Para kay B

Para kay B (O Kung Paano Dinevastate Ng Pag-ibig ang 4 out of 5 sa atin) 1. Ricky Lee, perhaps one of the best-known scriptwriters in the Philippines of the last four decades, is also an important fictionist whose Palanca award-winning stories anticipated the postmodern narrative in Philippine fiction, where boundaries between genre (fiction and reportage) and realities (imagined and lived) are often blurred, if not totally wrecked. His involvement with Sigwa in the seventies also positioned him as one of the more committed writers of his generation. To say that the arrival of his first novel last year was long overdue is an understatement. Good thing, Para Kay B (O Kung Paano Dinevastate ng Pag-ibig ang 4 out of 5 sa Atin) proved worth the wait: It exhibits Lee’s mastery of contemporary language, mindless of how the academicians would react, and showcases his skill in creating memorable individuals, breathing ordinary yet defamiliarizing lives. At first, we might be deceived that we were given stereotypical characters and worn-out scenarios, but a little later we would feel comfortable that Lee knew what he was doing and that they were all part of the book’s major scheme. 2. The novel was initially a story of five women whose experiences of love crushed them differently, save for one, as the title suggests: Irene, who had a photographic memory, could not forget the promise of love she was given when she was very young, only to find out years later that she was not even remembered by the man in her past; Sandra, who fell in reciprocated love with her own brother, only to cause his lifelong suffering in the end; Erica, who came from a community called Maldiaga where love was unheard of, left home wanting a taste of love, only to realize that she was not really capable of loving someone; Ester, a widow raising a sexually active gay son, finally admitted to herself that it was her female house helper and friend whom she really loved all her life; and finally, Bessie, the promiscous lover who seduced Lucas, who was incidentally the writer of all these five tales. The end of their stories opened the metafictional designs of the novel that were explored in the concluding chapter, where the Writer was presented as taking part in his own narrative, with conflicting visions of his own characters, both as people who supossedly lived real lives and as merely imagined personae. In the narrative rampage as the book reached its climax, the characters were able to confront the Writer, were able to decide amongst themselves for better endings in their respective stories, and were able to plea for salvation, and, well, yes, love, even in its most deceitful guise. 3. In a few concluding words to the book, Lee admitted that despite his success in writing film scripts, all he really wanted to do in life was to write novels. He also shared that he was able to write three novels in the last three years, and we were given a taste of the second one, called “Aswang,” which promises to be more hilarious, given the three-page excerpt. Perhaps Lee’s experiences and exposures with more popular texts, being also a creative consultant to many TV shows, paradoxically invigorates his sensibility to come up with something this creative. Or probably he was really just born to write novels this refreshing that I can’t wait for what he has to offer next.