cover image Dream Eden

Dream Eden

Linda Ty-Casper. University of Washington Press, $22.95 (480pp) ISBN 978-0-295-97586-3

A portrait of the Philippines since the 1986 elections that pitted Ferdinand Marcos against Corazon Aquino, Ty-Casper's (Ten Thousand Seeds) ambitious but overburdened novel details historical events at the expense of narrative energy. As he ventures between his childhood home of Gulod, a barrio on the fringes of Manila where ""all sorts of people seem to have been washed ashore,"" and his office in Manila, attorney Benhur Vitaliano attempts to gain redemption for his past and to provide support for his extended family. While Benhur strives to maintain his integrity in the turbulent and corrupt political climate, his childhood friend, Osong Moscoso, reaps the benefits of corruption, including a sizable income. Benhur is willing to give everything for the revolution, even his life, while Osong exploits all events to further his political career. Through them and an abundance of other characters, Ty-Casper charts the movements of recent Philippine history, returning to the theme of a lost paradise as she moves from the election of 1986 through Aquino's ""people power"" revolution and the bloodless coup of 1989. She attempts to juxtapose the private world and the public, historical world in order to give us the weight of tragedy. But the public world crushes her narrative, much of which reads like newswire reports, and her characters too often remain only names embedded in cold dispatches. (June)