{"id":1226,"date":"2011-03-29T11:21:13","date_gmt":"2011-03-29T15:21:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/2011\/03\/29\/read-this-moondogs\/"},"modified":"2011-03-29T11:21:13","modified_gmt":"2011-03-29T15:21:13","slug":"read-this-moondogs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/2011\/03\/29\/read-this-moondogs\/","title":{"rendered":"Read This: Moondogs"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"moondogs-cover.jpg\"I was back on the case for Shelf Awareness<\/i><\/a> yesterday, reviewing Moondogs<\/i><\/a>, a debut novel by Alexander Yates<\/a> about (among other things), a young half-Filipino man who flies down to Manila to reunite with his Anglo father, except that Dad’s been kidnapped by an incompetent cab driver and his rooster—which of course the son doesn’t know, so he sits around being resentful as hell while his father’s friends try to show him a good time.<\/p>\n

“If that were all there was to Moondogs<\/i>,” I wrote, “it would make for a serviceable comic novel, in the vein of Elmore Leonard perhaps, mixing family drama and botched criminal mishaps.” Yates adds other layers to the mix, though, plot threads which send the story into Jonathan Lethem or Victor LaValle territory. His version of the Philippines isn’t just exotic, and it isn’t just weird—it’s supernaturally weird, but in a way that doesn’t turn Moondogs<\/i> into a fantasy novel. I’m loath to describe it as “magic realism,” because I think that term gets bandied about too easily, but Yates’ Philippines does seem to fit the label if we’re describing an environment where mythology and folklore haven’t been compartmentalized away from daily existence. For now, let’s just say it’s a “fantastic” novel, and you can relish the ambiguity of that if you like.<\/p>\n

(As it happens, I’m currently reading another novel about a young Filipino-American man in Manila; I’m still in the early chapters of R. Zamora Linmark’s Leche<\/i><\/a>, but it’s already as wild as Moondogs<\/i>… not “fantastic” in the supernatural sense, but equally willing to bend reality just a bit. For instance, on his flight to Manila, our protagonist is watching a movie that stars Kris Aquino, the daughter of former Philippines president Corazon Aquino—who does happen to be an actress, although this particular film is part of Linmark’s imagination. I’m looking forward to how it all turns out.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was back on the case for Shelf Awareness yesterday, reviewing Moondogs, a debut novel by Alexander Yates about (among other things), a young half-Filipino man who flies down to Manila to reunite with his Anglo father, except that Dad’s been kidnapped by an incompetent cab driver and his rooster—which of course the son doesn’t […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1226"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1226\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}