On Getting Better and Smaller and Smaller Circles

Straight to the point...

Getting Better did fulfill the genre expectations of chick lit - you have a damsel stressed out with the demands of today's modern, fast-paced world, juggling a rather hip career at an ad agency, living independently on a apartment, having girlfriends with liberated, quirky personalities and a conservative mother, worrying about weight gain, when will one ever get 'shagged' again, etc. In the middle of all the raucous, the photocopy machine gets busted, she comes into terms with getting married to the self-absorbed AE. The plot was somehow unrealistic especially the 'underwear-buking' part but the character's dialogues, personalities and their rather 'mababaw' worries are reflective of today's middle class yuppies. However the conflict was not something uniquely Filipino.

Smaller and Smaller Circles on the other hand could be thought of more as a social commentary. It does fall under the 'whodunit' crime fiction genre but there were too many "give-aways", there's not much left for the reader (or at least me) to speculate or imagine. Come Chpater 20, you already know who the killer is and you read on not because you have this adrenaline rush , the excitement, the stimulation to find out what's going to happen next, but because somehow you were hoping in the end that there would be some twist in story - the most important element that gives detective crime fiction that yun, yon! The yon yun!, the twisted ending makes you want to go back to the other few chapters.. and you say to yourself : why the hell didn't I see that coming!?! The story however, failed to satisfy my expectation for that umpf! in the end.

Getting Better it did not make me think more about the real worries of Pinays: discrimination in the work place, domestic violence, the Maria Clara stereotype that women are struggling hard with, etc.

The 2nd Pinoy crime fiction written in English to date, Smaller and Smaller Circles is reflective of our country's otherwise slow justice system, which is the 'punot-dulo' of the antagonist's conflict. Alex Carlos wouldn't be cutting off kid's genitals and remove their faces if years ago, Mr. Gorospe had been arrested. Like the plight of the characters in Rosca's Generations, Alex and his parents knew (although not written) that nothing will happen, that they will not get the justice they seek. Also, the story showed how crimes were usuallu solved here: you have a journalist/documentor who has the connections and the means to investigate the case, hands out the video tapped evidence to the police. The police in turn would do their thing, with the media/journalist in tow..