Ilustrado: A Novel

by Miguel Syjuco

Book Overview

WINNER OF THE 2008 MAN ASIAN LITERARY PRIZEA NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR It begins with a body. On a clear day in winter, the battered corpse of Crispin Salvador is pulled from... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 031257293X
• ISBN13: 9780312572938
• Release Date: May 2011
• Publisher: Picador
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.7" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

Hard to Follow

I so wanted to like this, I really did. It's plot sounded incredibly intriguing and the brush of Filippino history was effortless, but I was 100 pages in and had no idea what was happening. Syjuco uses multiple writing styles, tenses, and threads to connect the overall plot, but the problem is all the threads are so abrupt it never really connects. One minute the narrator is reminiscing about his life, the next you're reading the murder victims journal, and the next you're reading a newspaper article. And there is absolutely no transition or rhyme or reason to the jump. It's not a new chapter. It's not a transition. It's just so extremely abrupt and jarring that I kept getting taken out of the plot.

Nice

Nice