The Hour of Daydreams

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Pub Date 14 Mar 2017 | Archive Date 08 Mar 2022

Description

Manolo Lualhati, a respected doctor in the Philippine countryside, believes his wife hides a secret. Prior to their marriage, he spied her wearing wings and flying to the stars with her sisters each evening. As Tala tries to keep her dangerous past from her new husband, Manolo begins questioning the gaps in her stories—and his suspicions push him even further from the truth. The Hour of Daydreams, a contemporary reimagining of a Filipino folktale, weaves in the perspectives of Tala’s siblings, her new in-laws, and the all-seeing housekeeper while exploring trust, identity, and how myths can take root from the seeds of our most difficult truths.

Manolo Lualhati, a respected doctor in the Philippine countryside, believes his wife hides a secret. Prior to their marriage, he spied her wearing wings and flying to the stars with her sisters each...


A Note From the Publisher

Renee was born in Manila, Philippines and raised in Alameda, California, where she lives with her husband and two daughters. She received her bachelor of arts in English from UC Berkeley and master of fine arts in English and Creative Writing from Mills College, where she received an Alumnae Scholarship and was the prose editor for 580 Split.
A long-time local journalist, her articles on arts and culture, parenting, and lifestyle have appeared in ColorLines, Filipinas Magazine, Oakland and Alameda Magazine, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, The East Bay Monthly, The Children’s Advocate, Parents’ Press, and others. Her reporting on minority issues facing Filipinos was nominated for a New American Media Award and New California Media Award by the editors of Filipinas Magazine. Her creative writing has been published in Red Earth Review, Mutha Magazine, and Ford City Anthology, and is forthcoming in the 2017 Women of Color Anthology.

Renee was born in Manila, Philippines and raised in Alameda, California, where she lives with her husband and two daughters. She received her bachelor of arts in English from UC Berkeley and master...


Advance Praise

“With its enticing undertow of secrets and magic, The Hour of Daydreams will seduce readers with its reverence for mystery, its gentle humor, and its deep empathy for its characters’ longings and losses. Sometimes it takes a village to tell a story as extraordinary as this—and Renee Macalino Rutledge has managed to do just that.”
– Cristina García, author of Dreaming in Cuban

“The Hour of Daydreams isn’t just a wonderful book—it’s a lyrical and poetic journey, one that’s simultaneously magical, surprising, and mesmerizing. It’s a love story, fable, fairy tale, and contemporary novel woven together with seamless thread, reminiscent of Isabel Allende. A brilliant start to a beautiful literary career.”
– Erin Entrada Kelly, author of The Land of Forgotten Girls

“Macalino Rutledge’s debut novel is a tale of dreams and secrets and what is hidden inside a marriage, and what cannot be denied. The writing is vivid and evocative, the world richly textured and alive. Here the duende speaks!”
– Micheline Aharonian Marcom, author of Three Apples Fell From Heaven

“Renee Macalino Rutledge’s The Hour of Daydreams is a stirring and haunting exploration of marriage, culture, and gender roles. You will find yourself cheering for Tala and Manolo as they stumble through fears and desires, and you will celebrate the choral narration with its multiple perspectives on love and community. This debut novel is a delicate weaving of mythology and everyday lives and it is a necessary addition to the literature of the Filipina diaspora.”
– Daisy Hernández, author of A Cup of Water Under My Bed: A Memoir

“A beautiful book that collapses the boundaries between reality and fairy tale, The Hour of Daydreams is both gritty and poetic. The atmosphere is fresh and vivid, like a broad green leaf shimmering with raindrops.”
– Elena Mauli Shapiro, author of 13, Rue Therese and In the Red

“With its enticing undertow of secrets and magic, The Hour of Daydreams will seduce readers with its reverence for mystery, its gentle humor, and its deep empathy for its characters’ longings and...


Marketing Plan

Uncorrected proof; please do not quote without comparison with the finished book.
Distribution of early galleys and ARCs (starting fall 2016) to media outlets, reviewers, bloggers, magazines, and key booksellers and librarians
National tour
Author interviews: radio, TV, print, and online venues
Reviews targeting the major print magazinesFeature coverage targeting Bay Area media
Outreach to national Filipino organizations
Bookseller outreach at PNBA and NCIBA
Reader and media outreach at AWP 2017
Edelweiss and Goodreads ARC giveaways
Social media including blog appearances, excerpts, Twitter, and Facebook
Promotions on author's website, reneerutledge.com, and the publisher's website, forestavenuepress.com
Publicity and promotion in conjunction with author's speaking engagements
Uncorrected proof; please do not quote without comparison with the finished book.
Distribution of early galleys and ARCs (starting fall 2016) to media outlets, reviewers, bloggers, magazines, and key...

Available Editions

EDITION Other Format
ISBN 9781942436270
PRICE $15.95 (USD)
PAGES 270

Available on NetGalley

Send to Kindle (EPUB)

Average rating from 35 members


Featured Reviews

A wonderful story about love and marriage. A beautiful imaginary tale. As a Filipino, it was delightful to see the cultural interpretations that lace this story. Thank you so much for letting me read it.

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This is the story of the marriage of Manolo and Tala. He, a respected village doctor, and she, a young woman with wings. Although this seems a fantastical story, it deals with the issues of trust in marriage and retaining identity when living within a traditional family that is not your own.
The story is opaque in parts, whilst seeming almost translucent in others. At times, it was hard to follow although I quickly regained ground and understanding. Some of the prose are magical, wise and didactic. Others are flimsy and confusing.

In her efforts to integrate into Manolo’s family, Tala decides to test Manolo whilst also guarding her own family secrets. We learn of Manolo’s insecurities and speculations, but when he receives the news of a new member to the family, he is overjoyed.

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A gorgeously surreal story of a woman who may or may not be an angel, and the family she affects. Manolo is a small-town doctor in Manlapaz, the Philippines, who one day encounters an angel bathing in the river. Or is she just an ordinary girl running away from a future of prostitution and abuse? Neither Manolo nor his daughter, the product of this union and the narrator of the tale, can ever be entirely sure.

The book is framed with Malaya, the daughter's, search for the true story of her mother and her heritage. Inside we are given flashbacks from the points of view of the various characters, some suggesting a supernatural origin for Malaya's mother, and hence Malaya herself, and some suggesting something much more tragic and sordid. This shifting patchwork of narration gradually resolves into a coherent story, although the temptation to stitch everything together into an overly tidy ending is resisted, and what is left is more of an impressionistic sketch of a plot and resolution rather than a clear A=B conclusion, like the daydreams suggested in the title. Instead, the reader is treated to a setting redolent with the scents, sounds, and sights of the Philippines, populated with folk beliefs and supernatural entities just on the edge of ordinary life. The language itself is lyrical and evocative, plunging the reader into the river of dreams and the subconscious that runs through the text as the physical river runs through the story. A beautiful addition to genre of magic realism and Filipino literature.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing a review copy of this book. All opinions are my own.

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The Hour of Daydreams by Renee Rutledge tells the story of Manolo and Tala who are newlyweds. The two are not your ordinary couple though. The story is actually narrated in a way that makes it seem a bit more like fantasy than reality. For instance; Tala uses to have wings. There are other elements of magical realism interwoven in the story throughout the chapters. This is a beautiful story about love, family and the complexity of marriage.

The story is told as folklore or more like a fable. However, the author makes all events thought provoking and realistic. A husband hides his wife’s wings? That makes you wonder if perhaps it depicts reality. Does it simply mean that he was just controlling and hence wanted to limit his wife’s freedom? There is a story within the main story about a box that is used to test trustworthiness. This really made me think about different scenarios. For instance, would I resist the temptation to snoop if my husband brought home a red box which he then places in the open? Wouldn’t it be natural to just take a peek and see what’s inside? Will that make me untrustworthy?

The writing of this book was impeccable. I loved the imagery. It took me to the fantasy world and brought me back to reality. I got lost in the couple’s world. There were instances where it was both beautiful and sad. The character development made me connect with the MCs hence making my reading experience even better. I enjoyed reading this book and was totally enchanted by the writing hence my reason for recommending it.

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Unusual, beautiful and romantic! Based upon a Filipino folktale, Ms. Rutledge has created a wonderful, thought-provoking look at marriage, trust, and secrets. Almost dreamlike, definitely worth the read.

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4.5 Stars


In the tradition of Isabelle Allende and Laura Esquivel, Renee Rutledge gives us a lush tale of magical realism set in a Filipino world. Dealing with love and marriage, with secrets and lies, she weaves a tale of Tala and Manolo's love, a love that unravels after self-doubt, distrust and jealousy slowly infect the relationship. The truth of Tala's history, a fallen angel, a soaring soul, a saint or an oppressed victim, lies like Manolo's truth, buried in a box with a key he could use to open at any time. He simply decides to pretend the box isn't there, until its presence consumes him.

This is languid, lush prose that the reader can lose themselves in, and in which many readers may truly get lost. The bookends of Tala's daughter Malaya's search for the truths about her mother ground the story. Between those bookends, Tala's past and present cuts back and forth between the magical and the squalid, and occasionally they intersect. This is an interesting and moving story that would have been richer if we'd had enough of a grasp on Tala to build our own attachment to her and mirror Manolo's fears and loss. Tala is so ethereal and fey that it is hard to count on her remaining grounded in Lualhati for long. The revelation that she and Manolo were more similar perhaps than we believed was a striking development. Reareading prologue after the conclusion left me with many questions about the factual timeline and whose wings we are really talking about.

I wished the ARC/final novel had a Tagalog dictionary for the terms used in the story. It was distracting to have to stop to research duwendes and albularyos, etc. It frustrated me as a reader.

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This book is part fairy-tale, part daydream, part real life – or all three things at once. The edges between the book’s various facets are blurred, and change from chapter to chapter, as does the narration – switching from first to third person and back again. The story is about truth, secrets and trust. How stories morph from actual events, through countless retellings, interpretations and wishful thinking to become new myths and accepted truths. One man’s superstition is another person’s reality, a way of making sense of the world.
On the surface, this is the tale of the love between the young doctor, Manolo, and the beautiful, mysterious Tala. But the surface is constantly deceptive. Each knows a different truth about their relationship and how their pasts became entwined. As the reader, you are coaxed, enticed with beautiful language and imagery from one perspective to the next, through countless hours of daydreams studded with blasts of reality.
Don’t expect to truly understand what is happening, just wallow in the fabulous narrative(s) and the author’s exceptional writing skill.

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A wonderful lyrical story, "The Hour of Daydreams" balances on a tightrope between contemporary novel and magic realism. Set in the Philippines and exploring the family life of Manolo and Tala, it was unclear to me until the end whether or not Tala was a angel slash angel-like-monster from local folklore or a woman who had escaped prostitution. The themes of trust and truth in marriage, as well as identity and change thereof work for either scenario. I also enjoyed the setting, which Renee Rutledge described with broad exotic brushstrokes. I found the detailed exploration into each side characters backstory a bit too much at times and would have preferred a more condensed story telling, but somehow even that fit in with the overall style of the novel. Certainly recommendable for fans of fairy tales and magic realism!

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The Hour of Daydreams is a truly magical story told with so much fluid lyricism and intricate descriptions.

Woven into the tale of love and betrayal and fairy tales are themes of identity, relationships and how assumptions and past experiences shape our belief and reaction to others people's actions.

Told from multiple POVs, we see and feel like through Manolo, his parents, his daughter Malaya, their housekeeper. And as the story builds a fuller picture emerges from each character's limited viewpoints.

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The book was well written, with descriptives that helped me buy into the fantasy portion of the story. I loved the reveals during the entire book and how I was slowly piecing the parts little by little. I did wish that the scenes of revelations were longer and emphasized. All in all, good read.

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3.5 stars. The author weaves fantasy and fable into the story of Tala and Manolo's meeting and marriage. The writing has a lyrical, fairytale quality which at times is mesmerising ("He began walking along the lip of the water, where it saturated the sand with kisses") and the author has some imaginative metaphors/similes ("They talked rapidly and their conversation was like a dance; as one took the lead, the others were eager to follow. It was a meandering dance, circling from place to place..."). However, at other times, the language was surprisingly clunky ("Cigarette in hand, he assessed the scene in front of him with some degree of calm." or "Your mother's anguish invoked you from sleep, and we combined our efforts to pacify your discomfort.") There are keenly observed descriptive passages of everyday life (the market, the quayside) but I found some of the author's extended metaphors baffling, such as pretty much the whole of Chapter 6. The supporting characters are well-drawn and the importance of food and sharing communal meals is lovingly described. I enjoyed the story of the main characters but found that, for me, the fantasy element confused rather than enhanced the narrative.

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This debut novel was an interesting experience, although I should have expected no less than such a feast of all the senses when it has been described as a reimagined Filipino folktale.

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During a time of grief Manolo Lualhati stumbles upon seven sisters bathing in the moonlit river. As he watches six of them don beautiful white wings and fly away while the seventh lingers in the waters. Struck by her beauty he hides her wings and they are soon married. But Manolo feels guilty and unworthy and these feelings are bound up with the fear that his beautiful wife will one day rediscover her wings and leave him bereft and so he becomes suspicious, following Tala in disguise and trying to penetrate her secrets. At the same time Tala worries that Manolo’s love is fleeting and possessive and sets out to test his trust by placing a locked box in their home, the key in the lock, and asking her husband to respect the secret within.
Rutledge’s lyrical tale builds on a long tradition of magical realism, dominated by striking voices such as Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Isabel Allende, blending folklore and fairy tales with stories of real lives in order to capture the culture of her world. The Hour of Daydreams explores that liminal space between waking and sleep where dreams bleed into reality and vice versa. So powerful is this effect that their daughter, who has never known her mother, is haunted by bullies who call her mother a witch, a monster, and she has no clear truth with which to parry their cruelty. The story of Manolo and Tala and the uncertainty over how they really met and who they really are interrogates the way that we use dreams and dream-like qualities to obscure darker aspects of life that we would rather not face. Is Tala an otherworldly creature, higher and purer than her husband or is there a darker, all-too-real explanation for their first encounter?
It also asks questions about the difference between reason and superstition and the difficulty we have in fully occupying either world. Manolo is a doctor, prides himself on his ability to find rational causes for illnesses without resorting to folk remedies or supernatural explanations but he also believes that his wife had wings. Despite his rationality Manolo remains haunted by these wings but is he really afraid that they are her means of escape or is he simply terrified that he cannot keep her and uncertain of her love? As Manolo becomes consumed by suspicion and fixates on the secret box Rutledge slowly unpicks the intricacies of the conflicting explanations, using multiple viewpoints to shed light on the ambiguous events.
It’s a beautifully told story and Ruteledge has an eye for a striking image and an ability to really evoke the feel and colour of her setting. There’s a wonderful sense of place, with a real depth of sights and sounds and the magical elements add a flavour of Filipino culture. Unfortunately I didn’t feel her characters as deeply, they were so firmly enmeshed in the uncertainty of their pasts and the space between truth and myth that they never fully emerged, limited to characters in a story being told to their daughter rather than people in their own right, lacking the nuance of real feeling. Even by the end they felt as insubstantial as Tala’s wings.

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