Michael Carrington Carrington থেকে Carrawabbity NSW 2871, Australia
I finished reading this last Sunday morning. Two days have passed and I still vividly remember a number of scenes that really made an etch in my mind. That's how powerful is this novel for me. Dominador B. Mirasol was one of the 5 authors in the landmark collection in Philippine Literature entitled Mga Agos Sa Disyerto (4 stars). It is a landmark collection because the authors successfully tried to go against the public's reading preference (romance, happy ending and mostly written in English) by writing about marginalized people in society (poor, farmers, women, etc) and they wrote in Tagalog. Included in that collection are 5 of Mirasol's well-written short stories. I like all of them but I like this novel of him most. I think Mirasol was a better novelist than short story writer. This novel won the a special award in the Cultural Center of the Philippines Contest in the Novel categories in 1979. Ginto ang Kayumangging Lupa or "Gold in the Brown Land" is also written in Tagalog but it is not hard to understand because it is almost the current conversational type of Tagalog. Critics say that Mirasol's minimalist yet exact prose is very evident in this novel. He could create a tense and highly-emotionally charged situation without using too melodramatic words. He chose his words meticulously and did not even go near the border of hysterics. However, he took time to describe his scenery and so he had this ability of transporting his readers to his milieu. I really enjoyed that journey while reading this book that I could not put this down last Sunday. The story is set in a farm that used to be a forest. The one who did the clearing was Moises the father of three children and the husband of Tinay. On the first time that Moises saw the place, he was told about the barrel of gold bars that the fleeing American and Filipino soldiers during World War II tried to bring out of the country while they were being chased by the Japanese Imperial armies. That barrel of gold is buried somewhere in that area since the fleeing armies were mostly gunned down by Japanese forces. However, Moises brushes that story aside and he decides to live in that place and make it his homestead because he loves farming rather than working in a nearby lumber yard or lagarian. I will not tell you the rest of the story so you'll enjoy the book as much as I did. Be assured that this book is different from the many landlord-tenant stories of conflict and disparity that were among the common subjects written by authors in the 60's and 70's including the five Agos boys. Well done, Mr. Mirasol. Again, I am late in reading this book. I wish I was able to read this when you were still alive so I could interview you and tell you how much I enjoyed reading this book - your book.