Gina Apostol

Moving, sexy, and archly funny, Gina Apostol’s Philippine National Book Award-winning Bibliolepsy is a love letter to the written word and a brilliantly unorthodox look at the rebellion that brought down a dictatorship Gina Apostol’s debut novel, available for the first time in the US, tells of a young woman caught between a lifelong desire to escape into books and a real-world revolution. It is the mid-eighties, two decades into the kleptocratic, brutal rule of Ferdinand Marcos. The Philippine economy is in deep recession, and civil unrest is growing by the day. But Primi Peregrino has her own priorities: tracking down books and pursuing romantic connections with their authors. For Primi, the nascent revolution means that writers are gathering more often, and with greater urgency, so that every poetry reading she attends presents a veritable “Justice League” of authors for her to choose among. As the Marcos dictatorship stands poised to topple, Primi remains true to her fantasy: that she, “a vagabond from history, a runaway from time,” can be saved by sex, love, and books.

Bibliolepsy

maybe a reference to a new wave song, Birds Fly?

Nate

I do not have a voice that is part whisper, part preparation for a scream.

It took me days to get over the idea that someone's attitude about a story might be equal to my own attachment-in the man's case, an aposiopetic enchantment. For several days, I walked the university with a different air, suspecting people of passion.

But very curiously, and I note this fact carefully, there was nothing remotely erotic that I could feel for that man. Maybe it was because, in his effort to keep from stuttering, his saliva sometimes spilled over and dripped delicately down the side of his face, like filthy rain. He was a mess.

I understood Dostoyevski, who may have fallen in love merely at the sight of a hand moving skillfully upon bland keys.

Bibliolepsy quotes

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