Book Review | Baking the Novel and Raising up the Dead

Ang Maghuhurno by Cymbeline R.Villamin (Novel in Filipino)
Published by 8Letters Bookstore and Publishing
Paperback / 5”x7”/ 256 pages/ Color Matte Cover/ Perfect Binding / P520 at Shopee, 8Letters

Ang Maghuhurno tells the affair of a sexagenarian who is 4th generation descendant of the obscure but skilled presidential baker in Kawit in the 1890s. The romance is whisked into a blend of history, politics, feminist theology, culture and erotica. Cymbeline Villamin chooses to write the story in Filipino because it is her “heart language— mellifluous, sensual and passionate like a song in the middle of the night.”

Unfolding the narrative from the viewpoint of a woman past 60 y.o. is meant to privilege women in the most exciting autumn season of their lives when leaves are red and gold, when they remain fresh and continue to bear fruits of wisdom, just before winter comes when everything would be frozen, deathlike.

The novel starts not in the beginning but right in the middle where the action sizzles, in the state-of-the art fitness gym in Nuvali, at break of dawn when the glass walls afford a panoramic view of the metropolis that would be slowly bathed in sunlight, as Liz Virata, the baker-protagonist, negotiates the treadmill with Lancelot Yatco, trainer and future lover beside her. They are at the threshold of the prelude to sweet disaster that would coincide with the outbreak of the pandemic Covid-19.

After holding her readers captive in the first chapter, Villamin proceeds to employ flashback and stream-of-consciousness, poetry and the metaphorical bibingka, that was scholarly contextualized by Joi Barrios as traditional yonic symbol in Filipino fiction, in her introduction for the novel.

The bibingka, listed as 13th most delicious cake in the world by Taste Atlas in July 2022, is used to insinuate treason in the 1890s. It is served in the merienda cena after the first president of the republic, Emilio Aguinaldo, proclaimed Philippine independence on 12 June 1898 in Kawit, Cavite. It brings together the lovers into 2 a baking tryst that would forge their intimacy. The husband’s rejection of the rice cake his wife bakes indicates their dysfunctional marriage. On the other hand, it does not take a genius to discern what is going on with Lance’s enthusiasm to help Liz in firing the terra cotta ovens, heating round-cut banana leaf over fire to make pliant for pouring of the batter, mixing of ingredients as his free hand explores her breast, kissing her on the lips and recording the scene on his mobile phone camera to replay over and over. When Lance feels nauseous from repetitive serving of rice cake by his fiancée, Nathanie, we become certain as to who really owns his heart.

Significant is Villamin’s handling of eroticism in the story. She introduces sexual tension and sustains it. It seems the lovers lose interest to “raise up the dead” (make love) when their affair is exposed. But the pining goes on despite outward show of stoicism and moving on. To comply with the “happy ending” convention of the romance genre, the writer obliges somewhat.

The truth is, this novel does not give us a catharsis at all. We see the protagonists as zombies, living dead. One side of them cries out for freedom to fall in love passionately, while the other side whispers “Never let me go” within the safe context of socially and morally acceptable institution of marriage. The writer does not dare to break the rules for her protagonists, at least for now.

Villamin says she will come up with an English version for the international market, The Baker of Silang, which she promises to be more daring and defiant, where Lancelot Yatco breaks free to work out the miracle of “raising up the dead” with the quintessential alchemist of rice cake and desire.