EILEEN TABIOS Engages
Residents of the Deep by Marianne Villanueva
(Unsolicited Press, 2025)
I’ve long anticipated a new book by stellar fictionist Marianne Villanueva whose first book Ginseng and Other Tales From Manila was one of my introductory reads to Filipino literature. So I was excited to receive her brand new book, the short story collection Residents of the Deep (Unsolicited Press, 2025). It sparked an enjoyable, nay, enthralling read!
Its first story, “Dumaguete,” shows Marianne as a master of restraint—her insinuations and evocations become more than real as their effects become visceral. At one point of reading the story, I sensed my heartbeat quicken, all from the power of my emotional response to what the story was setting in play, in this case, dread. My continuous wondering of "what is happening?” paradoxically made the story more muscular and powerful. Her strong resonant writing creates a nuanced universe from narrative pebbles.
The stories benefit from Villanueva’s expansive imagination combined with a strong descriptive capacity. For example, the superb title story “Residents of the Deep,” a variation on the legendary tale of Atlantis (the Greek myth of an island civilation that ultimately was swallowed by the sea), features a small but powerful detail of “under-dwellers” who can only move forward. That made me pause: I’ve never thought before of how it would be if we were unable to turn around or move backwards! This eye to detail also shows up effectively in “The Hand” which offers this marvelous passage:
“The hand had a faint tracery of blue veins spreading, fan-like, from a narrow wrist. It was preternaturally white, a white like the bellies of the dead fish piled up in front of the stalls at the wet market back home in Manila.”
If you’ve ever seen fish corpses, you know that particular whiteness on a fish belly—the glossy white with luminescent sections that make you want to poke a finger into it (or, at least has that effect on me).
Villanueva’s strong language is to create an authenticity in each character that creates reader empathy. Indeed, “Sofia” is so perfectly pitched it made me wish I’d written it, even though the story is about Sofia’s thoughts as she contemplates her less than satisfactory life as she transitions towards the act of suicide. I hate to admit it but this story did make me consider good language as a sort of redemption against sorrow. (It’s best to have ice cream ready in your freezer before you read a tale like this.)
The strength of language can be seen in how many phrases or sentences can lend themselves to epigrammatical usage. For examples—and I glean these examples by opening the book randomly each time:
“Who knew the greatest discovery I would ever make would involve so simple an act as peering down?” (P.20)
“Every single person I know is going to die.” (P. 100)
“Their husbands frown but can do nothing.” (P. 129)
“The unspoken contract: Whatever is not provided can be taken.” (P. 150)
Residents of the Deep mixes philosophy and sci-fi elements with language-based riffs for an unexpected texture. Several stories remind me of the concept of “Ostranenie,” the notion of “defamiliarizing” one’s self with one’s usual environment in order to look at them anew, or as this jpeg would say:
In this sense, Residents of the Deep could be aptly categorized as speculative fantasy.
Beyond language, Villanueva also is strong in structure and technique. I really appreciate—I just truly like—“Don Alfredo & Jose Rizal” because of its use of the poem inside prose. Specifically, she uses the poem to mark a change into a different time period within the story. While I’ve used poems within prose in my first two published novels, I’ve not done this yet and, as a writer, I’ll likely pay the supreme compliment of copying this in future writing.
In addition, “Residents of the Deep” is one of those short stories that make you wonder how the writer would do with the novel. The short story’s imaginative expanse is huge and its imagery shows Villanueva could up to the task of a larger-scale form. This has implications about how one chooses a short story vs novel. Of course, the answer may not have anything to do with genre but the author’s personal preference of how to spend her time (for example, I’ve found the novel more immersive than other literary forms, which can affect your lifestyle). The point is the story is capacious, the type of short story that could inspire an entire movie adaptation though its literary form is shorter than a novel.
Ultimately, Residents of the Deep affirms the dire state of the world in which its words were written, which is to say, literally and metaphorically illustrates survival in end times. What struck me from several stories is how expiration can be so noisy: Expiration as a cacophony. Well, perhaps grudgingly but nonetheless sincerely, I thank the author: I can’t think of a better source for depression (wink) than well-wrought literature.
*****
Eileen R. Tabios has released books of poetry, fiction, art and experimental prose from publishers around the world. Recent releases include the poetry collections Engkanto in the Diaspora and Because I Love You, I Become War; a novel The Balikbayan Artist; an art monograph Drawing Six Directions; an autobiography, The Inventor: A Poet’s Transcolonial Autobiography; and a flash fiction collection Getting To One. Other books include a first novel DoveLion: A Fairy Tale for Our Times which was translated by Danton Remoto into Filipino as KalapatingLeon and two French poetry books, PRISES (Double Take) (trans. Fanny Garin) and La Vie erotique de l’art (trans. Samuel Rochery). Forthcoming in 2026 is a selected art stories collection, The Erotic Space Around Objects. Her literary inventions include the "Kapwa novel"; the hay(na)ku, a 21st century diasporic poetic form; the MDR Poetry Generator that create poems totaling theoretical infinity; the “Flooid” poetry form that’s rooted in a good deed; and the monobon poetry form based on the monostich. More information is at https://eileenrtabios.com
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