Reviews of A SMALL PARTY IN A GARDEN: REVISED AND CRITICAL EDITION by LINDA TY-CASPER

 BOOK REVIEWS OF

A SMALL PARTY IN A GARDEN by Linda Ty-Casper

(New Day, 1988)

 

BOOK LINK TO THE REVISED AND CRITICAL EDITION

Philippine Free Press, February 4, 1989

 

This 98-page novelette is dynamite. It is a story that can profoundly disturb consciences because it ends in a howl of despair for those whose lives have lost faith in the Filipino and have treated God peripherally in their everyday lives. Linda Ty-Casper is masterful in capturing nuances in dialogue … clinically precise in her describing the movement of grace and self-recrimination … (her) forte is character delineation … in handling the character’s subtlest feeling, thoughts and emotions … savagery handled so serenely: sheer mastery of form … The style approaches the quiet grandeur of a Greek tragedy … The marvel of the form is that in several chapters … the reader is lulled effectively to anticipate a joyous communion of spirit between father and daughter: the objective correlative to the flighty and superficial character of 165the small garden party the night before. God took them at their best: at their perfect moment of truth … witness to the resurrection: “I remember the nests of wrens held in place by thorns; I remember birds singing inside the cliffs of the brown virgin, the sun rising again and again as I descended the hill; and I call … grace caught up in flawless language.

 

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Barbara Solaro for Pilipinas, No. 21, Fall 1993

 

The novel teeters on the edge of disillusionment, claiming kinship with Doestoevsky’s agonized reassessment of the meaning of faith … Ty-Casper’s short novel is surprisingly powerful; it spares the reader nothing but instead provides a glimpse of the savagery of the dictatorship (Marcos). It possesses a certain density in its compressed use of suspenseful, groping consideration of questions of good and evil, innocence and complicity, as they relate to the extent of Filipino westernization that has led to moral corruption. The small lovely garden, where bored Cornell University alumni survey the little world they have made by cunning, is symbolically transformed into a gorgeous, but horrific, Philippine Golgotha. Indeed, the rape by the police is like a crucifixion. “I feel myself being hung on hooks hammered into the walls.” How much longer the Philippines will continue to be martyred to greed, bloodlust, and corruption is the unasked question of this novel.

 

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Tanglaw Vol 3, No. 1, April 1995

 

When Michael Edwards proposed a Christian “theory of literature” he cautioned readers on the boldness of his undertaking. Anyone who ventures to read literature in the light of religion does need courage to be different and to offer an alternative reading far from mainstream criticism. Ty-Casper examines the dynamics of conversion and demonstrates how grace works in a very mysterious way so that a person who had stopped believing can be saved.

 

Ty-Casper opted to write on the deeper struggle for liberation—liberation from sin … She does not dismiss the social and political issues … Without any deliberate effort on her part, B has been looking “inside” when the narrative unfolds. The conversion process has already begun. B questions herself and her way of life … From self-examination, B enters more deeply into the conversion process which moves as a kind of journey in three stages. First, not unlike the Prodigal Son, B goes back to Malabon to visit her father. This initiates their reconciliation. The father and daughter take a trip to San Filemon capped by a simple meal that seals their reconciliation. The detour to Santa Cruz … marks the third … B’s interior journey to the Father, her ultimate conversion to God … Her own salvation comes when she finally calls on God for help.

 

For the believer nothing happens by accident … Grace has been working all along … Reduced to utter powerlessness, B abandons herself to God, an act of faith and total surrender.

*****

These book reviews are part of the book, A SMALL PARTY IN A GARDEN: REVISED AND CRITICAL EDITION (PALH 2026). Reprinted with permission from PALH (Philippine American Literary House).