Marginaliad: Reading Gina Apostol's "The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata"

Abstract

This review, which discusses Gina Apostol’s second novel, The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata (Anvil Publishing, 2009), raises two main points. First, it looks at how the novel uses various devices to fragment and distort the narrative, and how using such devices allows the novel to dramatize its own dependence on and misgivings about narrative cohesiveness. Second, the review looks at how the novel uses humor and wordplay to leaven the book’s serious subject matter. Also tackled in the review is the influence on the novel of other texts, particularly the Gospels, the stories of Jorge Luis Borges, and Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire.