Baby Jesus Pawn Shop (original 2008; edition 2008)

Lucia Orth’s first novel, Baby Jesus Pawn Shop, is about a white American army wife of the upper class, Rue Caldwell, who falls in love with a sometimes reluctant member of the New People’s Army, Doming Aquinaldo, during the Marcos regime in the Philippines. The love story is really a backdrop, however, for the political turmoil of Manila during Marcos’ reelection in the early 1980s, and the complicity of the United States government in keeping a ruthless dictator in power in order to safeguard our own military and commercial access to the East. Orth brilliantly and beautifully tells a story of two people’s complicated love for a place (Manila), a faith (one in science, the other in an individual Catholicism), and eventually each other.

The book is written in a loose chronology, and moves back and forth between Doming Aquinaldo’s story and Rue Caldwell’s, occasionally overlapping or retracing one moment in time from the other’s perspective or repeating a line that was referred to earlier in order to retell that event in greater detail later on. But, it does not feel disjointed. Rather, the story unfolds organically, as if told from the depths of people’s memories, which in fact, is a leitmotif running through Baby Jesus Pawn Shop. Orth begins her novel with two epigraphs. One from Akiro Kurosawa: “We all want to forget something, and so we create stories.” The other from Milan Kundera that says, “Forgetting: absolute solace and absolute injustice.” The two are fitting because Orth has created a story about finding solace in a world that is absolutely unjust.

While the tone at times seems to be in a similar vein to an investigative journalist, it is also intimate and engaging enough to capture a person’s desire for love, despair at discovering the torture, murder, and corruption going on every single day outside one’s home, and a vengeful anger so powerful that it struggles against one’s higher ideals for country and humanity. Orth has the ability to weave history, myth, politics, religion, class consciousness, and respect for nature and the natural order together while never losing sight of the fact that she is writing a fictitious novel, which is meant to entertain the reader. Her style is unique and captivating – I read the entire 381-page book in one sitting because I absolutely could not put it down…

For the full review, see: http://community.livejournal.com/asianamlitfans/63090.html ( )

Doming Aquinaldo was seventeen when his father was killed by members of the military controlled by Ferdinand Marcos, and after escaping with his own life that night, he made it a matter of honor to avenge his father’s death. Some years later, he is living and working under an assumed name while walking a fine line: his friends try to lure him into assisting their revolutionary actions against the Marcos regime, but even as he lusts for revenge, he hesitates to become a part of such violence and destruction. While working as a driver for Trace Caldwell, an American diplomat, he is able to gain access to and pass along to his compatriots whatever information he can glean from Trace and the men with whom he works. Along the way, Doming becomes entangled with the diplomat’s wife, Rue. Their relationship begins as one of mutual dislike, but as Rue comes to love her job and the people of Manila, she comes to love Doming as well, and she soon comes to the realization that the work of her husband, his associates, and the Marcos reign are destroying the people of the Philippines.

Baby Jesus Pawn Shop has the amazing power to transport you to the Manila of 1982 and introduce you to those who suffered under the Marcos rein, and Lucia Orth beautifully captures the lives of the Filipino people. I read this book with a mixture of desperation and helplessness and hope, feeding off the emotions of both Doming and his friends, as well as those of Rue, who “felt a dread, unnamable, that by not objecting she was also part of the farce and the horror.” I couldn’t help but get caught up, and this novel was certainly hard to put down. ( )

I knew I would like this book before I even read it because of the title, and I was right! ( )

This book is an in depth fictionalized look into Manila under the rule of Ferdinand Marcos in the late part of the twentieth century. Orth focuses on two characters as the lenses for her story, and what follows is a tale of suspense that lives up to the novel's claims of exploring 'the struggle of two ordinary individuals to lead a moral life when reality defies conventional notions of right and wrong' (taken from the book jacket). While it isn't necessarily a quick read, the book moves quickly if you're interested in either the setting (flawlessly rendered from what I can judge), countries in political flux, or political thrillers tailored with interesting characters.

As a whole, the book is beautifully written with just enough background that you feel as if you are learning about the historical politics going on in the background even as you're falling into the story. It is frustrating at times to see the political maneuverings and controls from only observer stand-points though. There's plenty of worth in reading about a country in the midst of upheaval from the viewpoint of those most affected, but the lack of direct insight into what politicians and military minds are doing makes the read frustrating at times for readers who want to know more about the reasons for what they're reading, as opposed to just action and effect. Overall, though, there's a pretty good balance in this regard, and I'm not sure that Orth could have pulled off as much of a flowing and page-turning novel in any other way but than to focus on the characters she chooses. For this reason, I have to say that I would have liked more of a drama with suspense than a novel that was obviously written to be a literary tale of suspense.

The book's jacket makes it sound like the political intrigue will move hand in hand with the personal development of the characters and their relationship, but when it comes down to it, the characters are less the focus, and somewhat flat in creation. This isn't to say that they're not interesting, but I wanted more about them and of them to make me truly care about Orth's novel. It was too easy to get swept along in the story, and be entertained, but not be entirely touched---and, a novel trying to do as much as this one is, I would argue, should touch readers. In the end, I'm afraid this focus on creating suspense through plot moreso than character, as true to the story as it may be, will make it easy for readers to enjoy this while they're reading it, but also leave it behind without a great deal of thought or memory that might make them look further into the issues presented or pass the book on to other likely readers.

In the end, while I Wanted more from the book, it's a good read, beautifully written and worth the time. I got this from the early reviewer program on LT, but I wouldn't have been disappointed if I'd spent money on the book from the store. I have to say that I think it had more potential than what the final result puts out, but this only leaves me anxious for Orth's next novel, considering that this is an incredibly impressive first book. My only warning to potential readers is that there is a fair amount of violence, sometimes graphic, within the book, some of it related to animals---all of it is necessary and true to environment, but as early as it comes, I have to admit that it might have put me off if I hadn't received the book from LT for free and had just been browsing. If you're overly sensitive to scenes like this, you might want to at least be wary before picking up the book, though, again, I do think it's worth the time. ( )