To start things off, I find the novel a bit hard to comprehend and a little bit confusing. Why? A lot of strings were needed to connect every persona mentioned. However, it is not enough reason for me to say that it is a bad piece of literature. Every work of art has its own unique properties. One might show the literal aspects of a figure, and one portrays what the author feels about it. It just so happened that one, I’m not a very wide reader, two, I am not used to this type of text, and third, it’s too confusing. Nonetheless, I would like to highlight how the various behaviour and attitudes of each personality portrayed the events of reality.
For example, the very language of the novel is the language of the country that once colonized the Filipinos was chosen for the reason of the microcosms of larger and irreconcilable tensions. The way Connie, the main protagonist, hallucinates over and over possibly made the idea that we, Filipinos are often kind of blinded by fallacies and misled statements of non-fictitious events, leading to more chaos and abomination. Also, the introduction of Connie’s mom having a first husband before Connie’s father shows how the state of Filipinos were since the WW2 collapsed.
I really liked the way the author puts his ideas into the context in which the readers wouldn’t really expect. Well, I’ve been tricked into believing that Connie truly had 2 navels when she’s only having the traumatic nostalgia and as escape, she clung to her Biliken for comfort.
The Woman who had Two Navels 