“I BOUGHT this notebook to write my dreams in. But it has too many blank pages. I don’t have enough dreams…Maybe dreams just don’t happen when we go to sleep. Wishes, desires, aspirations, visions—aren’t those dreams too? And stories, especially stories…fantasies, fictions, lives imagined, worlds conjured…”
This entry in the notebook of a hopeful novelist speaks of her hunger to tell the world stories—hers and others’. This hope to be heard and to go beyond the realms of the ordinary rings throughout Cristina Pantoja-Hidalgo’s new novel, A Book of Dreams (UP Press, 2001).
Hidalgo’s second novel is far from the ordinary, seamlessly fusing, seemingly incongruous elements into one organic whole. Dreams and lives of different persons, tales of the hopeful novelist Angela, and snippets from other writers’ works are subtly blended together to form a rich plot that takes on an intriguing twist with every turn of the page.
A former editor in chief of the Varsitarian, Hidalgo graduated magna cum laude in Philosophy from the old Faculty of Philosophy and Letters (now Arts and Letters). She now teaches Literature and Creative Writing at UP Diliman and is the director of its publishing house. Her first novel, Recuerdo, won the 1996 Palanca Grand Prize for the Novel.
Local color
The scenario is the typical “only in the Philippines,” told in a simple language that is nevertheless appealing to the senses. A common thread runs through the six voices of the main characters, each with an important story to tell through the dreams and events that happen in their lives.
Fifty year old Angela works in a university and leads a fairly comfortable life with her husband and two daughters. Little by little, she writes sketches, other writers’ quotes and sentiments on her notebook in the hope of forming a novel someday. “Where does one begin to look for answers? In the stories we read? In the stories we write?” she asks in her journal. Her writings somehow reflect her own dreams and those of her friends and acquaintances.
Through her whimsical and romantic tales, Angela depicts the lives of people who work around a small church in a forgotten old quarter of the city. In the “Tale of the Seamstress and the Seaman,” Angela narrates how a marriage made out of convenience spells doom for a mismatched couple with a wide age gap. Meanwhile, a student journalist gets her brush with the supernatural while working late in the haunted main building of the city’s oldest university in “A Ghost’s Tale.” Accomodating pain to survive is the main theme of the “Tale of the Cripple,” wherein the always ill but brave Risa outlives her sickness.
Connect the dots
At first, it is not apparent how the dreams of six different persons can connect with each other to form a story. But as the reader goes on, a common theme arises in each of the characters’ dreams and life events.
A gay friend of Angela, Ariel is a reluctant clairvoyant who sees omens in his dreams. He also has the uncanny ability to know what is happening in his friends’ life even without them telling him. He even claims that his housemates are the duwende in his garden.
Ruben, Ariel’s officemate, is bored in his marriage and secretly pines for another woman. He is also haunted still by his brother’s suicide many years ago, which is a recurrent part of his dreams.
In one of her dreams, Debbie comes across a bridge which she cannot cross. This seems to be a symbol for her life. With a sick father and growing financial concerns, she feels weighed down by her duties and her past. But her teaching in a sleepy college town gets a boost when her old friend Angela invites her to a national literature conference. Though she falters in presenting her paper, Debbie emerges renewed from the experience.
Meanwhile, Luis, a cousin of Debbie, goes back to their hometown after bad luck in the city. His dreams of being chased reveals his tortured and guilty feelings of being not able to provide decently for his family, whom he left in Manila. Driven by his helplessness, he agonizes over whether or not to join in his neighbor’s drug-peddling business to make money.
Angela’s officemate, Cora, on the other hand, is struggling to keep her breadwinner and mothering duties. With her husband out of a job, she tries to compensate by selling tocino and Avon cosmetics to her officemates. Family concerns invade her dreams.
The plot unfolds as these characters meet each other in their everyday lives, dreams and in Angela’s sketches, where part of their stories happen.
Reconstructing the self
“…Dreams are the mind and the soul and the secret truth about us,” Angela quotes Truman Capote in her journal. Through the dreams of the characters, the readers watch fragmented pictures and hear voices, thus feeling the stirrings of the soul. Hidalgo proves that her pen still pierces and awakens the imagination, gleaning the truth that the reader has to understand. A Book of Dreams is definitely a feast for the mind.
