Take two sisters, exiled to the United States because their father, a Filipino politician, opposes the incumbent dictator. The two women share family memories and personality traits, yet Lali (the elder) who has been dating Arturo (the godson of that dictator) ends up marrying him in what is considered a wise political move that starts Arturo’s debut on the political scene. Pilar, the younger sibling, wants to carry on her father’s fight against the dictator but is attracted to her sister’s husband. Just writing this makes the plotline of Betrayed seem like an introduction to an overcomplicated soap opera. Let’s just say that on the surface, it’s hard to explain succinctly. But that’s what this author has accomplished, layering on the stories and connections.
What Reine Arcache Melvin does in her novel is to plunge the reader into the love triangle of Pilar, Arturo, and Lali. Each character is intense and passionate in her/his own right, almost to the exclusion of not empathizing beyond their own limited point-of-view. Characterization is the heart of Betrayed. These three individuals are flawed, fascinating, and make the reader want to know what slights and injuries made them into the people they have become, and what actions they will take next to achieve their goals. Yet each character is capable of lyrical, emotional insights based on small hurts and misinterpretations. The hook in this novel is that these three central personalities are complex in their loyalties, strengths and weaknesses. Like dominoes, what they say and do affects so many around them. Strong, sensual writing adds up to compelling scenes.
Arcache Melvin is a Filipino-American author. Her work spotlights the lives of Filipinos. In 1999, her short-story collection A Normal Life and Other Stories won the Philippine National Book Award for Fiction. Betrayed is her first novel.
Even though Lali (who is pregnant) and Pilar share key family history events, their interpretations and how they react to them is very different. There is no one clear path for either of the two sisters to follow, just moral dilemmas to consider.
Composed of thirteen chapters and an epilogue, the dominant character is the older sister, Lali, who drives the action of the plotline. Betrayed then alternates points-of-view with her sister and husband. Eventually, the last two chapters assume a third person omniscient point-of-view that summarizes “this was the story they could live with.”
Lali is “the superstitious one,” who engages healers and fortune-tellers and who has dreams and is haunted by her father’s ghost. At one point, Lali observes about her husband: “A furrow creased Arturo’s brow as a dream or sensation passed through him…She would never know the boy she glimpsed in his sleep, never comfort herself with memories of what he had been as a child, never see this vulnerability when he was awake.”
Pilar is shy and idealistic: “She and Lali had been born in the same year, eleven months apart…For years, Pilar had loved her older sister more than herself. Then one day she realized it was Lali everyone loved.” Pilar recognizes the following about her attraction to her brother-in-law: “It came to her that he, too, must be afraid of what was happening between them. He must have thought, when he married Lali, that their love was immutable. Lali and he had been madly in love. Pilar had seen it. Now that love had turned out to be as fragile as everything else.”
Emotions, loyalties, and betrayals—internal and ensuing actions are difficult, messy and compelling.
Arturo, raised and educated in the United States, described by others around him as a “hotshot,” can “feel a rush a gratitude. He was right to have come here with her. She was simpler than Lali, kinder. Hesitantly, he told her what he had never told anyone before…The cave had been his friend, his protector, taking him in and soothing him each time he came here…He told her he had never brought anyone else here.”
And these are just the main characters. Set in the Philippines during the (unnamed) Marcos dictatorship of the 1980s, Lali, Pilar, and Arturo are part of the elite ruling class and are often contrasted with the mass population. Bodyguards seek to protect these three from violence, sometimes successfully and sometimes not. Safety comes from surprising places and people and inevitably their own selves.
So much is also going on in the background. Other events and people include a disaster of an overcrowded sunken boat with smuggled people, a massacre in the south by vigilante groups, tarot cards, a beauty pageant, leprosy, and a saint. All add to themes of religion, politics, and social class. Many other characters like Arturo’s mother, Pilar and Lali’s mother, and some of the servants in the household have their own stories that could be explored more deeply. There are so many layers of relationships and themes, masterfully shown through juxtaposition.
Reine Arcache Melvin has written a strong, memorable first novel that gives readers powerful images of the lives of Filipinos during this troubled history.
