Smaller and Smaller Circles

PIECING THE ENIGMAS OF A GORY JIGSAW By Louie Adrian A. Lava (R-24)

Lit 13 (Introduction to Fiction)

Ateneo De Manila University October 21, 2014

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Maria Felisa H. Batacan brilliantly delineated the staggering realities in the Philippine society in her masterfully written, carefully researched, and engrossing storytelling—Smaller and Smaller Circles—the first Filipino crime fiction published in 2002 that bagged the highly coveted literary awards such as the Palanca award for the English novel and the MadrigalGonzales Best First Book Award in 2003. It is also one of the seven novels released as part of the U.P. Jubilee Student’s Edition designed for the general public to access such literary rarities—a breath of fresh air in Philippine literature. The author, whose work has been touted for a total of 6,000 copies in the country, claims the name F.H. Batacan in the novel. Her career first blossomed in the academe, and then emerged in the fields of journalism and mass media. After winning her Third and Grand Prize Palanca awards for the short story Door 59 and Smaller and Smaller Circles, respectively, Batacan worked in Singapore as a business journalist and a news editor. Her novel is quite reminiscent to the American television series CSI which follows the professional criminalists who use physical evidences to solve murders. Indeed, F.H. Batacan’s award-winning book is a novelty in Philippine literature. It has a remarkable focus on the science of criminal investigation and forensics juxtaposed with local flavor brought about by its Payatas milieu. As her title suggests, two Jesuit priests explore the ―big circles‖ to eventually lead them to ―smaller circles‖—they are undertaking a methodical scrutiny to dissect the mysteries in the slums of Payatas. However, not only did the author centralized its subject matter at the discovery of the aloof culprit behind a killing spree. The novel’s literary elements, such as its plot and point of view, cunningly deviated from the conventions of detective fiction to give way for its chief goal of radically baring the inefficacies of Philippine criminology, the evils of local society, and the political realities in the form of satire. It is also fitting to go beyond the critical level of understanding the novel’s subject matter because the novel also explores the similarities and disparities among some characters, especially the families of the child victims, in terms of their social classes, by reinforcing their struggle in confronting the consequences of economic marginalization in relation to the death of their children. Batacan also tackles the mental and psychological driving forces that led the characters in manifesting a certain behavior in the text. The novel’s mystery revolves around the murders of teenage boys in the mountainous dumpsite of Payatas—a poor region of low horizons, stenches of garbage, and stinky layers of air pollution. Two Jesuit priests Father Augusto ―Gus‖ Saenz and Father Jerome Lucero, a forensic anthropologist and a clinical psychologist, respectively, launch an important task force in coordination with the NBI, Atty. Benjamin Arcinas, and Joanna Bonifacio to trace 1

and apprehend Alex Carlos, the serial killer whose identity was explictly revealed by Batacan throughout. He works in a mobile clinic that provides medical assistance to some undersized Payatas boys to fulfill his gruesome plan of precisely defacing the pre-adolescent boys and expunging their internal organs and genitalia at night in the dumpsite. During his high school in Payatas High School, he was raped by his P.E. teacher Isabelo Gorospe. This unmannerly incident developed into a humiliating trauma, and then into a vehement wrath. In return, he kills preteen boys who resemble his physique and remind him of his dreadful experience. When the troop is about to catch Alex, Father Gus got into the van alone to convince Alex Carlos to surrender. Suddenly, he is reminded of Gorospe because of Gus, and so the killer injured him using a medical blade. The fatally wounded Saenz dropped injured outside the van. The troop came to the rescue and saw Alex still holding the blade. They shot him, and the priest escaped death after suffering the injuries inflicted on him. Although the development of the storyline is a cliché and is predictable, the novel did not fail to stir curiosity because its motifs are new and unique in the Philippine literary scene. It drags us into terrible yet perplexing glimpses and images of realism as the story unfolds in the local slum areas of Payatas in Quezon City as its real-world setting—thus introducing a local flavor to it. Interestingly, the novel’s climax comes in the form of the archetypal Pinoy justice seen in movies: the villain gets an attempt to kill the protagonist while the police is away from the scene. Despite Batacan’s careful attention to facts and details, the novel was a fast read. However, reading may sometimes have an unadventurous and dull mood because of the storyline’s plodding development and the presence of some unhelpful scenes; but the excellent descriptions to the gory imageries such as body parts ripping out of their skeletal frames redeemed its monotonic mood and exaggerated Batacan’s writing prowess. The plot also captured the metafictive feature of the crime fiction genre because the novel demands for the participation of the reader with the text and reflects the cultural and social values of when and where F.H. Batacan wrote her work. The author’s effective attempt of exploring and understanding the psyche and human nature of Alex Carlos moved the plot and led Saenz in disclosing the novel’s revelations. Aware that the novel is too enigmatic in nature, readers would have the impulse of figuring out the criminal by making conjectures at the beginning of the story, especially at the introductory chapters. The investigation is as hard as piecing a jigsaw—linking clues together, inferring from findings, and making conjectures that are reasonable and logical—that the readers are also taking part in fixing it. One may actually think that Fernando ―Ading‖ Rustia is the criminal because of a correspondence in 2

the culprit’s first-person dialogue and in his characterization. At Chapter 3, Batacan describes Ading as a ―local level supervisor with some two decades of largely unrewarded experience under his belt‖ (p. 18) whereas before Chapter 6, the culprit questioned if the people he works hard for appreciate him enough. However, this reader-involved reflex was shattered when Batacan went lenient about the culprit’s identity to give an unusual twist to this fiction genre. The text was also made remarkable because elements of foreshadowing are present in the novel. The side-story of Father Saenz’s impacted tooth and the scene when they saw the mobile clinics served as the keys to unravelling the mystery of the crime. Although comically written, it still showed a possibility that the culprit might be directly affiliated with medicine. Also, appearing before some chapters are quotations from the Bible and Pablo Neruda which effectively triggered our curiosity and set the tone of the next chapters by letting us conclude that the quotation is found before a certain chapter to foreshadow some parts and provide clues to the readers. An example to this is the entry of W.H. Auden’s quote before Chapter 23 (―I and the public know / What all schoolchildren learn / Those to whom evil is done / Do evil in return‖ – p. 117) to give a hint that the horrible experience of the deranged Alex Carlos is the peculiar reason that explains the motivation behind the frenzied murder as his means of recouping the dignity that he had lost—that his character became noteworthy because the readers know that his psychological tendencies were an output of his traumatic childhood experience. Similarly, the quotation by Friedrich Nietzsche posed before the first chapter only made sense after reading and appreciating the totality of Batacan’s novel. Its purpose is to indicate the reader of what to expect in the novel by providing a vivifying idea that completely envelopes the theme of the story. The novel’s plot is primarily a battle of the good and the evil—the side of the priests versus Alex Carlos and other opposing forces—but the narrator is impartial in her narration. The narrator only limited herself to the reporting of the inner thoughts, inner feelings, and the dialogues of all characters. The story is communicated from an omnipotent viewpoint; hence its point of view is a third person-omniscient. Batacan departs from the classical habit in universally known works of crime fiction such as Sherlock Holmes that only features the voice of Dr. John Watson as the first-person narrator of Doyle’s legendary series whose coverage is limited to the reporting of the thoughts and actions of Sherlock Holmes alone. In Smaller and Smaller Circles, the narrator brings into light various third person perspectives that rotate along a number of characters which include Gus Saenz, Jerome Lucero, Joanna Bonifacio, and a first-person point of view to the murderer Alex Carlos. The transparency of 3

the killer’s case and personality is another novelty in the literary scene of the crime genre. Still, this double vision does not muddle the narrative. As a result, it even enabled the readers to also have an equal and dual ability to see the novel in two standpoints—one, is the capacity to engage our attention to Alex; and the another, to sympathize with the investigators. Gus Saenz is a fully developed character in the novel. He is introduced in Chapter 2 as the well-built, good-looking, humorous, and aristocratic priest and an anthropologist who likes European music and fears dentists, thus adding to the comical side of Batacan’s novel aside from his amusing banters with Jerome. Because of his wit and intellect, he may actually be labelled as the Philippine version of Sherlock Holmes. Unlike the expected way a priest is perceived, the readers would neither witness a pretentious nor a too holy and priestly attitude in Saenz. An opposite to Jerome Lucero, he acted composed and with fine temperance in the novel. He feasibly acted natural but self-controlled; vigilant but always calm and collected. However, contrary to the accepted notion that priests must live in simplicity, his luxuriant living was a surprise as it was revealed that he and his family is actually living in an affluent village in Makati. And apparently, there was no mention of God or Father Gus praying. He only prayed outwardly for the first time in the novel when he is finally about to hunt down and catch Alex Carlos. Nonetheless, he is a still a proof of the essence of a lay person who does not only preach within the church, but also goes beyond his duty of priesthood to serve his community and meaningfully utilize his expertise. Deciphering the details of this brutal crime was not easy for the priests, especially for Jerome Lucero. He is described in the novel as a five feet nine clinical psychologist who is a younger priest than Saenz. He is also bulky, brawny, and physically fit, but has a limp posture as seen in the way Jerome walks. (―Only the keenest observer will note that he walks with an almost imperceptible limp‖ – p. 11) Unlike Saenz, Jerome is short-tempered and gets easily agitated to ill-mannered people—another dissimilar characteristic to our society’s perceived ideals of a priest who is always soft-spoken and patient. This is shown by the way he dealt with Atty. Benjamin Arcinas who, at first, mockingly worked with the two priests. (―It’s all too much for Jerome. The younger priest rises forcefully from his seat…‖ – p. 28) Strangely, Jerome Lucero is experiencing unpleasant dreams wherein he hears himself screaming like the voice of a child. He also finds himself dragged in a muddy and slippery dump of garbage, with his childlike soft voice shouting for help. He would see the face of a man whose ―words he can’t understand [speak] in a whisper,‖ (p.16) and he would be hit with a rock and then whipped by a sharp, cold blade. When he wakes and grows conscious, he 4

would see himself bathed in sweat. He would wash his face with cool water, and then his eyes would seem ―to have lost their whites‖ (p. 16) while his skin was very pale. Clearly, this scenario testifies his inner and hidden paranoia towards the callous murder case that he himself is supervising. Perhaps, the pitiless way the boys were ruthlessly dehumanized cannot get out of his head. Symbolically, maybe Jerome’s nightmares serve as messages conveyed in his insentience by the children themselves to seek their own justice or to remind him of their suffering by letting him feel the pain they went through in the hands of a child killer. Councilor Cesar Mariano and Atty. Benjamin Arcinas are opposing characters as they illuminate the two different kinds of personalities in Philippine politics. Mariano epitomizes the ideal public servant who is responsive and eager as he showed willingness in helping the priests access medical records. On the other hand, Arcinas was first depicted as a homosexual lawyer (―His face has a layer of expertly applied foundation and his well-manicured nails are covered in a coat of sheer polish.‖ – p. 27) who grossly scoffed the help that the priests are willing to offer with scrutiny and ridicule. He is quite prejudiced and egoistical that he puts too much of his confidence to the suspect that his team has. He eventually consented them to work with him, but his approval was only motivated by an eagerness to be praised by others and to disparage the honorable reputation of Saenz and Lucero. (―Trahimur omnes laudis studio‖ / English: ―We are all led on by our eagerness for praise‖ – p. 28) Benjamin Arcinas is an effective representation of the Filipino bureaucrats we call as ―balimbing‖—a popular Filipino maxim which refers to an official who takes the side from which he can benefit. Joanna Bonifacio is a media personality in the novel. She was characterized as a onewoman NBI. This tall, athletic-looking, and sassy investigative media correspondent was in a newsroom along with some of her work colleagues, Wally and cameraman Manny, when she was first introduced in the eighth chapter as a new character. She is a skillful journalist—she knows how to work her way to tap for useful information from the authorities without being over-acting unlike the rest of the media. She is also a multilingual savvy like Gus Saenz. She has a stubborn and a nasty personality, as shown by the way she acts especially when she presses her palm on her colleague’s forehead only to put a tiny Bazooka Joe comic strip, and when she boldly tracked down Arcinas’ team to take part in documenting the arrest of Alex Carlos even though Wally has already warned her of the risk. However, scenes in the novel went cluttered when her illicit affairs were discussed too much. The author should have only included a fair background to spare the readers from dwelling too much on the personal lives of the secondary or minor characters which include Joanna. 5

The culprit, Alejandro ―Alex‖ Carlos, is feisty and psychotic, but is a very intelligent face-ripper. One would not even think that he is the culprit because he was characterized to have a reputable educational background and an adequate upbringing by a loving family in Cebu. His crime is inhumane—he works as a dentist in the mobile clinic in Payatas, and kills preteen boys by excising their genitals and faces with crafty precision because they remind him of his physicality when he was raped. Indeed, his every act is a show of power to exclaim his disturbing sense of presence and his capability to ―gratify his thirst for justice‖ (p. 138) by slipping through the male kids of Payatas. We are delved into the thoughts of a criminal psychopath; and the short, italicized passages are some fragments of his thoughts. These firstperson dialogues were like haunting phantoms whose voices irked our probing minds and catalyzed the plot’s progress. The gripping narrative driven by his innate psyche significantly propelled the reading experience by broadening the elements of suspense and delight. Although the story is plain, it was in fact a very realistic one as Batacan openly used a Payatas backdrop to intensify the novel’s imageries by illustrating the Payatas way of life. This familiar setting helped us appreciate the story. Because of the weather, the dumpsite, the kids, and the streets, the story obviously took place in our country, particularly in Quezon City where the actual Payatas dumpsite is located. Filipinos can instantly imagine the places, the weather, especially the characters. It is difficult to make crime sound realistic, and even crime-fighting priests more so. But with the slum areas of Payatas used as the setting, the thrilling moods of uncertainty and suspense were made stronger. With those brutal imageries yet finely crafted details of the setting, the readers could effectively feel the dominance of poverty, despair, and helplessness of the people in Payatas. The descriptions of setting, which include clusters of shanties, swaggering and belligerent street children sneering every person at the streets, crowded highways, and meager living, were crucial and important in grounding the story to a certain resemblance to realism. The author’s credibility was heightened by the consistent and detailed unfolding of the situations, scenes, and objects. As a result, the story was made more plausible and convincing to the audience. Furthermore, the part by which the context of the parents of the killed little boys was described was one of the most dramatic and gripping scenes of the novel. From the setting in McDonald’s Katipunan, the realist factor of the story shifted into the life in Payatas when the stories of Lolita Bansuy, Edith Solis, and Binang Alcaraz were presented. Undeniably, their background stories created a heartening impact to the readers who witnessed the struggles that they experience in their families—their everyday struggle in their back-breaking work to 6

make ends meet, negligent parents or deceased relatives, and the juvenile delinquencies of their children shown by the obscenities in the way they speak or the way they act. In this part, the author allowed her readers to sympathize with the victims and develop a fonder wrath towards the killer who took away the innocence of the children whose families are wrestling not only with poverty, but also with grief. Another important indicator of the setting is the stinky and muddy stenches of Payatas dumpsite. It accentuated the intensity of Alex Carlos as a notorious killer, as if it is his own territory. In fact, it is in that place that he forged his identity as a direct and vengeful enemy to the investigators and a menacing predator to his young male preys. The interplay of the varying atmospheres—rain and sunshine—was also vital in the story as it contributed to the establishment of the story’s Philippine setting. As a matter of fact, our country is tropical in climate, so we experience both humid weather and abundant rainfalls. With these things said, therefore, Smaller and Smaller Circles is classified under the realist mode of fiction. The story is grounded to a verisimilitude—the very familiar Payatas setting, the NBI officials and offices, the Filipino claim that serial killing is only rampant in the West, and of course, to the possibility that such act by Alex Carlos may actually be taking place in reality—we might not know. It also raised social realism since some personalities in the novel, such as Benjamin Arcinas, illuminated specific identities from the present political scenario. His character satirizes attention-seeking officials who does not actually help loosen national issues, but carelessly handles them and deviously obstructs the chances of finding solutions. The novel is also a satirical exposé of our broadcast media’s greed for scoops and big-time ratings as depicted by the closing act of the novel which involves Joanna Bonifacio. (―The ratings will shoot through the roof‖ – p. 155) This thinking, as a result, bastardizes the media’s noble social function of providing reliable news that solely gives priority to art, culture, and information within the broad public’s reach and benefit. Oddly, a rare element in this novel is the presence of priests as the detectives. Unlike major cases in the country where national security and investigative agencies disappointingly respond and treat cases poorly because of insufficient resources, Saenz and Lucero supervise a world-class autopsy laboratory embedded with several sophisticated equipment, designed for specialized examinations of dead bodies retrieved from the scene of the crime. Another reason for this lame criminal system, perhaps, is the presence of incompetent officials who, to some extent, only choose to accommodate cases which involve high profile personalities. In fact, the novel also shows how police workforce concentrates on preferred cases. Most of 7

them take up the popular ones, or those that would certainly gain them much media exposure, leaving sometimes the more urgent cases. (Balinuyos, 2012) This would then lead us to a sociological approach in looking at Batacan’s novel. It debunks the myth that the criminal and justice system is not biased against the poor. Every individual may commit a crime—but only the poor are generally punished and less prioritized by the government and the police. (Silver, 1968) A common observation in our justice system is the prevalence of police workforce who always cracks down on the poor and then praised for getting ―tough on crime‖. However, when the crime involves the rich, it is unusually a mechanism for the local police to apprehend them directly. But when they do, interestingly, they are condemned for ―excessive regulation‖. These misguided observations, when looked at the light of the novel, boil down to Batacan’s romanticism of the society’s response to a crime committed against the poor. They successfully gained their justice in the resolution of the novel, even if the culprit is a professional who actually belongs to the middle class. But then, the presence of the crime-fighters who are surprisingly Jesuit priests extending their full efforts in dealing with heinous crime by treating it with utmost priority, notwithstanding their duties in the church, is fairly unconceivable—more so for the attention given by NBI agents and law enforcers, the media, and the police workforce who all eventually coordinated with Saenz and Lucero in conquering Alex Carlos. Life is unfair for the family of the victimized children, and their poverty brings forth more burdening consequences although it is not a fault to be economically underprivileged. The poor nutrition of the Payatas kids was a reason for the killer psychopath to infringe them. Hence, the mobile clinic launched by the doctors may look like a beacon of hope for them, but it has an underlying dark motive. Also, he chose to murder the Payatas children because they are truly helpless, and it would be difficult for Alex Carlos to contravene in the confines of the capitalist classes who apparently have the advantage of security, wealth, and influence. If that is the case, he may be putting his own self at risk. Further assessing the inner workings of the minds of some characters may provide a psychological justification for the way we analyze their behavioral processes in terms of their obvious and hidden motives. If we perform a psychoanalysis on Alex Carlos, we say that he has the tendency to kill persons who remind him of his traumatic experience. He wallows in his own victimization, and during his childhood he is psychologically impotent to reveal his parents the molestation that he underwent. As explained by the psychologist Paul Mattiuzzi, Ph.D., a person’s aggression towards killing occurred as his response to the ―single, massive 8

assault in his identity‖. We may also consider the character of Alex Carlos as insane because of his irrational view on his own behavior and a twisted and psychotic belief on morality—on what is right and wrong, on what is inappropriate and cruel. He perceives the essence of his masculinity as destroyed if he is not able to make a response that will vindicate his personal justice. He rarely displays anger, but his chaotic heart is filled with so much sentiments of rage—and he is releasing them. Resentful of his own identity, in return he would kill other people who remind him of his former identity—a frail man, weak, petite, someone who can easily be manipulated, fooled, and abused. Now, Alex sees himself as a stronger guy capable of seeking revenge by homicide—his means of regaining power and inner peace. (―I feel so much better today. So light and encumbered… I am filled with an astounding sense of peace. I wish it could be like this everyday.‖ – p. 68) As the forensic psychologist Dr. Kathy Charles (as cited by Keenan, 2013) puts it, killers seem like ordinary people but they all share one thing—a psychotic personality that gets a thrill from killing. Perhaps Alex Carlos’ make-up of nervous system is different from others in the sense that he does not get a thrill from some of the things that normal people would. However, despite these, his act of defacing children that reminds him of himself means that in a symbolic sense, he wants to obliterate his own face and identity because of shame and disgust. Also, he goes delusional when he is watched or observed, (―I feel like I am being watched. I hate being watched.‖ – p. 3) or when one poses a surveillance on him. He thinks that they also pose a threat to hinder his motives. Father Jerome Lucero, on the other hand, is another character whose psychology is grippingly laid out when the narrator exposes his experience when dealing with nightmares. He is seen to have a subtle, but not obvious, fear towards the suffering of the victims. Maybe the priest is guilty of something that concerns his Payatas boys, or maybe it is just because regretful experience that resonated in his dream. Thus, he unconsciously believed that he was killed and then saw his dream as a result of his own paranoia. However, it is more likely that Father Jerome does not want to lose his status, and hence his nightmares are nothing more than a reflection of his own fears. Psychology explains that his hallucinations indicate that he fully and consciously understands the recent events that are taking place in his life. Generally, F.H. Batacan does not only revolutionize the conventions of the popular crime genre. She has also established Smaller and Smaller Circles both as a product and a reflection of our troubled society’s search for stability and peace. She was able to illustrate and enumerate the rare merits yet numerous flaws in our investigating system. At the same time, she also suggested us the capabilities of a Filipino mind—whether in the elimination or 9

creation of crime. The book has precisely described this science of crime scene investigation and has an added local flavor because of the Payatas backdrop, but the author, in terms of plot, did not romanticize the intricately dense system of crime investigation in the country. Although fictionalized, she still exposed the difficulties dealt by the priests even if they are prodigies in those fields. However, the author did not present the two detectives deteriorating because of their own flaws—it is actually the antagonizing forces around them who kept hindering their valuable motives deceitfully and cunningly. What more in the realist setting where a Father Gus Saenz or a Father Jerome Lucero is unlikely to exist? As a matter of fact, shrewd people like them are too extraordinary to exist in reality. The novel is a living testimony that mirrors our society by representing different kinds of people from different origins. Not only that it scrutinized a culprit and merely concentrated on the development of the plot because it also delved on certain social realities by anchoring its story to the popular Payatas. Other than focusing on the crime alone, it also examined the dying Philippine society by probing and twisting accepted truths and by modelling satires that mocked the wicked forces of our society. Sociologically speaking, the story wisely explores the social biases which involve the capitalists and the working class in terms of their access to a fair criminal and judicial system. It also allowed its readers discuss the in-depth psychology of the characters to encompass the totality of their character as a facsimile and representation of the modern man’s sensibility, subjectivity, tendencies, and attitudes. However, the enigma of the novel cloaks a more important mystery which needs to be answered. Aside from novelty and literary purposes, I think F.H. Batacan used different point of views and a unique plot to represent the plight of our community through the child victims. Because of this, everyone is confused, everyone is alarmed, everyone is searching. But why is the author so transparent of the killer? Perhaps, Batacan wanted us to explore for many other deceptive forms of evil rather than concentrating on what is obviously immoral. Social evils emanate from unconceivable places, from every layer, status, or class of individuals. They take on different faces in the novel—the inefficient NBI, the unlikely act of bribery by Gus Saenz, the impractical broadcast media, the politically crooked and treacherous officials, and even the poorest of the poor. We ironically become a victim of our own crimes—everybody suffers, because everybody takes part. We are blinded of the mystery in Batacan’s novel. Is it because of the luxurious living of the priests? Is it because of the government’s frustrating inadequacy? Is it the media’s greed for fame? Is it the because of Alex alone? Or could it be because of us? It’s time to ask yourself if you are a perpetrator of our bloody society. 10

BIBLIOGRAPHY A. Books and Papers Balinuyos, John Marvin. Philippine Literature in English: Smaller and Smaller Circles (2012) 20 October 2014. . Web. Batacan, Felisa. Smaller and Smaller Circles. 2008 ed. Vol. 1. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 2002. 155. Print. Hidalgo, Cristina. Over a Cup of Ginger Tea: Conversations on the Literary Narratives of Filipino Women. 1st ed. Vol. 1. Quezon City: UP Press, 2006. 113. Print. Kintanar, Thelma. Women Reading: Feminist Perspectives on Philippine Literary Texts. 1st ed. Vol. 1. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, 1993. Print. B. Online Database and Websites Keenan, Amanda. Inside the Mind of the Murderer: Forensic psychology expert reveals key tools to solving crime. The Daily Record, 24 June 2013. Web. 19 Oct. 2014. . Maclang, Minna. French and Forensics: Smaller and Smaller Circles by F.H Batacan. 21 May 2012. Web. . Mattiuzi, Paul. Why Do People Kill? A Typology of Violent Offenders. Everyday Psychology. 30 July 2008. Web. 19 Oct. 2014. . Miranda, Angus. Serial Mysteries: Smaller and Smaller Circles by F.H. Batacan. Book Rhapsody. Web. . ___________. A Review of F.H. Batacan's Smaller and Smaller Circles. 20/50, 22 Mar. 2011. Web. 20 Oct. 2014. . ___________. Option 1: Smaller and Smaller Circles by F.H. Batacan. Shredded Cheddar. 1 June 2010. Web. 20 Oct. 2014. . 11