Author: Nick Joaquin
Series: None
Publisher: Bookmark
Release Date: 1991
This novel by Joaquin is a literary assessment of the influence of the past to the time encompassing events in the Philippines after World War II, an examination of an assortment of legacy and heritage and the questions of how can an individual exercise free will and how to deal with the "shock" after experiencing "epiphanic recognition".
After glossing through hundreds of glowing four-to-five star ratings and insightful theme analyses of
The Woman With Two Navels, you may be led to believe that I too will conduct this review in an appropriate, almost distant manner, praising Joaquin for such a glorious masterpiece.
You have been sorely mistaken.
There will be no detached observations. There will be no compulsory censoring. I will rant. I will spoil. It will be messy. If you take exception to this, then find another reviewer, because I cannot politely contain the fury of my emotions or thoughts this book has provoked. Classic or not, nothing can change my opinion that
The Woman Who Had Two Navels, while not a waste of my time, was one of the worst novellas I ever had to sit through.
The two-naveled woman in question is Connie Escobar, a spoiled, selfish, and delusional Filipina who travels to Hong Kong in search of a treatment for her condition from a horse doctor. Yes, a horse doctor. For a condition which may not actually exist since she refuses to show her deformity to anyone who asks. Note that there is a moment when Connie relents much later in the book, but the author thought it would be more meaningful or some shit to fade-to-black at the last possible moment, since it shouldn't fucking matter whether she actually has two navels or not, and the title is supposed to double as a fucking metaphor. Let the dumb bich be whimsical, I guess.
Now I digress. Her visit sparks a chain reaction, one that effects everyone from her family to a group of childhood friends that she's never met. Each of their lives will never be the same, and they'll be forced to face the actions of the past, present, and future, regardless of whether these actions were, are, or will be theirs to make.
If you beget a monster of a child it could prove you were rather monstrous yourself.
But the story truly begins with Concha Vidal, Connie's flighty mother who's experienced much heartbreak and disillusion throughout each era she experiences. In one of them, she encounters Macho, a younger man who shares her thrill-seeking ways and unexpectedly becomes someone she grows to love. Unfortunately, she's married and he's, well, young. Although her latest husband is one of necessity and they've come to an understanding, Macho and Concha's relationship is frowned upon by society and is the subject of much ridicule among their peers. Concha, not wanting to destroy the boy's life, leaves the country, thus ending their dalliances and breaking his heart. When she returns, she asks him to marry her daughter Connie, in order to obtain the happiness of the two people she cares about most in the world.
"If your hands were not clean, your good actions had grimmer and more relentless consequences than your sins.''
Unbeknownst to anyone, Connie has been corrupted by her mother's past and this very decision, which leads the little girl on the path to insanity, for lack of a better word. In one method of coping with this, she makes friends with the hideous, inanimate idol Biliken. Biliken becomes her anchor, a way of shielding her from the harsh realities lurking beyond her safe little bubble.
After Connie grows up and experiences a few blissful months of marriage with Macho, she finds a stack of letters in the back of his closet. Although they're old, written before she was even born, they contain every excruciating detail of her husband and her mother's past relationship, something they'd kept secret for a very good reason. Upset by this shocking revelation, she runs away to Hong Kong while struggling to gain the courage to face her problems head-on.
The unfortunate victims of the Vidal family's shenanigans are a tight-knit circle of friends who grew up away from their heritage and the country it came from. There's Rita, the likeable, sympathetic leader of the group who pulls all the stops to keep them together; Paco, a poor musician who blames Connie for his unhealthy obsession with her when really, he's just a cheating, victim-blaming scumbag and unforgivable aspiring rapist; Mary, the unfortunate wife to said-scumbag who doesn't grab her kids and leave Paco's ass the moment he tells her of his escapades in the Philippines; and Pepe, a... blank sheet that really only serves to ask Connie questions and inadvertently draw her closer to mess up their lives even further. Following behind is his father Doctor Monson, a demented old man who seeks to go back to the good ol' days by becoming addicted to drugs, and his brother Father Tony, a priest who begins to question if he's cut out for his line of work.
Together, they will unrealistically think and speak in strange riddles and analogies, rife with hidden meanings, as they will, without reason, help this one suicidal stranger—a manic pixie girl who will effectively ruin the lives of each and every one of them to obtain her happy ending without so much as a proper apology. Forget if it might be temporary, necessary, or done unintentionally. That's fucked up.
"But don't you understand, Father? I want to be good. I'm trying to stay good. Does one go mad for trying to do that? Is it that hard?"
"It's very hard indeed. But you, Connie, have taken the easiest way out. You are not trying, you have given up... When you convinced yourself you had two navels, you retreated, not from evil, but only from the struggle against evil. People can't be good unless they know they're free to be bad if they wanted to."
If this whole thing wasn't a mess already, Connie's narratives get confusing as hell towards the end. The hallucinations she experiences are supposed to show her increasingly unstable mental state and how she slowly overcomes her issues, but most of the time I had no clue what was going on or what was really happening. Only until after I had gone through these scenes over and over again
for weeks did I finally get that her dreams were, in fact, dreams.
On a matter of personal taste, I have a few more complaints. The last fifty pages were utter crap. Everyone had a chance to be redeemed in my eyes, but any sliver of hope—and I mean for
every single character—was kicked to the curb after I crossed that final lap. I found myself cheering when Concha was killed (tbh there was a chapter or two where I thought she was great but damn, girl) yet did Macho have to die too? They were apart of the past and so needed to be left behind, but I wanted Macho and Connie to ride off into the sunset, especially after Macho confesses that he had grown to love his little wife and forgotten all about her mother, which he'd only realized until that moment. And what the fuck was up with Connie and Doctor Monson having some dipshit, meaningful conversation in his final moments? It's past meets future, I know that too! Yet I felt like the honor of his last words shouldn't have been randomly bestowed on our pathetic excuse for a protagonist.
But despite its glaring faults, I couldn't put it down. Like a bystander drawn to the sight of a trainwreck, I couldn't tear my eyes until I reached the last page. I felt a burning hatred for every single character and every one of their stupid actions but still, I couldn't, which leaves me to my next point.
I could label this as a godawful book and leave it at that. But oh no. My feelings, much like this book, are much more complex. (See! I can do this too, Father Tony. You self-righteous piece of shit.) As a work of commentary regarding the Philippine identity and society, it does a brilliant job. Even if I may disagree with the idea that being detached from your culture makes you a broken person, especially from someone who has not experienced this first-hand, it definitely has its effects and generational trauma is certainly a thing. I admit, I will give credit where credit is due. As an enjoyable work of fiction... no. Just no. Joaquin focuses too much on getting a point across than writing a story. Which would fine, since he probably meant for it to be that way, but I wish he could have managed to have balanced both of these elements, so that the reader could be satisfied in the message and the ultimate fate of the cast.
Perhaps their lives needed to be changed. Perhaps Connie needed to go to a veterinarian instead of the psychiatrist she so obviously needs. Perhaps Connie needed to take that idiotic confrontation with Doctor Monson on his deathbed. Perhaps Connie needed to take that *coughs*
unconventional step of courage. Perhaps Mary needed for her husband to be stolen away and left with a gaggle of kids to "find herself" *gags* Perhaps Paco shouldn't have gotten his comeuppance. Perhaps Macho needed to shoot Concha and himself in the fucking head instead of Connie starting over with him and living happily ever after. But this does not make me hate these choices any less, and this doesn't make any of these characters less of a dumbass for doing what needed to be done. I end this review with one big fat middle finger to all of them.
P.S. In high school, I wrote an alternate ending where Connie and Paco panic as they are held up at the border by the police and are subsequently arrested. I wish I kept it.
Author: Megan Shepard
