PALH BOOK REVIEWS

 

TWICE BLESSED by Ninotchka Rosca published by Norton Review by Publishers Weekly, Jan 13, 1992 v239 n3 p46(1) COPYRIGHT 1992 Cahners Business Information

Rosca's (State of War) novel might seem fantastical it set in any country other than the Philippines. Hector Basbas has just been elected president, but the incumbent won't concede. While loudly declaring "Either this is a democracy or it isn't," Hector dispatches his twin sister, Katerina, who calls to mind Imelda Marcos, across the archipelago to bride low-level officials with machine guns and shopping bags of money. Satirizing the seamy side of her country's political process in controlled, highly literate prose, Rosca, a Philippine journalist once jailed for her opposition to the Marcos regime, also relates the Basbas twins' unsavory history as they clawed their way out of poverty. After Hector is presumed dead in an airplane crash, Katerina tries to claim the election, but the patriarchal power structure refuses to take her seriously. When Hector is found, near-catatonic from being locked in a plane with rotting corpses, his family tries to make him a presentable figure. By the novel's close, the the wheel has turned again: Hector seems poised to slip beneath its spokes. Just as the mad whirl of events threatens to overwhelm the narrative, Rosca pulls back, a brilliant move that adds extra punch to her novel's effect. (Mar.)

Review Grade: A

 

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