Reconnaissance n [F. lit. recognition]: a preliminary survey of an area; esp.: an exploratory military survey of enemy territory

    I didn’t even know how to spell the word, at first! I mean, is that one n and two s or the other way around? And the definition of the word: are we talking about the Enlightenment or a military term? But after sorting everything out, Tara FT Sering’s collection of short fiction, Reconnaissance, is all and more.

    In the tradition of Helen Fielding and Sophie Kinsella, Sering provides us with a bird’s/worm’s eye view of different women: the new wife, the job applicant, the elderly, the young girl, and the career woman. There is that prerequisite merging of humor and cynicism; the various pieces of the puzzle that create the bigger picture: after all, haven’t we all been at these stages at one time or another? And yet there is something uniquely Filipino and incredibly modern about her stories that it transcends the boundaries of gender and locality, and lets the reader view the world wearing various-colored glasses.

    Par example: the title story, Reconnaissance, tells of a young girl who accidentally sees her old neighbors having sex. The first sentence quickly underscores this “military” tension between the two groups of children playing in the streets, (“It was the afternoon of the Third World War, and the opposing camps – Pia, Bibi, and Allen versus Jaime, Joseph, and Jasmine – were dressed in full battle gear: denim pants, waterproof jackets, lab glasses, slingshots draped onto their shoulders, and bottle cap ammunition in plastic pockets tied to their belts.”) During the course of their game, they manage to break the window of the house next door, and the middle girl, Bibi, is sent to investigate the damage. Instead, she espies these 50-something married couple doing a little S&M, and she quickly catches a glimpse of something that echoes through her adult life – that first peek at something so powerful and private that she remembers that scene even when she grows up. Reconnaissance, indeed.

    Preview is a strange little tale of a new wife being forced by her husband’s parents to partake of their strange Sunday meal, particularly of their favorite delicacy: the fish eye. But apparently, the fish eye had other things in mind when it takes over her own right eye and allows her to see behind the façade of her new family. And on the other side of the spectrum is The Last Chip off the Old Walled City, as the yuppie daughter of a middle-class family, Kat, deals with the discovery of her father’s affair with another woman and her mother’s seeming detachment to the whole situation.

    Similarly, Wonder is a piece of sudden fiction seen through the eyes of a young woman applying for a job – and the apparent inattention of the corporate world to her undertakings. And in The Vacation, another point of view is taken as an elderly couple prepares an afternoon merienda for their friends in hopes of bragging about their recent trip to Europe.

    But perhaps the tour de force of this little volume is the novella, Getting Better. First published in Cosmopolitan magazine and structured like a “how-to” guide, it tells of the travails of a young woman as she deals with her relationship with a seemingly perfect boyfriend – before, during, and after the break-up. Populated with real and entertaining characters, Getting Better does not only make one laugh and cry, but allows the reader to examine life on another level; and yet this awareness is slipped in so lightly and elegantly that one does not even notice until it has been ingrained into the mind. The dialogue is a combination of Filipino and English, it’s fast and witty, and yet remains credible to the casual reader.

    “Jan, his name is Bert Reyno. Bert is bad enough. Bert Reyno pa!”
“What’s his real name, ba? Baka naman you can sort of invent a new nickname.”
“Robert Redford Reyno.”

v“And Jan, he goes to the gym a lot daw. Plus he loves Sex and the City.”
“Ay wala na. You’ve got yourself a new shopping partner.”

    Sering not only recreates the genre of the “chick novel” so prevalent among the new titles at PowerBooks, and crafts it for the Filipino audience, but she also bridges the gap between “serious” and “popular” literature. Older readers will appreciate the deft handling of the language and the simple yet stylistic prose, and the younger readers will enjoy the tone and humor prevalent in the stories presented.

    As part of the University of the Philippines Press’ Jubilee Student Edition, Reconnaissance not only sports a new jacket cover – a swanky new red design instead of last year’s blue hues – but also a nifty price tag: Php 110.00. A copy can be easily bought at the UP Press Bookstore at Balay Kalinaw in UP Diliman, or at the local bookstores.