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Noel Alumit's novels
Jul. 10th, 2008 04:54 pm![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
pylduck.livejournal.comI finally got around to reading Noël Alumit's first two novels, Letters to Montgomery Clift and Talking to the Moon. (I also follow his blog, "The Last Noel".) I liked them both, especially the second novel. I'm finally getting around to reading novels by queer Asian American writers.... I checked out the second novel from the gay library in town.
I'd started Letters a few years ago, when the novel first came out. But for some reason or another, I put it down and never finished it until this week, starting over from the beginning. After finishing it, I wondered if in fact I had read through the whole thing before because the story seemed very familiar. The conceit of the novel is provocative. The narrator, Bong Bong (later "Bob"), writes letters to the dead matinee idol Monty and hopes to give the letters to his mother once they are reunited. Bob also sees Monty sometimes. The backstory is that Bong Bong's parents were caught up in the Marcos regime's crackdown on dissidents in the Philippines, and he was sent to his Aunt Yuna in California for safety. I'm not a huge fan of child narrators (they often seem contrived) but Letters deals with it okay, especially since the letters only serve as starting points for the chapters, with an adult narrative voice occupying the rest of the novel. Also, the letters continue until Bob is older and therefore lose their child's perspective eventually.
I generally liked the novel better as it progressed, leaving behind the narrator's difficulties as a child to address his concerns as a teenager and young adult. He ends up living with the Arangans, a Filipino family who takes him in as a foster child and eventually informally adopt him as their son. Ironically, Mr. A works as a money launderer for the Marcos regime. There's a sort of ambivalence in the novel over what is going on when Bob sees Monty, too, and has sex with him via a string of one-night-stands. There's definitely a psychiatric reading that sees the Monty manifestations as delusions the narrator uses to help him cope with the trauma in his life. At the same time, there is an otherworldly quality to Monty's presence and advice that ultimately guide Bob well. It's also nice to see a narrative in which the gay Asian man finds another Asian American as a lover (this happens in the second novel as well).
Talking to the Moon takes the ghostly, magical aspects of the first novel and makes them more prominent and also less ambivalent (little suggestion that the characters are "crazy"). The story is told through multiple perspectives though always in the third person point of view. The chapters focus on individual characters in a family: Jory Lalaban is the father; Belen is the mother; Emerson is the son; Jun-Jun is the dead son; and Michael is Emerson's boyfriend. The narrative is lyrical and beautiful in many places.
The novel was a bit weird with Michael, though. He is a Taiwanese steward, and the narrative has him speak Engrish. He is also rather materialistic (though he loves Emerson despite his lack of riches). All I have to say is, if this novel weren't written by an Asian American writer, I'd be calling that shit racist.
I'd started Letters a few years ago, when the novel first came out. But for some reason or another, I put it down and never finished it until this week, starting over from the beginning. After finishing it, I wondered if in fact I had read through the whole thing before because the story seemed very familiar. The conceit of the novel is provocative. The narrator, Bong Bong (later "Bob"), writes letters to the dead matinee idol Monty and hopes to give the letters to his mother once they are reunited. Bob also sees Monty sometimes. The backstory is that Bong Bong's parents were caught up in the Marcos regime's crackdown on dissidents in the Philippines, and he was sent to his Aunt Yuna in California for safety. I'm not a huge fan of child narrators (they often seem contrived) but Letters deals with it okay, especially since the letters only serve as starting points for the chapters, with an adult narrative voice occupying the rest of the novel. Also, the letters continue until Bob is older and therefore lose their child's perspective eventually.
I generally liked the novel better as it progressed, leaving behind the narrator's difficulties as a child to address his concerns as a teenager and young adult. He ends up living with the Arangans, a Filipino family who takes him in as a foster child and eventually informally adopt him as their son. Ironically, Mr. A works as a money launderer for the Marcos regime. There's a sort of ambivalence in the novel over what is going on when Bob sees Monty, too, and has sex with him via a string of one-night-stands. There's definitely a psychiatric reading that sees the Monty manifestations as delusions the narrator uses to help him cope with the trauma in his life. At the same time, there is an otherworldly quality to Monty's presence and advice that ultimately guide Bob well. It's also nice to see a narrative in which the gay Asian man finds another Asian American as a lover (this happens in the second novel as well).
Talking to the Moon takes the ghostly, magical aspects of the first novel and makes them more prominent and also less ambivalent (little suggestion that the characters are "crazy"). The story is told through multiple perspectives though always in the third person point of view. The chapters focus on individual characters in a family: Jory Lalaban is the father; Belen is the mother; Emerson is the son; Jun-Jun is the dead son; and Michael is Emerson's boyfriend. The narrative is lyrical and beautiful in many places.
He sat on a couch in his living room. It was a crappy couch, one he paid next to nothing for at Goodwill. All of his furniture was crappy, bought from the garage sales and thrift stores in the area, but it was comfortable, crappy furniture that he'd collected over time. In the back of his mind, he knew the furniture held stories, other people's lives imbedded in the velvet upholstery of the couch or rubbed into the train of a table. Everything has souls, his father told him. Maybe that is all a soul is made of: stories, deeply imbedded inside.The story centers around this family at the end of 1999, loosely taking up real life events of that time when a man shot a post office worker and school. Jory is the postal worker, a Filipino immigrant who grew up as an orphan in the Catholic Church, studying to become a priest before meeting Belen and getting her pregnant. The traumas driving their lives are their excommunication from Belen's mother, a powerful matriarch in their provincial town, and the death of their beautiful, eldest son Jory, Jr. (Jun-Jun). After leaving the Catholic Church, Jory learned the healing ways of the Makers of Prayer and is most awed by the Moon as a god. It is Emerson who talks to his dead brother, though, via ringing telephones that only Emerson can hear. Jun-Jun gives Emerson advice and helps him through difficult situations. Belen is the most Catholic of the family and talks to the Virgin (who responds).
The novel was a bit weird with Michael, though. He is a Taiwanese steward, and the narrative has him speak Engrish. He is also rather materialistic (though he loves Emerson despite his lack of riches). All I have to say is, if this novel weren't written by an Asian American writer, I'd be calling that shit racist.
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