10-12Bangkok Post | Friday, July 5, 2019

life books&cultureBESTSELLERSASIA BOOKS TOP 10

NEW YORK TIMES (PRINT AND E-BOOKS COMBINED)

FICTION NON-FICTION

FICTION NON-FICTION

1 Call Me By Your Name by Andre Aciman2 Animal Farm: The Illustrated Edition by George Orwell3 The Tattooist Of Auschwitz by Heather Morris4 The Reckoning by John Grisham5 Eleanor Oliphant Is Com-pletely Fine by Gail Honeyman6 Past Tense by Lee Child7 Good Omens by Gaiman & Pratchett8 The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint-Exupery9 One Day In December by Josie Silver10 Milk And Honey by Rupi Kaur

1. Where The Crawdads Sing, by Delia Owens. (Putnam)

z In a quiet town on the North Carolina coast in 1969, a young woman who survived alone in the marsh becomes a murder suspect.THIS WEEK: 1 LAST WEEK: 1 WEEKS ON LIST: 402. Mrs. Everything, by Jennifer Weiner. (Atria)

zThe story of two sisters, Jo and Bethie Kaufman, and their life experiences as the world around them changes drasti-cally from the 1950s.THIS WEEK: 2 LAST WEEK: — WEEKS ON LIST: 13. Tom Clancy: Enemy Contact, by Mike Maden. (Putnam)

z Jack Ryan Jr.’s latest adven-tures take him on a mission to stop an international criminal conspiracy and deal with tragic news.THIS WEEK: 3 LAST WEEK: — WEEKS ON LIST: 14. The Oracle, by Clive Cussler and Robin Burcell. (Putnam)

zTreasure-hunting couple Sam and Remi Fargo embark on a new adventure to find a sacred ancient scroll and lift its curse.THIS WEEK: 4 LAST WEEK: — WEEKS ON LIST: 15. Unsolved, by James Patterson and David Ellis. (Little, Brown)

zA string of seemingly acci-dental and unrelated deaths confounds FBI agent Emmy Dockery.THIS WEEK: 5 LAST WEEK: 3 WEEKS ON LIST: 26. City Of Girls, by Elizabeth Gilbert. (Riverhead)

zAn 89-year-old Vivian Morris looks back at the direction her life took when she entered the 1940s New York theatre scene.THIS WEEK: 6 LAST WEEK: 4 WEEKS ON LIST: 27. Before We Were Yours, by Lisa Wingate. (Ballantine)

zA South Carolina lawyer learns about the questiona-ble practices of a Tennessee orphanage.THIS WEEK: 7 LAST WEEK: 7 WEEKS ON LIST: 408. Recursion, by Blake Crouch. (Crown)

zA dark force alters people’s memories so drastically that reality itself starts to shift. Barry and Helena team up to save the city.THIS WEEK: 8 LAST WEEK: — WEEKS ON LIST: 19. The Summer Guests, by Mary Alice Monroe. (Gallery)

zA hurricane threatening the coasts of Florida and South Carolina leads to a group of strangers sheltering together in a home.THIS WEEK: 9 LAST WEEK: — WEEKS ON LIST: 110. Little Fires Everywhere, by Celeste Ng. (Penguin Press)

zAn artist upends a quiet town outside Cleveland.THIS WEEK: 10 LAST WEEK: 9 WEEKS ON LIST: 38

On Sept 23, 1972, Ferdinand Marcos’ declaration of martial law was promulgated to the public in the Philippines. It elongated Marcos’ rule beyond the constitutional

limit of two terms, giving him a freedom of ruling by decrees, which eventually led to a dis-solution of press freedom, and stifled violence and oppression against the democratic opposi-tion, including communist rebels and ordinary civilians. Marcos proclaimed that martial law was a crucial prelude to the creation of Bagong Lipunan, or a “New Society”, based on vital and progressive social and political values. During this turbulent time, he ruled single-handedly as a dictator from 1972 to 1981.

Against this backdrop, opponents and those tarnished by the martial law and Marcos’ ideol-ogy fled. With America’s passing of the Immi-gration and Nationality Act of 1965 into law which eradicated national quotas of immigrants and provided an unlimited number of visas for family reunification, Filipinos became the largest immigrant group that left for the United States from Asia between 1970s and 1980s.

Elaine Castillo America Is Not The Heart delves into the life and experience of these Filipino immigrants who made America their second home. It centres on Geromina de Vera, known as “Hero”, as she arrives in America.

Hero comes to live with her uncle “Pol” and aunt “Paz” in Milpitas, a city in Santa Clara County, California. She doesn’t talk much and leaves her past a mystery to the people who encounter her in her new community. Her rou-tine job is cleaning the house and babysitting cousin Roni, an eczema ridden eight-year-old girl who often gets into trouble at school from fighting. Paz arranges for Roni to see a faith healer to cure her eczema. Hero takes Roni to see Adela, a healer who opens a restaurant with her husband selling barbecue and Filipino food.

There, she meets Rosalyn, Adela’s grand-daughter, who works as a make-up artist in the Bay Area. They become friends, and Hero and Roni begin their frequent visits to Adela’s restaurants: they watch Filipino soaps, read Jap-anese manga, and eat barbecue with Rosalyn and her grandparents. As time goes by, Hero becomes acquainted with Rosalyn’s family and friends. She blends in, with a certain degree of aloofness, in a thriving community of Fili-pino contemporaries.

Castillo meticulously narrates the day-to-day diasporic life of working-class immigrants. Characters flows in and out at tremendous speed. Nurses, housewives, restaurateurs,

beauticians and DVD renters all have a fair share of storytelling. Hero fits in among them with relative ease. But it is Rosalyn whom she begins to feel romantic with, and vice versa.

The narrative then moves on as a beautiful queer story. Castillo is at times most direct at sex scenes, but it is outside the bedroom, in Rosalyn’s back garden, that the story manifests an intimate intercourse. Buoyed by a quest to know why Hero’s hands are damaged, coupled with a feeling of empathy, Rosalyn bites slices of fallen apple for Hero and put them — one by one — in hero’s palm. The biting and the eating of forbidden fruit by Hero is one of the most erotic and surrealistic narratives ever put in literature. Love blossoms as a consequence.

Hero slowly opens up to her lover. A story flashes back and forth to a time and place in the Philippines. We learn that Hero, as Geronima,

Book review

Finding the heartElaine Castillo’s deep dive into California’s Filipino diaspora

is warm and layered, filled with wonderful language

�SAWARIN SuWIchAKORNPONg

Hippieby Paulo CoelhoArrow271ppAvailable at Asia Books and leading bookshops, 295 baht

REviEwS �BERNARd TRINK

Home sweet home

I don’t know the global statistics, but I daresay the US heads the rest in runaways. The main reason is they find family life intolerable. The boys and girls,

teenagers mainly, have the notion that life on the road is adventurous, more so than their dull existence. Or go to Hollywood and become film stars.

In the event, they are in for a very great disappoint-ment. First and foremost, there is a host of predators waiting for them with open arms. Their natural wariness dulled by having run through their savings, the runaways are easy pickings. (FYI, more than a few grown-ups also run away. The dangers are much the same.)

Novelists spell out the all-too-awful consequences in chilling detail. Desperate parents and spouses have prevailed on the authorities to open a section devoted to finding runaways and assist them to return home if they now wish to. Those still alive, that is.

Run Away by popular yank author Harlan Coben focuses on one such co-ed. The venue is the Big Apple. When Paige takes off, she becomes ill, is hospitalised. Spotted in Manhattan’s Central Park, the girl runs off. Simon, a family friend and sleuth, is called in.

What he uncovers in his investigation is sickening. There’s a secret gang, headquartered in Arkansas and spreading through the States, which has communes. Its head is known as The Truth. Offering food, shelter and solace, the commune makes a pitch to runaways. The women are seduced, contraceptives are discour-aged. The mothers-to-be are strongly advised to give up the babies. The Truth promises they will be taken care of exceedingly well. In fact, they are sold for adoption. The members of the cult are either sold into slavery or murdered and buried in remote places.

Needless to say, Simon rescues Paige and puts an end to the gang and its terrible practices, the penultimate chapter a shoot-em-upper. Having been praised by pres-tigious Lee Child, the scrivener can do no wrong. It is the opinion of this reviewer that the likes of The Truth exist outside Coben’s imagination. The best advice I can give runaways is don’t. And travel in groups.

1 Sapiens: A Brief History Of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari2 Mindset: Changing The Way You Think To Fulfil Your Potential by Carol Dweck3 Homo Deus: A Brief History Of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari4 21 Lessons For The 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari5 Thinking, Fast And Slow by Daniel Kahneman6 Factfulness: Ten Reasons We’re Wrong About The World - And Why Things Are Better by Hans Rosling7 The Power Of Habit: Why We Do What We Do What We Do, And How To Change by Charles Duhigg8 A Brief History Of Time by Ste-phen Hawking9 Grit: The Power Of Passion And Perseverance by Angela Duckworth10 The Art Of Thinking Clearly: Better Thinking, Better Decisions by Rolf Dobelli

Run Away by Harlan Coben Century371ppAvailable at Asia Books and leading bookshops, 595 baht

A whirling dervish

A couple, three years ago I dipped a hand into the bag of books I was meant to review and brought up The Spy by Paulo Coelho, crossed

my fingers that it would be interesting and proceeded to peruse it. It immediately caught my full attention. Well researched, this historical novel about Mata Hari made the case that she didn’t live up to her nefarious reputation.

This reviewer has since read a few other of his works, yet none was as enthralling. Even when about his own life. But his choice of subject can’t be faulted. Take Hippie, under review. Hippie anti-culture liter-ally burst onto the world stage in the second half of the 20th century. It addresses the age-old questions of the meaning of life and our place in the cosmos. As the answers aren’t in our environment — travel and find them out there.

The Beatles opened their minds to meditation in India. Is that ancient civilisation the only destination? Keep looking, which is what a group of young men and women do in this story. Karla from Holland and Paulo from Brazil, living in France, are the main char-acters. Each is headstrong. The group swills alcohol and sex is for the asking. Karla has LSD. She falls in love with Paulo. However, he doesn’t reciprocate. In Istanbul he has his own agenda. To become a whirl-ing dervish. He is convinced it is the answer to his quest, if no one else’s. And under a teacher he must convert to Islam.

Likely, the reader will sympathise with Karla, who poured out her heart to Paulo. And she loves him enough to let this go. Coelho doesn’t deride the hippie era. He notes that as far as the modern gener-ation is concerned, hippies are footnotes in history. Asked the eternal questions about life, they turn to their computers.

Time was when decent people insulted those who weren’t socially correct: hippies. In this day and age, terrorists. I wonder what the next generation will label them.

1. Unfreedom Of The Press, by Mark R. Levin. (Threshold Editions)

zThe conservative commentator and radio host makes his case that the press is aligned with political ideology.THIS WEEK: 1 LAST WEEK: 1 WEEKS ON LIST: 42. Songs Of America, by Jon Mea-cham and Tim McGraw. (Random House)

zPulitzer Prize winner Jon Mea-cham and Grammy Award winner Tim McGraw explore how America was shaped by music.THIS WEEK: 2 LAST WEEK: — WEEKS ON LIST: 13. The Pioneers, by David McCullough. (Simon & Schuster)

zThe Pulitzer Prize-winning his-torian tells the story of the settling of the Northwest Territory through five main characters.THIS WEEK: 3 LAST WEEK: 5 WEEKS ON LIST: 64. Educated, by Tara Westover. (Random House)

zThe daughter of survivalists, who is kept out of school, educates herself enough to leave home for university.THIS WEEK: 4 LAST WEEK: 3 WEEKS ON LIST: 695. Howard Stern Comes Again, by Howard Stern. (Simon & Schuster)

zThe radio interviewer delves into some of his favourite on-air conversations from the past four decades of his career.THIS WEEK: 5 LAST WEEK: 6 WEEKS ON LIST: 56. The Mueller Report, by The Washington Post. (Scribner)

zRedacted findings from the special counsel’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and poten-tial obstruction of justice by the president.THIS WEEK: 6 LAST WEEK: 4 WEEKS ON LIST: 87. Becoming, by Michelle Obama. (Crown)

zThe former first lady describes her journey from the South Side of Chicago to the White House, and how she balanced work, family and her husband’s political ascent.THIS WEEK: 7 LAST WEEK: 7 WEEKS ON LIST: 318. Siege, by Michael Wolff. (Holt)

zThe author of Fire And Fury weaves a story of the second year of the Trump White House.THIS WEEK: 8 LAST WEEK: 2 WEEKS ON LIST: 29. Sea Stories, by William H. McRa-ven. (Grand Central)

zA memoir by the retired four-star US Navy admiral, including the capture of Saddam Hussein and the raid to kill Osama bin Laden.THIS WEEK: 9 LAST WEEK: 8 WEEKS ON LIST: 410. The Enemy Of The People, by Jim Acosta. (Harper)

zCNN’s chief White House correspondent details his expe-rience covering Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and administration.THIS WEEK: 10 LAST WEEK: — WEEKS ON LIST: 1

America Is Not The HeartBy Elaine CastilloNew York: Viking406ppAvailable at Asia Books and Kinokuniya Thailand

was a member of the de Veras, an ailing aris-tocratic family that befriended Marcos’ family. Disheartened by her parents’ loyal support of Marcos, Hero dropped out of medical school and joined the New People’s Army, a com-munist guerrilla force which rebelled against martial law and attempted to overthrow the Marcos government in order to set up a new political state led by the working class. Hero was captured by the state authorities and endured a decade of hardships. When she was released, Hero returned home to discover that her par-ents had disowned her. Broken physically and emotionally, Hero had no choice but to start her life anew — in America. This is how she came to be rescued by her uncle Pol who had left the Philippines to live in America with his wife.

Castillo’s women in America Is Not The Heart are characteristically strong. Paz, Hero’s aunt, for example, grew up poor, with many siblings. Dreaming of a better place, Paz went to univer-sity to become a nurse and while working at a hospital she met a debonair and handsome surgeon, the upper-class Apolonio de Vera — Pol — who was impressed by her character, and perhaps more importantly, her documented papers to America. They married and moved to Milpitas where their head-strong daughter was born. Pol named her Geronima, Roni for short, after his niece whom he thought had died.

The most fascinating aspect of America Is Not The Heart, nonetheless, lies in its lan-guage — the diaspora means a sea of languages. Throughout the story, English, Spanish and the Philippines’s three native languages — Tagalog, Ilocano and Pangasinan — are play-fully interchanged. Pidgin language is both a bridge and barrier of identification. Whilst faith healer Adela speaks in Pangasinan, Hero speaks Tagalog, English and Ilocano; and Roni, the American born Filipina, flips her tongue between Tagalog and English without knowing the difference. Anxiety, class, gentrification and belonging find their way into the language the characters employ.

To Castillo, Hero’s America is not all rose tinted. There are poverty, prejudice and dis-crimination; and although the country may not be the heart of Hero as the title suggests, toward the end it’s no longer a foreign shore. As characters grow warmer, Hero finds love and tenderness from her family, Rosalyn and the wider community in the Bay Area. Her new life seems settled when she learns to love and accept those she has met anew. Not a heart, nor a vein, but America gradually becomes the home of her life.