The Age of Umbrage review: Jessica Zafra’s first novel is for misfits and outcasts
The Age of Umbrage by Jessica Zafra is available at Shopee, Lazada, Mt Cloud, and the Ateneo University Press. For e-books and foreign orders, please go to facebook.com/ateneo press.
by Paul John Caña in Esquire, 17 October 2020
In Jessica Zafra’s The Age of Umbrage, we meet Guada. Precocious, no-nonsense and a voracious consumer of books, music and film, she anchors a book that is part-bildungsroman and part-social critique, set during a time when pop culture was inescapable, but just before the dawn of the internet.
We meet Guada’s parents first, a mismatched pair whose eventual estrangement leads mother and daughter to take up residence in the mansion of the Almagros, one of the wealthiest families in the Philippines. Here, Guada will get a taste of what Fitzgerald was talking about when he said “the rich, they’re not like you and me.” (We’re paraphrasing, of course).
This is Zafra’s first novel, which is something of a surprise, considering she’s one of the more familiar names in contemporary Filipino literature. The former newspaper columnist and TV host (and erstwhile band manager of the Eraserheads) has built a cult following for her wry observations on life, with a particular focus on current issues, arcane bits of entertainment trivia, and her signature theory on world domination (via the country’s diaspora).
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