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    Ilustrado: A Novel
    Ilustrado: A Novel
    Ilustrado: A Novel
    Audiobook12 hours

    Ilustrado: A Novel

    Written by Miguel Syjuco

    Narrated by William Dufris

    3/5

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    About this audiobook

    Ilustrado opens with Crispin Salvador, lion of Philippine letters, dead in the Hudson River. His young acolyte, Miguel, sets out to investigate the author's suspicious death and the strange disappearance of an unfinished manuscript-a work that had been planned not just to return the once-great author to fame but to expose the corruption behind the rich families who have ruled the Philippines for generations.

    To understand the death, Miguel scours the life, charting Salvador's trajectory via his poetry, interviews, novels, polemics, and memoirs. The literary fragments become patterns become stories become epic: a family saga of four generations tracing 150 years of Philippine history forged under the Spanish, the Americans, and the Filipinos themselves. Finally, we are surprised to learn that this story belongs to young Miguel as much as to his lost mentor, and we are treated to an unhindered view of a society caught between reckless decay and hopeful progress.

    In the shifting terrain of this remarkably ambitious and daring first novel, Miguel Syjuco explores fatherhood, regret, revolution, and the mysteries of lives lived and abandoned.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateApr 30, 2010
    ISBN9781400187201
    Author

    Miguel Syjuco

    MIGUEL SYJUCO was born and raised in Manila. A freelance writer, he has written for international publications, including the New York Times, the International Herald Tribune, the Globe & Mail, and the CBC. He currently lives in Montreal. Ilustrado will be translated into more than 15 languages.

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    Reviews for Ilustrado

    3/5

    109 ratings14 reviews

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    • 2/5
      When I got to the middle of the book, I suddenly remembered that the life is too short for bad books. I struggled to find an interesting story among the numerous storylines the author had decided to present the reader with in his first novel. The funny story of Erning Isip as a protagonist was my favorite part of the book, but still it was nothing more than copying jokes from standup comedians. And, Mr. Syjuco, you're not William Faulkner, and I think that the effort to read your debut book isn't that much worth it. My opinion is that an authors should respect their readers on the first place. Then they have to know how to tell a story just to justify themselves as writers. And only then they would have allowed themselves to put together a novel like that one: complex, difficult to follow, and leaving the reader lost after reaching the middle of it.
    • 2/5
      I really struggled with this one. Probably because the story structure doesn’t lend itself to an audio read (the format I chose to try and get my trade paperback copy read and off my TBR pile). The narrative mechanisms used include everything from excerpted sections of fictionalized published works, transcribes of interviews, to reproducing emails and blog postings to communicate the story. Quite the jumbled mess that made listening to the story a bit of a challenge, kind of like listening to someone reading aloud a journal article and making a point of reading aloud each footnote in turn, disrupting the flow. This probably would have worked okay as a physical read, especially with the visual cues of section breaks and changes in font style to indicate the shifts in narration, but that wasn’t enough for Syjuco. He had to go and further complicate matters by free flowing the story backwards and forwards through time and place. One moment, we are in modern day New York, the next minute in the Philippines during the Japanese Occupation, and then suddenly in Canada in the 1960’s/1970’s. The premise itself is the reason I picked up a copy of this book and I really like Syjuco’s use of “Ilustrados” – the well-to-do Filipino intelligentsia, who have received European and Westernized educations – to be his "voice" but I should point out that this really isn’t much of a mystery as it has been billed to be. It is really more of a pseudo-autobiographical and sensationalized literary mouthpiece for what one reviewer has called “oblique manifestos” in the same highbrow, expansive style utilized by writers such as Roberto Bolano, with a similar noir undertone. This book does a wonderful job outlining 150 years of Philippine history, and communicating the country’s search for its identity, but I came away from this one with the same feeling I had after having read Bolano’s 2666: an overarching feeling that the story is an information dump of deeper messages layered one over top of the other, piled so high that I fail to work my way through to the core meaning. Overall, one of the most ambitious debut novels I have ever read. I just wish I had the patience to try and understand the deeper meaning I am sure it contains.
    • 2/5
      I tried. I really tried to like this. I am supposed to like this. The critics rave, this book is brilliant they say. Well, his brilliance must be blinding coz I can't see it. There are good bits of writing, some nice phrasing etc, but it doesn't hang together. He is so busy listening to his own voice(s) that the stories stutter, bereft of reason.
    • 3/5
      It was a very modern piece about the political mess called the Philippines and the fictional life of the author and his mentor. It has a really nice twist at the end that I did not expect and Syjuco did a great job. He was very strategic to the point that you just stop predicting what will happen next. However, when reading "Ilustrado" make sure you have a dictionary and an alarm clock ready. It was full of hifalutin words and is really dragging. The story really started slow for me and if you're expecting for an action-packed novel you'll be disappointed. If you're also expecting a Sherlock Holmes-y story, you'll also be disappointed. It's more of biographical kind of story, also full of political satire that is both funny and real at the same time. A must-read for Pinoys.
    • 3/5
      Ilustrado is a novel by Miguel Syjuco.Honestly, I didn't understand the story very much. It’s fragmented, and the author is very verbose. I only began to sort of grasp the whole unity of the novel when it was about to end. The twist in the ending reminded me of the twist in Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder. I didn't quite expect it.From what my feeble mind was able to gather, the story is about a young writer who loses his mentor. The latter’s death is mysterious. No one knows if it's suicide or murder. To make sense of his teacher's fate, and hopefully solve the mystery, Miguel, the protagonist, returns to the Philippines to interview people from his teacher's past -- a sister, a friend, a former friend, and a rumored daughter. At the same time, he writes down Crispin's biography.But, as I've hinted, there's a twist near the end. (Spoiler alert: Stop reading this if you don't to know what it is.)There's another mystery Miguel wants to solve, and that is to find Crispin's "missing" novel, The Bridges Ablaze, which is supposed to be his last great work. The novel is supposed to achieve what few literary works in the past have achieved for the country.We find out, in the epilogue, that, actually, Crispin didn't die. Miguel did! He drowned in the Pasig River following a typhoon. We are reading a story that Crispin is writing. In an effort to make sense of the abrupt and tragic death of his former student, he writes a story that explores what might have happened during Miguel's last days. In effect, he tries to make sense of his own life. Miguel’s death shakes Crispin up and compels him to rethink his life's trajectory. He finally decides to go home to the family and country he has alienated (he was on a self-imposed exile for many years), and hopes to be reconciled with the daughter he betrayed. The Bridges Ablaze was apparently unfinished and was eventually destroyed.So that is roughly the structure of the story.There are a lot of things going on in this novel. It’s a story about a young writer who goes on to make sense of the death of his old mentor, and in the end, it is revealed to us that actually, it was Miguel who died, and that the novel is actually about Crispin trying to make sense of Miguel’s death and in effect his (Crispin’s) own life. But it’s also a story that offers us a glimpse of Philippine history. Inserted between the narrative of the story are Crispin’s memoirs, and through them we are able to peek into his past: His family originated from Bacolod. They were probably Spanish mestizos, and they own vast areas of lands. They lived through the time of the Americans and the Japanese occupation, got exiled during the Martial Law, and thrives in the modern administration (his grandparents enter politics). Finally, it’s also a story that seeks to present the ugly truths in our society, from corruption in government and business to corruption in culture and families.I’m not sure if I like the story. It’s very dark and gloomy. I can’t understand Crispin’s philosophy. What is he trying to achieve with literature? I also have the sense that Miguel, too, is a bit lost and confused. What is he searching for? Where is he going?Miguel is also quite critical towards religion, Christianity in particular. But I guess that’s not a surprise, since he is after all an atheist. He sees religion as one of the causes of the country’s problems. But I think what he is really describing is hypocrisy among some religious people. Nevertheless, he has a very negative attitude towards religion, and does not see the sacredness of religious objects. His atheism is also quite strange. He doesn’t believe that there’s such a being as God, but it seems he thinks he should thank someone transcendent for the happiness he sometimes feels. But maybe I just misread him.And the jokes, most of them are crass. I think that simply reflects bad taste. Moreover, there’s a lot of cussing in the dialogues.“Ilustrado” seems to refer to Crispin. But I think that label means more than his being an “enlightened” intellectual. It also means that his reflection on Miguel’s death “enlightened” him about what the important things in his life really are.
    • 3/5
      I really wanted to like it, and at times it shone brilliantly, but it also kept skidding out of control. The playful approach and varied voices are fun for a while, but a more restrained execution would probably have been more beneficial in the long run.
    • 3/5
      It's a common complaint that the special effects in movies today are extraneous, explosions and computer graphics inserted into a narrative simply because the director/studio can. Filipino writers in English (IMHO) have the tendency to be the Jerry Bruckheimers or George Lucases (I still love Star Wars though) of literature. They are skilled and they can write and they are hell bent on proving these facts by using every special effect in their writing arsenal.This penchant for writing FX is on full display in Ilustrado - multiple texts, multiple authors/readers, multiple timelines (via multiple texts), multiple obscure dreams; all topped off with drugs, sex and rock and roll. It sounds kind of cool at first, just like all the gee whiz special effects are fun to watch at first. But ultimately getting through it all is kind of tiring.Ironically, Ilustrado itself is aware of the tendencies of Filipino writing, which it describes as "Living on the margins, a bygone era, loss, exile, poor-me angst, postcolonial identity theft. Tagalog words intermittently scattered around for local color, exotically italicized. Run-on sentences and facsimiles of Magical Realism, hiding behind the disclaimer that we Pinoys were doing it years before the South Americans."There are fulfilling moments in Ilustrado, quiet moments when the writing FX ebbs slightly, when the language shines. Particular highlights for me were Crispin's description of the doomed Philippine cavalry marching to war as well as the occasional wry observations of Miguel, "Cliches remind and reassure us that we're not alone, that others have trod this ground long ago."It's hard to appreciate these quiet moments though as they are constantly drowned out by the literary fireworks and explosions which Ilustrado revels in.
    • 4/5
      It's wonderfully written, astonishingly so at times, but only rarely did I connect with the story. Something left me cold. I think this is a novel that demands a revisit in the future.
    • 3/5
      A promising book that ultimately could not carry the weight of its excessive hype. Loved it at the beginning, but by the end I was bored and skimming just to finish it.
    • 3/5
      Illustrado tells the story of Crispin Salvador, a Filipino writer who dies mysteriously in New York, and a student named Miguel who considered Crispin his mentor. Miguel sets out to write Crispin's biography, and returns home to the Philippines to find out more about Crispin's life and understand his death. I had high hopes for this book, as it won the Man Asian Literary Prize, but I was quite disappointed. While I liked the writing, and was very interested in the history of the Philippines, which plays a major part in the story, I found the style too disjointed. On almost every page the novel jumps between Crispin's past; Miguel's childhood, recent past, and present; sections of Crispin's novels, essays, and autobiography; sections of newspaper articles; online comments on newspaper stories; emails between characters; and third person narration of Miguel's story. The constant jumping around in time and between different types of writing felt really gimmicky, and made it impossible for me to get involved in any of the story lines or with any of the characters. I felt like the writer made the structure of the book unnecessarily complicated, which ultimately got in the way of the story.
    • 4/5
      The first 50 or so pages of this were quite tough to get through. The novel's structure feels chaotic, as it's vascillates between the narrator's present-day experiences, passages from his mentor's novels, blogs, and even, at times, commentary from an apparently omniscient narrator who cues the reader that our narrator may not always be quite forthcoming. It's difficult to describe this kaleidoscopic, confusing, but somehow rewarding novel. I closed it feeling I hadn't quite "gotten" the entirety of the message, as it's fairly literary; this could be one to reread several times to glean the finer points of all the parallels, allusions, etc.Despite my initial frustration, I gave it four stars because it truly gives a flavor of Philippines culture and history. The narrator's search for answers seems to mirror the country's search for an identity. The smattering of passed-down jokes throughout the novel added an authentic, personal feel. I'm glad I didn't give up on it; it left me questioning and somewhat confused but it raised my awareness and that's what good books should do.
    • 4/5
      This is a uniquely written tale by Miguel Syjuco about a search for details into his mentor's life after a gruesome death that becomes a journey into his own life. Interspersed in the narrative are bits and pieces of his mentor's works (novels, essays, etc.) that highlight the things that are happening during his own quest. Full of information about the Philippines and the people who leave to make their lives elsewhere, I found this book insightful and seemingly personal for the author. As a reader, you are left wondering whether this is a biography or an imagining of the author (in fact, I had to Wikipedia it to make sure!) and it makes the story all the more intense. Well done, Mr. Syjuco.
    • 3/5
      I've been looking for a copy of this book ever since I heard of it and might have been seeing it around for a while, except that I've probably ignored it because of its cover. Anyway, to quote from the book: "After two weeks of conjecture, everyone was happy to forget the whole thing." This is exactly how I feel about the book.Oh how this book tried to be smart. I expected something new--and got it. Except that we tend to be so enthralled with the new, we forget that there is a story we should be telling. It has all been done before; in Danielewski's House of Leaves, Ong's Embarrassment of Riches. Where these books succeeded, Ilustrado failed. Sure, there were several pages' worth of insights (less than ten), and some stories were cute (that of Sadie's, the protagonist's charming and witty love interest), but that's it. I really felt shortchanged after reading the book. Oh, and I can NOT understand the misspelled words. Pnom (missing an H) Penh I can understand, but how he misspelled Juan Luna's "Spoliarium" (there should be an I after L!) especially since he used it as an important part in the storyline is strange. He says, "The Spolarium is an icon whose inscrutability most Filipinos do not care for or truly understand." Perhaps he was trying to make a point by misspelling it?That said, this isn't the "next big thing," in Philippine literature. I just wish this book could have given more. (Could have given something?) The prose is not bad, so I give this book 2.5 stars for effort.
    • 4/5
      A Filipino ilustrado embarks on a journey to discover the real cause of drowning of an author, in which we mainly weave between the Philippines and North America, Manila and New York. Ilustrado, if you wonder, is an interesting word with several meanings ranging from just being illustrated as with a book, through being wise, to denoting a man who made something of himself through being enlightened or learned. I found it neat that the story delivered in all the meanings of the word. The story is clever, enlightening and entertaining, and illustrates different aspects of Filipino life and emigration, even though it suffers somewhat from lack of focus. It took me an awfully long time to actually get into it with its bits and pieces of scattered narration that offers everything from snippets of Filipino history and politics, social criticism, vignettes from life in Manila, parts of other stories, and even Filipino jokes to boot. The structure was clever though, and not so difficult to follow once you got the hang of it.