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zaisgraph's review against another edition
reflective
fast-paced
2.0
I felt like he wanted to say more because this book read like it was censored by a fascist lol
Really... this is just a series of teasers/almost there stories in the backdrop of the Marcos Regime... I mean you read one of those, you sorta read em all and Riverrun is not above the fold. Sad.
Really... this is just a series of teasers/almost there stories in the backdrop of the Marcos Regime... I mean you read one of those, you sorta read em all and Riverrun is not above the fold. Sad.
plufifi's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
jujujuris's review
3.0
This was a unique read, and I’m not sure if I felt the pacing was off because of the way it’s structured in vignettes or if I could even say that since I’ve never read anything structured like this before. I wish we could’ve spent as much time in adolescence as we did in childhood.
The restraint coupled with a sense of familiarity grounded on the (I assume) deliberately hazy timestamps of its setting like the presence of colonizers and markers of the dictatorship is unlike anything I’ve encountered.
Joey Ayala’s Panganay ng Umaga (1991)
The restraint coupled with a sense of familiarity grounded on the (I assume) deliberately hazy timestamps of its setting like the presence of colonizers and markers of the dictatorship is unlike anything I’ve encountered.
Joey Ayala’s Panganay ng Umaga (1991)
kbwms_1's review against another edition
5.0
Well done. Pacing felt rushed towards the end, but the writing style had a perfect mix of being straight to the point, descriptive, flowery and concise. Loved it so much! I love books formatted and told like this. I wished that I could’ve read more of his experience of the Martial law.
pageglue's review against another edition
Good lord I’m bored! The one interesting thing about this fictional memoir is how unknown our protagonist is. The story tells us everything around him - his family, his town, some major events around him - but not much directly about him. So the idea of ‘these things are what made me me’ is interesting, but the process of sitting and reading about them is super boring.
losh's review against another edition
5.0
I don’t think I have been this enchanted by words in a while. Remoto’s prose is delicious, his images and diction so vivid, drawing you in at all the right moments. Riverrun is not by any means a “usual” novel, there is no linear plot. It is laced with poems, recipes, manuals, all of which work in its favor. This felt like a meditation on Remoto’s life, maybe fictionalized, maybe not, who knows? It reads as a compilation of memories - that of a young gay man growing up in the Philippines, full of wit, longing for a better government, and longing for love that never seems to leave his lips.
filaughn's review against another edition
3.5
This short novel was well-written and consisted of a series of vignettes. Several of the vignettes could have stood on their own as short stories, though together you can see the coming-of-age arc clearly. I thought the description was beautiful, especially in Part 1 (covering childhood). Part 2 (adolescence & young adulthood) seemed rushed or incomplete, and I would have appreciated more on this time period and getting to know the friends and others in Danny's life during this time. The time and place came through very clearly in the narrative, vivid without being didactic about the Philippines in the 70's.