Never Have I Ever
Cover illustration by Alexa Sharpe
Isabel Yap's Never Have I Ever is a collection of thirteen genre-bending stories of love, friendship, and things that make life worth living. It's got folklore and near-future SF and ghost stories and everything I love, but most of all, it is very Filipino.
The collection opens with Good Girls, which features one of my favorite mythical monsters, the manananggal. All the Best of Dark and Bright is a sort of sequel to Malakas at Maganda, our own version of Adam and Eve. Yap deftly mines the Philippines' rich culture and history, crafting heartfelt stories that are totally original, even to someone like me who grew up with these references. Yet her stories don't at all require foreknowledge of Filipino culture to be affecting. My favorite in the collection, Milagroso, illustrates the universal tension between faith and science, and sharply depicts the turmoil that can befall anyone when confronted with the inexplicable.
Malakas at Maganda, Watercolor by Nestor Redondo (1975)
Most of all (or at least most important to me), Yap's stories truly capture what it's like to be a Filipino. Have You Heard the One About Anamaria Marquez is so authentic, and it transported me to my own Catholic schoolboy days, reminding me of the bonds that formed in my teenage years and the legends that stalked every school. Asphalt, River, Mother, Child is particularly relevant, portraying the horrors of the Duterte regime's bloody and corrupt war on drugs.
Never Have I Ever feels almost aptly titled, as I very rarely get the heightened emotions that I felt reading this collection; of course that has to do with how much of my reading is in Filipino speculative fiction. Yap's stories make me want to read a whole lot more of them, make me hope that more of them get published, and of course, make me want to write more of these kinds of stories too.
