibiloleptic Primi, and find Bibliolepsy a dizzingly eloquent, slightly disturbing, but ultimately strangely comforting read."
1999
Philippine Studies, volume 47, no. 4
Review by Danton Remoto of Bibliolepsy
(originally in Philippine Star) "Other people write tomes that would be better off as doorstops. In 160 pages, Gina Apostol serves up Manila in the eighties: Swift, Swiftian, sexy, and sad."