Book Review

Ang Maghuhurno by Cymbeline R.Villamin (Novel in Filipino)

Published by 8Letters Bookstore and Publishing
Paperback / 5”x7”/ 256 pages/ Color Matte Cover/ P520 at Shopee

Baking the Novel

Ang Maghuhurno tells the affair of a sexagenarian who is 4th generation descendant of the
obscure but skilled presidential baker in Kawit in the 1890s. The romance is whisked into a blend
of history, politics, feminist theology, culture and erotica. Cymbeline Villamin chooses to write
the story in Filipino because it is her “heart language— mellifluous, sensual and passionate like a
song in the middle of the night.”
Unfolding the narrative from the viewpoint of a woman past 60 y.o. is meant to privilege women
in the most exciting autumn season of their lives when leaves are red and gold, when they remain
fresh and continue to bear fruits of wisdom, just before winter comes when everything would be
frozen, deathlike.
The novel starts not in the beginning but right in the middle where the action sizzles, in the state-
of-the-art fitness gym in Nuvali, at break of dawn when the glass walls afford a panoramic view
of the metropolis that would be slowly bathed in sunlight, as Liz Virata, the baker-protagonist,
negotiates the treadmill with Lancelot Yatco, trainer and future lover beside her. They are at the
threshold of the prelude to sweet disaster that would coincide with the outbreak of the pandemic
Covid-19.
After holding her readers captive in the first chapter, Villamin proceeds to employ flashback and
stream-of-consciousness, poetry and the metaphorical bibingka, that was scholarly
contextualized by Joi Barrios as traditional yonic symbol in Filipino fiction, in her introduction
for the novel.
The bibingka, listed as 13th most delicious cake in the world by a tourist journal in July 2022, is
used to insinuate treason in the 1890s. It is served in the merienda cena after the first president of
the republic, Emilio Aguinaldo, proclaimed Philippine independence on 12 June 1898 in Kawit,
Cavite. It brings together the lovers into a baking tryst that would forge their intimacy. The
husband’s rejection of the rice cake his wife bakes indicates their dysfunctional marriage. On the
other hand, it does not take a genius to discern what is going on with Lance’s enthusiasm to help
Liz in firing the terra cotta ovens, heating round-cut banana leaf over fire to make pliant for
pouring of the batter, mixing of ingredients as his free hand explores her breast, kissing her on

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the lips and recording the scene on his mobile phone camera to replay over and over. When
Lance feels nauseous from repetitive serving of rice cake by his fiancée, Nathanie, we become
certain as to who really owns his heart.
Significant is Villamin’s management of eroticism in the story. She introduces sexual tension and
sustains it. It seems the lovers lose interest to make love when their affair is exposed. But the
pining goes on despite outward show of stoicism and moving on. To comply with the “happy
ending” convention of the romance genre, the writer obliges somewhat. The truth is, this novel
does not give us a catharsis at all. We see the protagonists as zombies, living dead. One side of
them cries out for freedom to fall in love passionately, while the other side whispers “Never let
me go” within the safe context of socially and morally acceptable institution of marriage.

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