Eric Gamalinda

The Descartes Highlands is a very ambitious book structurally. The narrative weaves back and forth among three men and across a generation in time. The three are related: one has fathered the other two in the Philippines and put them out for adoption as infants to Western families. The plot, or perhaps “theme” would be more accurate, is the characters’ discovery that the others exist and their ultimately unsuccessful efforts to establish contact. There’s a lot of heavy-handed parallelism among the characters – the father spends time in a real prison, the boys have created their own – and ruminations on what it means to be orphaned or adopted. It’s a bit of work to keep the characters differentiated as the narration shifts from chapter to chapter. In the end, I didn’t find them likeable or interesting enough to make the effort. I lost interest in whether they found themselves or each other.… (altro)