COMIC book author Dean Francis Alfar makes an impressive crossover to Philippine fiction with his first novel, Salamanca, (Ateneo de Manila University Press, 2006), which won last year’s Palanca Grand Prize for the Novel.
Employing magic realism, a literary technique that weaves fantastical elements in a realistic setting, Alfar relays the love story of Gaudencio Rivera and Jacinta Cordova without cheesy idylls, using reverie rather than sentimentalism.
Divided into three chapters, the novel starts with Gaudencio announcing in a dinner party his plan to father a child with his wife Jacinta, whom he has left in Palawan after only 11 days of marriage. A series of flashbacks take the readers 18 years back in time, with the arrival of the Manileño Gaudencio to the secluded town of Tagbaoaran in Palawan. There he meets the beautiful Jacinta, whose supernatural beauty can transform her house’s walls into glass. But Gaudencio decides to leave her for unknown reasons, going back to Manila in the company of Cesar Abalos, his male lover.
The second chapter shows the separate lives of the main characters. Gaudencio becomes a successful writer in Manila, getting inspiration from his passionate bisexual encounters. Jacinta, left in Tagbaoaran, wallows in sadness, oblivious of Gaudencio’s departure. Her beauty fades until she becomes just as ordinary-looking as the other people in her town.
Jacinta falls in love with the Vietnamese Bau Long Huynh, one of the “boat people” who had fled to Palawan after the communist takeover of Vietnam. At the end of the chapter, Gaudencio gets tired of his prodigal lifestyle and decides to come back to Jacinta. Can they live together again?
Alfar’s use of magic realism is most palpable in the novel’s first chapter. This is best shown when Jacinta first lays her eyes on Gaudencio, where “an invisible bolt of electricity struck her… causing the clump of string beans that she had been planning to prepare for supper to explode from the intense heat.”
There is a smooth transition to the flashbacks and back. But readers must have a minimum knowledge of contemporary history in order to appreciate the book’s historical reference.
Readers will enjoy the light tone used in the novel. Even the extended talks about the complexities of love is comprehensible. In the end, Salamanca shows the magic and problematics of love, its wages and cupidity, as well as its beauty and strength. Myla Jasmine U. Bantog
Where can I buy a copy of this book?