“I still see myself in stilllifes, in print, my home is yet to be automated with ease even in my imagination. "

I'll start by saying this book is LONG. Even as an audiobook which I tend to zoom through, it was an endeavor. However, La Tercera is interesting. Historically interesting, linguistically interesting, and when I could follow the story, it has an interesting plot. I would describe La Tercera as a giant knot of brilliantly selected words. It is only after finishing the book and noting my favorite quotes that the themes and big picture of it all appear. It just takes a lot of diligence to follow along. I saw a blurb about this book call it "Labyrinthine" and that hits the nail on the head.

The author is undeniably talented and I can't imagine the hours spent researching and crafting the narrative. She incorporates 4 different languages and well-designed and described characters. There are many beautifully written passages and phrases of wordplay. I would love to read more of her work. This book is recommended for fans of historical fiction, readers who don't know much about the history of the Philippines or love learning more, and literature appreciators who won't get angry at long sentences.

3.5 stars

Thank you to Netgalley and the publishing team for this audio version of the book.

Other favorite quotes:
"But really Spanish was for the outside things, the things you could make, Waray’s kept their words for the inside, the things that made you up. I grew up with my mom’s way with words, the way she spoke Tagalog with indifference, and English with guesswork. For her, English was only this wartime novelty like chewing gum or tennis shoes, some foreign implement of insufficient relevance. Her Tagalog was tokenism, misrecognitions from her Waray, it’s her Waray that was the mineral hoard, a cave of treasure that if I were smart, I’d scrutinize carefully…..”

“Darkness seems to speak when you cannot see because your mind must imagine ”

“What the monsoon leaves America Occupies.”

Thank you NetGaley for providing a free advanced audio-copy in exchange for an honest review.

La Tercera is really two books, united by a bloodline. On the one side we have Rosario's story, a Filipino-American writer, remembering her youth growing up in the Philippines (after a brief childhood in California). Thrust into a new land with different textures, tastes, smells and many different languages, Rosario struggles initially to adapt and make friends. Meanwhile her mother, Adina "an Guapa" (Adina the beautiful), an artist, a clueless yet also cunning entrepreneur, both ignores her children for long stretches of time and struggles to offer them everything they want or need. Adina was actually my favorite character. She is a survivor of ignorant medical practices and spousal abuse, but she is also a beloved daughter, a creative force, a doting mother who will give her children the gift of freedom even at the risk of her heart ache. We also become familial with Rosario's friends from school and several other family members, but for me the mother-daughter duo was the strongest part to the book. Rosario's trip down memory lane is triggered, as we find out early in the novel, by her mother's passing.

In parallel, we have the story of Adina's ancestors, the brothers Hotte, told in diaries that Rosario finds as a child and struggles to translate, jumping from language to language to language. Except, there is one more perspective to the story, one that only becomes obvious toward the end.

The novel, like the inhabitants of the Philippines is polyglot and jumps from language to language (primarily English, Spanish, Tagalog, Warai). This will surely be a novel that will fascinate linguists, and some of the beauty and exasperation of the act of translation was deftly captured in the novel. Primarily, La Tercera is a book about language and finding meaning. One of my favorite paragraphs in the book captures this exasperation as Rosario first moves to the Phillippinnes as a child:
<i> "When we returned to the Philippines I was conscious of not knowing my mother’s tongue, though I was her daughter. I thought my ignorance was unjust. I wondered why I didn’t know the words in Warai when they were supposed to be my own. It seems like for some reason, on the tarmac I had dropped them, or someone had taken them from me. My ignorance did not make me feel guilty. It made me mad. I thought you were supposed to come into knowledge once you reached your mother’s country, that everything would click into place like my mom’s heels doing the tango, and when I grew up I would know how to dance that tango exactly like my mom. Athena came from Zeus’ brain, I sprouted from my mother’s words. That was the rule. I believed in these things. That my origins were a gift from my mother and all I had to do was receive them." </i>

However, this jumping around was part of the reason why I ultimately did not enjoy this book as much as I would have liked. The code switching became a bit excessive toward the second half. But the biggest problem was the repetition. I can tell it was done on purpose, I can glimpse a meaning for the reason why most things were always repeated in three, but I was also EXASPERATED. If I hear another "Adino, sweet Adino" "Gracia Plena"....I had moments when, hearing the exact same phrasing for probably the 100th time, I curled my toes and fingers in frustration. And the audiobook narrator had a very odd cadence which made some of the experience worse for me. I loved the first part of the book, the story of Rosario's childhood--that one was 4.5 stars for me. I didn't enjoy the diary narrative, and I believe the author's decision to incorporate a ghost perspective actually damaged the novel. It decreased clarity and emotional investment on my part (I give that part 2 stars). And the book lost me twice at the exact same mark: 60%, before I was able to finish it.

If you decide to give this one a go, be prepared for very interesting characters, but also repetitive language that may not be easy to digest, as well as a complicated diary narrative. An interesting experience, but perhaps not very accessible to a lay audience, even a polyglot one, unless you happen to be intimate with the land of the Philippines.

1.5 stars.

This is another book that I wasn’t sure if I wanted to finish early on and debated this for the entirety that I read it. I finally ended up DNFing at 20%. It’s very, very long, and the writing style is meandering, which makes it difficult to latch onto much of the story. I’m still not sure what this book was really supposed to be about without the synopsis.

There are also a lot of characters introduced, and even if they are fleetingly in the book, it made it difficult to keep track, especially in audiobook format. It didn’t help that there was also a lot of telling versus showing.

I also didn’t care for the narrator. I found some of the voices she used really fake and irritating, which pulled me out of the book.

There is also a lot of Tagalog and Waray, which was distracting in the way it was written. Specifically, not everything was always translated or obvious to its meaning, which became a source of frustration. I felt like the usage could have been a lot more nuanced, but you’re pummeled with it. I’ve read plenty of books that use other languages, and none of them have been this in-your-face.

It was disappointing for me to DNF because I wanted to support an Asian/POC author, but I also want to maintain my integrity. Perhaps I’m just not the right audience for it.

This is beautifully narrated. I like the way the story switches form language to language. With the narration it is musical.