"What does it mean to forgive somebody?" the protagonist of Nathan Go's immersive debut novel, Forgiving Imelda Marcos, asks halfway through a series of seemingly confessional letters he's writing to his estranged son. Forgiveness--and its longed-for companion, redemption--haunts Go's meditative narrative, which brilliantly reimagines complicated history through the intimate single lens of a lonely, dying man.
Angelito Macaraeg's kidneys are failing, but he's hopeful that the story he insists on sharing now might be a final gift to his American journalist son, who could "package it off in some newspaper or shiny magazine with your name on the cover." For 36 years, Lito was employed by the Aquino family, most notably as Corazon Aquino's personal driver. A year before her death, she convinced him to ferry her from Manila to Baguio City to meet "an old acquaintance"; the novel's title, of course, provides the identifying clue to their destination. Lito's recollection of what happened on the six-hour drive becomes the perfect framework from which to also interweave his own personal journey--his mother's murder, his father's misguided choices, his education, his silence, his absence--to the son he hasn't seen in decades.
Go, a Filipino native with an Iowa Writers' Workshop degree, is a deftly assured, culturally fluent storyteller. He introduces a hesitant Lito, earnest--even desperate--to be understood. Lito may call himself "a poor, bumbling, bald high school dropout," but such deprecation quickly gives way to reveal astute awareness. Rife with aching pathos, Go's novel presents an intricate exploration of the very nature of human (dis)connections, from the most powerful to the overlooked everyman. --Terry Hong, BookDragon