Reportage on Lovers

A rather solid continuation of accounts from the sixties, of which I'm reading this following the intriguing backdrop painted by Nick Joaquin's Reportage on Crime. What makes Lovers stand out is not the succeeding accounts that fill this book (two stories of pathetically rich, bourgeois love; love bridged together by foreign countries; love torn apart by local forces; a quiet bigamist meeting its end, etc.) but the preface and postscript that bookend this collection.

If anything, I'd like to stress how unbelievable the postscript is: an astute summarization of the Filipino soul rooted in its anxiety and clumsiness. A specific account told by a foreigner who found her love in the tropic Philippine soil–her identity revealed a shocker on its own–describes the soul in a way that, in retrospect, holds true in spite of the digital advances in today's society.

I've always enjoyed the non-fictional writing of Nick Joaquin, but this one has a postscript that is so sharply recalled and written it is easily throws the seasoned reader off their seat.