Forgiving Imelda Marcos

Go’s timid debut, told through the eyes of the personal driver of former Philippine president Maria Corazon Aquino, explores the limits of forgiveness. Lito Macaraeg, near the end of his life, writes a series of letters to his estranged journalist son, José, offering to share a scoop and hoping for some reconciliation. The letters are centered on a trip Lito takes from Manila to Baguio with Aquino in 1992, shortly after her retirement from office, to meet Imelda Marcos, wife of the dictator Aquino had succeeded after her husband’s killing in 1983. Interwoven are stories of Lito’s childhood growing up with an often absent father who takes Lito to join a communist village, where he studies under the mysterious leader Ka Noel, as well as Lito’s meditations on family, philosophy, and Filipino politics. The novel progresses at a steady pace, unraveling the mystery behind Aquino’s motive to meet Marcos, initially unknown to Lito, and its thematic links to Lito’s father’s quest to avenge his mother’s death. Though Go evokes the country’s messy recent history, the promising premise is bogged down by overly didactic narration and strained prose—“Humor, I guess, is a kind of laxative—prying loose the most constipated of people,” Lito muses. Go shows potential, but this one misses the mark. (June)