A review by sondershelf
A Field Guide to the Roads of Manila and Other Stories by Dean Francis Alfar, Andrew Drilon

adventurous reflective medium-paced

3.0

"We Filipinos like to imagine that we are all the same when the truth is we are all different despite our commonalities, preferring to stick to the circumscribed areas of the familiar. It takes disasters to get us together momentarily--an earthquake or a super typhoon that devastates distant provinces--before we retreat, convinced we have done our part."

"I think this country deliberately remains partially mired in its past, where it can admire its imagined zenith"

Short stories I enjoyed from this collection:
-A Field Guide to the Roads of Manila
-Notes on an Ascent
-City Crossing
-Glove and the Goggles
-This is the Story

As a fan of speculative fiction, these collection of stories were a delight to read. Especially during the current time of the pandemic, these stories present images of the metropolitan that is beating and alive. Contrasting to today's abandoned and liminal settings it has been reduced to.