"Praying is not enough-better put it in writing!" Bong Bong Luwad is living with his selfish Auntie Yuna in L.A., far from his Philippine village, the Marcos regime, and his mother who helped him escape. Bong Bong spends his nights watching old movies on TV, while Auntie Yuna writes pleading letters to saints and dead relatives. One night on the late-late movie, Bong Bong finds his own saint: Montgomery Clift, playing a soldier who helps a lost boy and his mother. Can Monty do the same for him? He gets out a pencil and paper and thus begins a series of extraordinary events that carry him from boyhood to adolescence, through sexual awakening, madness, and finally back to a place where he can begin his life again.
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[I didn't start seeing Montgomery Clift immediately]***
(@mpp_inc, 1 May 2010, first published 1 September 2002, 288 pages, ebook, borrowed from @GlasgowLib via @OverDriveLibs)
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I need to lie down for about a week after reading this. I need a hug and some tissues and a teddy and something hot to cuddle into. I didn't expect this book to affect me so much. It's one of the best books I've read in ages. I say that a lot and I mean it. I was a gibbering wreck for more than half of this beautiful, gutsy, devastating book, crying so hard I could hardly see to read the words. I didn't expect to be so, so broken by this book. Bong Bong is a brilliant character. I loved him so much. This is a coming of age novel as we go through Bong Bong losing his family, finding his feet with his American foster parents, falling in love, slipping into madness through grief and gingerly finding his way into light again.
