June 5, 2025
MANILA – There are no stereotypes in FH Batacan’s literary world, and no caricatures. Her new collection is a triumph of verisimilitude. At the same time, there are no coincidences and no all-powerful beings from her machine. As Freud says—and I paraphrase—there are no accidents, and nothing is random. The events that take place are part and parcel of who her characters are. They are ordinary Filipinos, authentic, flawed, and just trying to make it through proverbial lives of quiet desperation.
Fortunately for us, they do this, not without honesty, and not without a good measure of humor. Batacan’s touch is light and knowing, and where pieces might easily veer into maudlin territory, there is restraint that is reassuring. We can relax on this journey. We are in accomplished hands.
Those of us who have been hungering for more from FH Batacan since her tour de force breakout novel “Smaller And Smaller Circles” will find a gift that is more than satisfying in this—her first volume of short fiction, again from Soho Press in New York, “Accidents Happen.” The cherry on top? The visceral pleasure in new encounters, first with the Jesuit, forensic anthropologist Fr. Gus Saenz, who first appears in the second story, and then again later, and with investigative journalist Joanna Bonifacio.
Comprising pieces collected from her early publishing years, side by side with more recent work, “Accidents Happen” possesses the page-flipping intoxication of genre yet wields a complex resonance that’s powerful and literary.
A world shocking yet familiar
Batacan draws us into dark worlds of crime from points of view that are more ordinary and yet not commonly seen, and even as a couple of pieces enter the realm of the speculative, the sociopolitical and economic reality of contemporary Filipino society dominates with force, as though it’s a major character in play. Here is a selection of tales that may often be sad and disturbing but are told with something akin to love, and even a little hope for the future.
In story after story, we recoil with both horror and recognition, and as we engage in the puzzle each piece presents, the pleasure in the ensuing resolution is bittersweet with a twist of darkness. What is the crime? Who is the criminal? Who is the victim? Why do these things happen, we ask, but the fact is, we know that they do. And the answers, even as they surprise, are just about right. These things happen every day, and Batacan reminds us of the world’s ugliness; she holds it up before us, and we cannot look away.
The reflective youth Francis in the titular “Accidents Happen” is not your average poor little rich boy. So much more than that and yet, in his sad life, he only has the simple, goodhearted folk who are paid to care for him. In the second story, which is among my very favorites, the heroine Isa will reach in and tie a knot of rage and sadness in your heart that in the end will unravel, moving you to tears—in my case, sobs—by the end. And then how can you not laugh out loud at the deadpan one-liners from Joanna Bonifacio in “The One Cry” or squirm in the forlorn ache of “Comforter of the Afflicted.” The speculative strains that auger a couple of these stories—“Keeping Time,” downright dystopian and “The Gyutou” and “Road Trip,” horrific and supernatural, offer classic good times on the page, a kind of respite from the reality, even while they certainly offer their own doses.
However, all 11 stories wield a wrench that does the gut in, and I could go on, but I fear spoiling them and depriving you of that pleasure that’s delighted human beings for centuries. The primordial cathartic answer to the question: What happens next? Even in the world we already think we know, we are still capable of surprise.
Craft and language
There are quite a few contemporary Filipino writers who can tell a story, but those who have a masterful grasp of the English language are harder to find. Batacan is of the rare breed, demonstrating comfort with the rudiments of grammar and syntax, wearing the language and its conventions like a second skin. At no point are you thrown unceremoniously out of a paragraph nor are you ever in danger of being trapped in a sentence that mystifies rather than communicates. Her skill is consummate, and her authorial voice invites the reassurance of fairy tales of old.
Omniscience allows her to overhear the thoughts of a wide number of characters, and tense shifts with the shifting to a major point of view. Except these are not fairy tales but are as real as they are devastating. Finally, almost every story concludes, not with an ending, but the implied beginning of yet another story. Even after we finish, she leads us to imagine further what the character has in store.
With remarkable texture and rich detail, the techniques she uses are not limited solely to the conventions of narration, dialogue, and interior monologue. We learn about food and music and culture, and there are frequent observations that are funny, provocative, almost a throwaway line yet still sharp and scathing in their truth—“Men’s rooms always smell different from Ladies’ rooms. Not just different. Worse.” Every piece presents one or two takeaway nuggets that stand on their own while remaining integral, organic to the character in the story to which they belong.
At the point of crisis in every story, the emotional crescendo involves sadness, to be sure, but also a veneer of rage. Yes, we think, these things happen in the Philippines, and then simultaneously, the question that ensues is plaintive and heartfelt: But why do these things happen in the Philippines? Are there really no accidents? Is this truly who we are?
And at the end of the book, I found myself wanting to flip back to the beginning and read it once more, in part to repeat the pleasure and the reflection. We all know the answers are hard to come by in the darkness, but then again, there can be no light without dark. That’s humanity for you, isn’t it? I return to the pain and beauty of “The Number 1 Pencil,” which is difficult to reread, but I do.
The thoughts of the “every man” protagonist resonate: “A house will tell you a lot of things people won’t… I think about other houses I’ve been in, how the sounds change in them, how the air smells and feels. I think about how words, voices, anger, fear, malice, linger in the air of a room. How they cling to the walls, how they alter the character of silence.” The Number 1 Pencil is the darkest pencil.
Filipino literature, music, culture, and cuisine have been having a real moment, and with good reason. Batacan’s stories, like her first novel, have that cinematic quality that will lend them to film and theater. I would not be surprised if one or another of these pieces end up being adapted for the screen, just as her novel was.
What’s more, rumor has it on good authority that Batacan is at work on her follow-up novel to “Smaller And Smaller Circles,” in which some of the same characters will figure. I know I am not alone in anticipating it. Fortunately, “Accidents Happen” happily tides us over until then.