Word: ong
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...second novel, Ong comes home. The Disinherited is a morality tale set in Manila in 2000, moving throughout Philippine society, from ?lite private sports clubs to pestilential slums. Roger Caracera is the youngest son of a sugar magnate, who has come of age in California and now lives in New York City, where he teaches writing at Columbia University. The novel begins as he returns to the Philippines to bury his estranged father: in a scene straight out of a Victorian potboiler, the will is read in the posh attorney's offices, and Caracera learns that his father has bequeathed...
...Ong, as one might expect of an accomplished playwright, has a pitch-perfect ear for dialogue and a gift for dramatic scene setting. Some of his satirical barbs carry unforgettable sting, such as an episode in which Caracera tries to wrest Blueboy, the child whore, from the clutches of an American pederast who is spoon-feeding him ice cream at a sidewalk restaurant. Caracera's discomfort in the situation is presented exquisitely, leading him to ask the same questions about his own motives as have been nagging the reader...
...book's main strength is Ong's ability to create allegories that embody emotional truths in a suspenseful narrative. Caracera's attempt to give away his fortune is a straightforward symbol of America's historical efforts to do good?and demand love?throughout the world. Yet the reader believes in him as a complex human being, so the point is conveyed without preaching...
...Blueboy, who at once dazzles his patrons and suffers humiliation at their hands, is clearly a symbol of the Philippines, simultaneously naive and calculating, seductive and repellent; but here Ong veers into the outer reaches of bad taste. The boy's first scene, at a sex club in a Manila slum, is disgusting in the extreme, even as it strains credulity...
...Ong's world is both flamboyant and bizarre, as his native country can often seem, but there are several off-kilter moments, strange observational lapses that flaw the fictional universe. The novel's first paragraph sets the scene for Caracera's father's funeral: "It was not a good day for a funeral procession. Temperature: ninety-two at one p.m. and expected to rise to a hundred and ten before day's end." This steep a rise in the course of an afternoon is all but impossible, as anyone with a passing familiarity with the region's weather knows; anyway...