Always Hiding

Growing up in Manila's materialistic, status-conscious upper class under the Marcos regime, caught between her warring parents, narrator Viola Decanay feels morally rudderless, ashamed of her flat, non-European nose and disdainful of her social inferiors. Despite various connections between Viola's life and the fall of the Marcos administration, and obvious parallels between the tensions that destroy her family and the tensions that divided the Philippines, debut author Romero doesn't fully exploit her plot's potential resonances. The Marcoses' overthrow appears only briefly, as backdrop to Viola's shallow self-dramatizations. What's more, Viola never seems to grow up. When her father is charged with complicity with the corrupt Marcos regime, he sends Viola to her mother, who has fled her husband's indiscretions and made a life for herself in America as an undocumented maid. Blind to her mother's new resourcefulness and independence, Viola finds her life despicable and embarrassing; when Viola's example persuades her mother to rudely reject the ""insulting"" kindness of an employer, Romero clearly treats this petty vanity as a triumph. Smoothly but predictably written, with blatant symbolism, this first novel does little to reveal the Filipino-American experience or dignify its unsympathetic heroine. (Apr.)