*** Three excellent books KRIPOTKIN By Alfred A. Yuson (The Philippine Star) | Updated March 18, 2013 - 12:00am *** Darryl (sic) Delgado has been so underrated among our contemporary fiction writers. I’m glad that she finally came up with her first collection of short stories last year: After the Body Displaces Water (UST Publishing House). In these 13 pieces (or are there only 11?), we are treated to a gamut of fictive forms — 1st-person, 2nd-person and 3rd-person points of view, omniscient, epistolary, meta, 3-in-1 variations like a choose-your-own Rashomon adventure… The writing is consummate: cerebral, controlled, carefully polished without calling attention to its carats, however we sense an objective correlative here, a pound of psychological flesh there, a template of a picture puzzle resolved to its last jigsaw, but barely so, just so. Form follows function, readability coevals imagination, with characters sliding not jumping out of boxes, and all situations unfolding with supreme sentience. The afterword by Rosario Cruz Lucero says it: “For each story, however, she doesn’t confine herself to the conventions of one subgenre; instead, she makes two or more of these subgenres fold into each other to create improbably neat works of fiction.” I like best the story “In Remission,” where a cancer patient of diminishing hopes, a 39-year-old virgin, spends time at a resort hotel and finds her senses awakened, to the smell of oysters, for one, and a drink called Deluge (antidote to her drought), until she is deflowered by a much younger chef. Sorry: no spoiler alert. Much more ambiguity happens, in her thoughts as well as in her own resolve that determines whether the jigsaw pieces fit. When she consults her doctor, she arrives at epiphany — that of her own awakened strength. It’s all splendid storytelling, with shifts in central consciousness jostling gently with environments of both dreamtime and hyper-reality. In “In Remission,” poignance pre-empts pathos, owing to such assiduous craft. The shy lady’s humor is said to be “of dry variety”; we hope her tumor goes the same way. Ultimately, the prose is exemplary: “He was fanning the grill, turning huge, stuffed squid over hot coals, and smiling most sweetly at the guests, many of whom were matrons dressed for the ballroom at the hotel’s basement. He looked up briefly and waved greasy tongs at her. She pretended not to see him, as seeing him had the immediate effect of fever and a general weakening on the vague area of her groin which, as it were, seemed as raw and tender as a freshly-scraped, open wound. An ugly gangrene.” From greasy tongs to gangrene, all the judicious elements of imagistic detail, motifs, tone, diction, and tropes of purpose hit the G-spot of narrative exultation. Brava! An international labor rights NGO careerist, Darryl Delgado should also be pressed into service soon as a creative writing workshop panelist. She can certainly teach young writers how to woman up with all the quiet bells and whistles.