Marivi Soliven enjoys raw, funny and fascinating stories

Last week I attended an event hosted by National Book Store at the Raffles Hotel Writers Bar where I met the author of The Mango Bride, Marivi Soliven. I am currently reading her book and enjoying all the characters she created and am already feeling sad that, all too soon, I will be done with the book.  

While having her autograph my book I asked Marivi if she would share her favorite books with us. I appreciate that she took time during her hectic schedule in Manila to put this list together.

Here are Marivi’s top 10 books (in no particular order).

1. Bel Canto by Anne Patchett. “Because it was by turns funny, tragic and suspenseful. Because Patchett says she knew nothing about the opera before writing the novel. The fact that Bel Canto reads as though it was written by one of opera’s most literate cognoscenti shows how thoroughly she researched her novel.”

 2. Monstress by Lysley Tenorio. “Because I am, as my dear friend Gil M. likes to say, babaeng bakla, and being so, found Tenorio’s stories to be heartbreakingly beautiful.”

 3. Anything by M.F.K. Fisher. “Because she was a pioneer in food and travel writing and her descriptions of food are voluptuously three dimensional.”

 4. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. “Young love, yearning, passion, age, aging love — Garcia Marquez offers the whole package here.”

5. The Dew Breaker by Edwidge Danticat. “Because the resemblance of Haiti under Papa Doc to Manila under martial law is hair-raising.”

 6. Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri. “Because reading Lahiri helped me figure out how to write dialogue so that the poor monolingual English reader understood that conversations were being conducted in more than one language, in several different registers even of English.”

7. That Thing Around Your Neck by Chimamande Adichie Ngore. “Because her short stories are raw, funny, fascinating.”

 8. Anecdotes of Destiny by Isak Dinesen. “Because her plots are like those Chinese carved balls where you peer through the latticework of the outermost layer to see the equally intricate carvings in the inner sphere.”

 9. House of Mirth by Edith Wharton. “For her masterful depiction of the social classes of that era.”

10. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. â€œFor the sheer wonder of language used in unexpected ways by this English as a second language author.”

* * *

Here’s a link to the blog post Marivi wrote after her second hectic week in Manila: http://marivisoliven.com/category/blog/

* * *

“The Reading Club” recommends Write Here Write Now by AA Patawaran. For all of us wannabe writers he offers “profound and practical tips.” Available at National Bookstore and Powerbooks.