The Lonely Islands We Create: All My Lonely Islands by VJ Campilan

“Words. Depending on what you believe, they’re either empty air or a prophecy that shall come to pass.”

My Personal Rating:

It’s no wonder why Filipino author VJ Campilan’s debut novel All My Lonely Islands won the Grand Prize in the Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature in 2015.

Here, we follow Crisanta and Ferdinand through their recall of memories of their teenage years, going to Batanes several years later to offer Graciella the truth about the death of her son Stevan which the two had witnessed. The synopsis gives the impression that sinister secrets were hidden by the two, yet it’s far from that. The truths they repressed were more painful and intertwined than it seems.

It’s not difficult to get hooked on the writing style despite the initial confusion on the writing perspective. This book is mainly told by Crisanta as an elaborate letter to a comatose and unconscious Graciella. She takes us through her life, starting from the streets of Manila to the hustle of Bangladesh, the tragedy in the Sundarbans, her career as a ghostwriter, and finally to Ferdinand finding her and leading them to Batanes. To Graciella.

All My Lonely Islands is a poignant novel detailing human emotion through imagery and metaphors. Crisanta and Ferdinand’s regrets, guilt, melancholy, grief, desperation, anger, and resignation were so vivid that all that and the other emotions I haven’t mentioned almost feel tangible. The two of them show us what it’s like to live, see, fear, and continue living in the aftermath of a dear friend and foe’s tragic death. Their voices make you empathize with them so much like you are living through them and traveling in their shoes.

“The way I see it is that God never comes to us as a magician. He doesn’t use smoke and mirrors, no tricks up his sleeves. He just comes. And it’s quiet. You can’t look for God in the clouds or in the thunder. He’s not there anymore.”

Coupled with beautiful prose, the characters’ takes and musings on various things were significant to the weaving of this story. Their views on faith, religion, Filipino and world culture, society, relationships, life, and death are fresh and thought-provoking. I even had to pause several times to digest their thoughts and jot down passages and lines on a spare piece of paper, capture it through a camera lens, or underline pages.

The lonely islands from the title not only refer to the multiple places they’ve spent their lives at but also the multiple selves we leave and come back to all the time. It refers to all the lonely islands we create. We find, visit, and leave adrift throughout our short lives.

The most heartbreaking thing for me in this book is its conclusion. Crisanta and Ferdinand never got the closure they came for, but it was still closure, nonetheless. This book has instantly become one of my all-time favorites for the immense impact it had on me. I feel for Crisanta and Ferdinand so much as if they’re real people. I pointlessly hope that they live their lives well after relieving themselves of the baggage they carried for so long.

“Now I realize there can be no proper farewells, just a lifetime of remembering.”