featuring a friend's novel with an unforgettable opening paragraph...
which begins with an attempted murder. On Marivi's blog, she writes that the book's opening scene was described by Marc Chery, San Diego Public Library's Director of Programming as rivaling that of the opening scene of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's "One Hundred Years of Solitude"! A very impressive comparison indeed!
It was great to see Marivi and her husband and daughter again. Bert and I actually met them both through Thane nearly twenty years ago when both Thane and Marivi's boyfriend (now husband who is a professor of Comparative Literature at UCSD) were earning their ph.d's at Berkeley. We celebrating Thane's birthday at Plearn, a Thai restaurant in Berkeley. Bert and I were in San Francisco for our one year wedding anniversay (making this 1996) and I remember one of them recommended the Tonga Room at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco as a fun place for dinner. For the record, we did go to the Tonga Room the next evening and had loads of kitschy fun with the fake rain, thunder and lightning noises and watching the houseband perform on a floating platform.
Before TC was born in 2000, I bought one of her children's books, "Philippine Fright" (a collection of Philippine tales of the supernatural) and after she was born, "Chief Flower Girl" as a gift for then baby TC. They are a lovely, intelligent and humble dare I say, "power couple".
Marivi's book, "The Mango Bride" was first published last spring whereupon she embarked on a self-made book tour across the U.S. and in the Philippines. Her novel, under it's original title, "In the Service of Secrets" won the Carlos Palanca Literary Award in 2011; this is the Philippines' equivalent to the Pulitzer Award.
I felt so guilty last year because I didn't attend her book launch in San Diego and didn't buy the book until that evening (I bought two copies!), so I told Bert that we could not miss this opportunity to hear her presentation.
Her reading was prefaced by a slideshow punctuated with humor and candor about "The Path to Publication", which was a fascinating account of how she wrote her first novel through NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) in 2008.
As Marivi eloquently read excerpts from her book, the lush descriptions and the pointed dialogue came to life...
The audience listened respectfully and even laughed during a few parts where Taglish was employed as well as Spanish curse words. It was easy to imagine my mother and my aunties talking like that.
I wanted to hear more of the book, but of course, that little snippet was only a little taste of the juicy story I would soon be reading (I am 3/4 done at this point)...
Below are a few informative videos in which Marivi is interviewed by various Filipino media outlets and discusses the issues in her book such as the experience of immigrant women, domestic violence, class differences, and the mail order bride business, to name of a few.
Kababayan Today:
TFC Balitang Filipino:
Adobo Nation:
We were trying to search for Thane in the videos where she had her book launch in San Francisco but couldn't find him! He did attend the signing with Thane Jr. We plan to make a stop at the historic I-Hotel during our Bay Area road trip this spring or summer.
Marivi's website:
marivisoliven.com
Her book, "The Mango Bride" can be purchased at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
I highly recommend it and I cannot wait to finish off the last part of the book!
The evening wasn't over quite yet. We were up in Mira Mesa and it was already 9 p.m. which meant there were fresh ones at a local donut joint...
2 comments:
How cool! I wrote a NaNoWriMo novel once, too, but then I uh, never did anything with it after that.... oops. It sounds like an interesting read, I'll put it on my "wish list". Thanks for sharing!
hi mary - yes, i highly recommend marivi's book. omg, i'm almost done and it's getting more and more tense with each page....
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