Love and Other Rituals: Stories
US edition
"Tony couldn’t find any term to describe the city of his youth. Fallen, yes, but not quite so: the slums growing from its cracks could be taken as a crude sign of the city’s resurgence. As for the narrowing streets, he felt it was a sign that things were returning to normal, that houses could rise as quickly as houses had crumbled down. He had grown up thinking that his home town, nestled among pine trees and rolling hills, would last forever."
Lost in and out of their homeland, Monica Macansantos’s characters contemplate love while navigating the naivety of childhood, the complications of young adulthood and the politics of marriage. Macansantos is a powerful and emotive new voice of the Filipino diaspora, bringing us the vivid, raw and quintessentially human collection that is Love and Other Rituals. This rich collection depicts death with vitality, absence with longing, and tension with ease.
Praise
"I loved these beautiful stories by Monica Macansantos, who writes with such beauty and delicacy about desire, home, longing, loneliness, duty, and hope—that is, what it means to be human. Every story is terrific, different, surprising. I can’t wait to see what she does next."
—Elizabeth McCracken, winner of the 2015 Story Prize and author of The Hero of This Book, The Souvenir Museum and Bowlaway
"It's not their 'exotic' locations that make Monica Macansantos' stories feel fresh and new; it’s the emotional territory she covers. The compromised longing of a teacher for the young married father who's become his lover. The contemplation, on the part of two expat Filipinas in Austin, Texas, of the varieties of loneliness available to them in America. The sudden vision of a teenage girl who's chosen a rough boy as her protector of the potential emptiness of her future. Described this way, these stories sound bleak. They're not. They're stories suffused with tenderness and a keen attention to the wild aberrations of the heart."
—Anthony Giardina, author of Norumbega Park, White Guys and Recent History
“In Monica Macansantos’s exquisitely rendered stories about the Filipino experience, both in the old country and abroad, homeland is not a place, but a pang. Wisely and compassionately observed, her dislocated characters long for home with the same restrained ardor they yearn for connection – one that, because Macansantos knows too well how an upset heart turns, remains always within sight, and yet heartbreakingly elusive. Her splendid writing is stirring.”
—Antonio Ruiz-Camacho, author of Barefoot Dogs: Stories
"Monica Macansantos' writing is immersive to the point of creating its own virtual reality. Set in the Philippines, the U.S., and New Zealand, these are tender and well-crafted stories of heartache and yearning unmet. Macansantos's Love and Other Rituals deftly moves us beyond what some might consider foreign or exotic and instead brings us closer to understanding our own tiny corners of the world."
—Oscar Cásares, author of Where We Come From
"Monica Macansantos draws you into the worlds of her characters and slowly reveals their secrets. I read with curiosity and quickness, intent upon discovery, but she isn’t going to give it all away and you wouldn’t want her to. Macansantos is a promising young writer who is wise beyond her years."
—Mary Miller, author of Biloxi, The Last Days of California and Always Happy Hour
“What does it mean to express love authentically versus automatically, or even begrudging obligation? Between passion and jealousy, which proves your love more? Throughout this exquisite collection, Macansantos explores what it means to love.” —Grace Talusan, The Rumpus
"The desire to connect, and the inability to do so, is at the heart of Monica's stirring debut collection, Love and Other Rituals. Friendship, family, romance, sibling rivalry—it's all on the table in these eight excellent stories, rendered with a mix of startling newness and good old-fashioned storytelling." — Greg Marshall, The Hopkins Review
"The prose is detailed in its dovetailing of the characters' actions—from changes in facial expression to slight gestures—described to complement their lines of dialogue. The way they're attired and, in the case of the ladies made up, are all cross-hatched on an expanding map of familial or social relations, through all the ups and downs of recognition." — Alfred A. Yuson, Philippine Star
"In this collection of eight stories, there is dormant hope and irresolution to last a lifetime as Macansantos's stories remove the veil of false contentment from the reader's eyes." —Meanjin Quarterly (Australia)
"When reading this collection, I often found myself falling into a soft descent of anticipation and intrigue as each character gradually opened themselves up to me, revealing themselves through actions and words, because many of these characters go through a soft descent themselves, figuring out what it is they want from love or what love looks like to them now. Macansantos's thoughtful world building is on full display in this collection through the different lives these characters inhabit and the losses they're experiencing, and also through the love and tender moments they try to preserve amid longing and loneliness."—Colorado Review
"Macansantos' stories are striking, vivid and homesick inducing, especially for those of us in the diaspora." —The Pantograph Punch (New Zealand)
Book Review by Catherine Robertson on Radio New Zealand (audio only)
