Review: Smaller and Smaller Circles

Smaller and Smaller Circles by F.H. Batacan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This review is also found on Goodreads! :)
--
Borrowing from the vocabulary of the great Stephen King, unputdownable.

This book provides a more than your raw and gritty crime fiction. This provides a shrewd look into institutions--both in our criminal justice system and in the Roman Catholic Church. It is laced in politics and for the first time in a long while, I didn't mind. In hindsight, I realized that you really couldn't write about Manila without getting political. This book served like a slap in the face of our political system and even the piousness of the Church. It's a juicy and interesting take on Philippine politics set in a whodunit. It's layered and multi-faceted. It gives the readers a glimpse at the affluence of the rich marred with corruption, and a jarring picture of poverty deeply rooted in even more corruption and social diseases.

Review: Lincoln in the Bardo

Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This review is also found on Goodreads! :)
--
Actual Rating: 3.9 stars
--

I have considered DNF-ing this book numerous times halfway throughout. I'm so glad I didn't. The format takes a lot of time to get used to and the different tones adapted by the different characters constantly threw me off-balance. When I was just in the process of getting used to a character's specific way of speaking, a different tone and language will be adapted by the next character. During the first half, it was really difficult to follow. I can truly understand why a lot of readers didn't bother finishing this book. But I pushed through, because however difficult the format was, the story was so beautiful, and the characters were all so interesting.

The entire story revolved around the night of Willie Lincoln's internment, during which President Lincoln visited his son after the funeral. A war had just started, both in the world, and inside Abe Lincoln's heart. The turmoil and grief within President Lincoln was depicted holistically in the book; it was impossible to not get pulled in. Willie's arrival in the bardo became a source of excitement for the other "citizens" of the graveyard. During this night, characters from the graveyard got to tell their stories, and each story was as unique and heartbreaking as the next. I was rooting for Willie, but I was rooting more for Bevins, Vollman, and the Reverend. It was Willie's story, but it's as much as Bevin's and Vollman's stories too. While it revolves around historically facts of Willie's death, the entire book was wholly imaginative and unique, my mind refused to put it down.

I would have enjoyed this story much more if the format followed a more conventional type. But even with how it is written now, it was still beautiful and unforgettable.

View all my reviews