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WANDER GIRL

Published Saturday, September 25, 2004 by XY | E-mail this post

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Title: Wander Girl
Publisher: Summit
Price: P150
Author: Tweet Sering

It's the same feeling as finding designer clothes at a decent Ukay place, or cool puca jewelry in Boracay... like finding treasures at AFFORDABLE prices! Discovering Summit books, that is.

Thanks to a friend for clueing me in to these books... Admittedly, they've become my guilty pleasure too... I'm dumping the Shopaholic/Bridget Jones types now... Harhar...

Wander Girl appealed to me for lots of reasons. Technically, I liked Sering's writing style. Witty. Introspective. Funny. I guess, Summit books have to be funny. This novel is written like it is a traveler’s guide. Coolness. Of course, like any Summit book (or mag), this caters to the Fun, Fearless Pinay! Hehe.

The characters are real and endearing. The experiences (of most characters), close to home. Hilda Gallares, the heroine, started out as an insecure UP Diliman graduate who did not know what to do with her life, and some 7 years later, at age 30, is already an accomplished writer/publisher, and doing what she loves the most: writing and traveling. It's the wanderlust and the love for always moving that makes me relate to her the most (aside from all the bad relationships and what comes along with them... ehem)... The other fab characters are her dad (nagwawala, as she would call it, and I can sooo relate... harhar), her ate Helen (dating KP as in kulubot puwet... hahaha agen), and her best friend Lulu (true-blue, kick-ass Bisaya! Bisayans, unite... Hehe). Oh, I should not forget her boyfriend Gabe, who would count to 250 while they're having sex (brings to mind a friend's story. Just after having sex, and while attempting to do "another round", her partner blurted out "I guess I really need Viagra now"... Ano yun? Trying to be macho, or just plain pathetic? Argh. Men! hahaha... no offense.)

"We Pinays are shoppers in that grocery store. We are dissatisfied with our mangoes and yet we bite into one, swallow a chunk with a grimace, and then go back for more. We complain about the sub-standard men in our lives—how they womanize, gamble, drink too much, abuse us both physically and verbally, disrespect us—and yet we're still with them. We don't go up the grocer and say, "Sir, the mangoes in your store are rotten. Tomorrow, when I buy your mangoes—despite the two occasions they have disappointed me—I want them to be juicy and delicious. Otherwise, I will look elsewhere and never set foot on this store again," and then make good our word…. Pinoy men, I concluded as I rose from my chair, are emotional underachievers because we don't expect high standards from them. They are brats because we spoil them. They give so little and take a lot because we give a lot and take so little."

This book is more mature than Breakup Diaries. Or as Hilda would tell us, "free of Catholic guilt". It showcases the life of a single and independent Pinay in today's time, one that is having sex, yes, no matter that her mom still thinks that she is still a virgin at age 26. (Now tell me, whose mom doesn't?? My mom, I bet she still thinks of me as her baby... But Mom, I would like to protest, I want to have my own babies soon, the natural way! :D)

After a tumultuous 20's, Hilda is now all grown and wiser at 30, just finding out that the hardest relationship of all is not that with other people, but with one's self. And this time, she wants to take that journey.

And I would like to believe that's where I'm heading to as well.

"Because the best thing about wandering off, I found out, is coming home."

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