Leche

Starred review from January 3, 2011
Linmark (Rolling the R's) cunningly follows Philippines-born Vince De Los Reyes through the trials and surprises awaiting him upon his return to his home country after spending 13 years in Hawaii. Filipino émigrés are often known as "balikbayans"—a distinction, Vince finds as soon as he reaches Philippines customs, that is fraught with political and cultural implications. Having won a contest, Vince has returned to free accommodations and fanfare, but he's not prepared for the heat, politics, and eccentric characters that accompany life in Manila. He immediately falls for a cab driver and, at a celebrity-studded party, befriends a famous activist nun, an acclaimed director, and the actress daughter of the country's president. Within the narrative of Vince's Manila sojourn and the teasing out of his dark past, Linmark intersperses tongue-in-cheek tourist tips ("staring is a favorite Filipino pastime") and revealing postcards Vince writes to friends back in Hawaii. As quirky and funny as its oddball characters, Linmark's latest is a unique, colorful portrait of cross-cultural experience and a view into the complexities of modern-day Philippines through the prism of an ex-pat's self-discovery and quasi-homecoming.

February 15, 2011

It's 1991. A gay Filipino American returns from his home in Hawaii to his native Manila, where he is jousted by absurd encounters, thwarted desires, cultural and political upheavals and painful memories.

Vince, introduced in Linmark's Rolling the R's (1997), hasn't been in the Philippines since 1978, when he and his siblings left for Honolulu—six years after their parents flew off to escape the Marcos regime. Sensory overload greets him. The heat is stifling, he's accosted by strangers attractive and not, a mysterious sleeping sickness is claiming men and a volcano is about to erupt. Having arrived with members of the Filipino balikbayan culture, who cart unwieldy boxes stuffed with food cans, shampoo bottles and designer jeans, he acclimates to a different social setting when his good looks draw the attention of showbiz types. A film and pop-culture obsessive, he becomes part of a world including President Corazon Aquino's movie-star daughter, known as the "Massacre Queen of Philippine Cinema." The title of the book, which translates not as milk, as in Spanish, but as a four-letter word, is as cheeky a novel as you'll encounter. Broken up by postcard correspondence, dream sequences, glossary entries and "Tourist Tips" ("Staring is a favorite Filipino pastime. Don't take it personally"), it's nothing if not breezy. Linmark isn't funny or cutting enough as a prose stylist, though, or innovative enough as a postmodernist to achieve the tour de force he's after. As lacerating as he tries to be, his satire is rarely more than mild, and his attempts at magic realism fall short. But the book's nonstop energy and nonstop attitude are addictive. And in Vince you won't find a less predictable tour guide.

A lively satiric return to early '90s Manila, seen from both sides of the Filipino American divide.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

February 15, 2011

Linmark (Rolling the R's) offers both a meditation on what it means to be Filipino and an exuberant, affectionate, irreverent love letter to the city of Manila from one of its own. The protagonist, 23-year-old Vince, who was born in Manila but immigrated to Hawaii early in life, returns after a long absence, seeking to understand his heritage. Linmark, who like Vince has lived in both Manila and Hawaii, develops a lively and engaging narrative voice as he skillfully juxtaposes these two very different cultures. He presents Manila in vivid, gritty, and often unflattering detail, showing us heat, humidity, sprawl, pollution, beggars, squatters, vendors, blackouts, stray dogs, and traffic, along with a sordid and harrowing colonial history. Vince is gay and single, and Linmark depicts his determined search for love sympathetically. This is a jaunty, kaleidoscopic novel that amusingly chronicles the many challenges Vince faces moving between cultures. VERDICT Recommended for readers of lighthearted literary fiction.--Patrick Sullivan, Manchester Community Coll., CT

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2011
Linmark (Rolling the Rs, 1997) delivers a harrowing tale of love, family, and cultural bewilderment, a sardonically funny and vibrant novel about one mans journey to his past. After winning a contest that grants him a VIP pass to the Philippine version of a Hollywood party, 23-year-old Filipino American Vince returns to his native country after living in Hawaii for 13 years. But from the moment he first encounters the dreadful traffic, oppressive heat, and sheer chaos that make up life in Manila, Vince isnt sure hes ready to be back. He quickly falls for Dante, a cab driver with a wife and three kids, and encounters an activist-actress nun, a celebrated filmmaker, and the countrys First Daughter. Comprised of memories, irreverent tourist tips (Three out of five Filipinos fall inand out oflove every day), scripts, picture postcards, bits of Philippine history, and dreams, Linmarks novel reads like a bittersweet love letter to a vast and perplexing nation. This is a story of heritage, sexuality, and self-discovery that is as riveting as its locale is complex.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)

February 15, 2011

It's 1991. A gay Filipino American returns from his home in Hawaii to his native Manila, where he is jousted by absurd encounters, thwarted desires, cultural and political upheavals and painful memories.

Vince, introduced in Linmark's Rolling the R's (1997), hasn't been in the Philippines since 1978, when he and his siblings left for Honolulu--six years after their parents flew off to escape the Marcos regime. Sensory overload greets him. The heat is stifling, he's accosted by strangers attractive and not, a mysterious sleeping sickness is claiming men and a volcano is about to erupt. Having arrived with members of the Filipino balikbayan culture, who cart unwieldy boxes stuffed with food cans, shampoo bottles and designer jeans, he acclimates to a different social setting when his good looks draw the attention of showbiz types. A film and pop-culture obsessive, he becomes part of a world including President Corazon Aquino's movie-star daughter, known as the "Massacre Queen of Philippine Cinema." The title of the book, which translates not as milk, as in Spanish, but as a four-letter word, is as cheeky a novel as you'll encounter. Broken up by postcard correspondence, dream sequences, glossary entries and "Tourist Tips" ("Staring is a favorite Filipino pastime. Don't take it personally"), it's nothing if not breezy. Linmark isn't funny or cutting enough as a prose stylist, though, or innovative enough as a postmodernist to achieve the tour de force he's after. As lacerating as he tries to be, his satire is rarely more than mild, and his attempts at magic realism fall short. But the book's nonstop energy and nonstop attitude are addictive. And in Vince you won't find a less predictable tour guide.

A lively satiric return to early '90s Manila, seen from both sides of the Filipino American divide.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)