Review: The Weaverbirds by YB Mangunwijaya

So! I finally finished this book. It's been, what, four months since I borrowed it? And I only finished it now. Lovely. The school library is going to rake in lots of money.

This book is, well, it's not difficult, per se. I just had a hard time of getting into it. The book had the double sin of a) written in 1st person and b) contains a lot of sentimental Indonesian-esque romance that I don't really like. Romance is fine, but Indonesian authors tend to have this style that whatever romance they wrote is going to end up really sappy and/or cheesy. Since most old novels are written in 1st person (my most hated POV) and have these sappy romance (that my cold heart does not understand), you can see why I don't really read them much.

But as a book connoisseur, I have to read a lot of books, crossing genre and time, even if that means I have to get out of my comfort zone. Or spend four months reading a 300 page book. 

Okay. So. The review. Right.

The Weaverbirds (Indonesian: Burung-Burung Manyar) tells the story of Setadewa (Teto) and Larasati (Atik). Teto is the son of a KNIL soldier, KNIL being the private army of the Dutch colonist in Indonesia, and an Indo mother. Atik is still Teto's cousin of some sort; her mother is the adopted daughter of Teto's father's uncle. Teto's father comes from a blue-blooded native Javanese family, but he likes being "Dutch" more.

During the Japanese occupation, Teto's father joined the rebellion, and was subsequently caught. Teto's mother was kept as a mistress by a Japanese official to protect Teto's father, and Teto was left in the care of Atik's family. Teto vowed that he will avenge his parents, and joined KNIL once he was old enough. When the Japanese left however, Teto was faced by the Republican factions; that is people who wanted and have declared Indonesia's independence. Teto viewed the Republicans as ex-collaborators with Japan, and thus viewed Indonesia's independence as not something that they earn, but something that is given by Japan. Not to mention, after the war, the fate of his parents is still unknown. Thus, begins Teto's quest to "help" his homeland and find the truth about his parents.

 Structurally, the novel itself is divided into three parts: a prologue of some sorts that tells the story of Teto and Atik's childhood, a middle part consisting the bulk of the action, and an epilogue. 

I find the concept refreshing, because Indonesian novels often have this black-and-white view of the world, that the good guys will always be good and the bad guys will always be bad. This is a boring, not to mention unrealistic, point of view of the world. The good guys is not always good and the bad guys are not always bad. So it's really refreshing to see a flipped perspective; the Republicans became the antagonist and the colonizing Dutch became the protagonist.

Maybe it's because of this I find the middle part to be the most exciting of the three. It details Teto's struggle to reconcile his vision of Indonesia, and the Indonesia he's seeing right now. Teto does not go to war because he hates Indonesia; he loves Indonesia and wants to free her from the Republicans whom he viewed as Japanese collaborators. Teto's mother frequently becomes a sort of allegory for Indonesia herself, in the eyes of Teto: she was a happy housewife in the Dutch period, only to become a trapped mistress in the Japanese occupation, and later institutionalized after the war. Indonesia too, according to Teto, is subjugated but happy during the Dutch period, trapped in a broken promise during the Japanese occupation, and has become insane in her independence.

Teto's views and behaviors is a departure from the usual Indonesian heroes that is usually portrayed as calm and polite even in the midst of gunfire. Here, Teto is brash and foul-mouthed, but he had the heart of a lion, and a firm principle taught by his father. He's an intelligent boy; he knew in the middle that what he's doing, what KNIL and him are doing, is basically worthless but still he fought because his father taught him not to run away from a fight. And by God, he didn't, even if it meant sacrificing his only chance on being with the girl he loved.

I expected Atik to be one-dimensional and flatter than a cardboard, but she was quite fleshed out, which is a nice surprise. Atik too is struggling that she may or may not have feelings for Teto, her childhood friend slash distant cousin and a traitor to the Republic. Atik herself works for the Republic, even becoming an aide for the then-Foreign affairs minster. She has to learn to reconcile her loyalty for her motherland and her affection to an agent of the enemy.

The prose is wonderful and this is one of the few first-person POVs novel that I actually like. YB Mangunwijaya conveys Teto's feelings so perfectly that you can't help to root a little bit for the Dutch, if only to give Teto his happy ending. The changing of POVs is something I severely dislike in most modern novels since it's just hella confusing, but Rama Mangun (as he's affectionately called) uses it so efficiently to portray the characters' feelings, to let us see the two-sides of the coin, that I can't complain about it.

My problem with this novel is that we really don't see Atik and Teto's relationship developing properly. Literally 70% of their screentime are spent apart from each other. We only get to see their interaction in the beginning and in the end; they rarely interact in the middle part. When I first read Teto declaring his love to Atik in his inner monologue I was like "bruh? You only met this girl for two months, tops!" It feels odd to me because they only met each other for a short time in their childhood, and it didn't really make sense for both of them to be violently in love with each other. They talked about their closeness a lot, but we don't actually see how close they are, or how their closeness develops in the first place. As individual characters, they are well-developed, but as a pairing they are not.

I also have issues with the length of the first part and the third part. The first part should be longer, and the third part should be shorter. The ending is firm and resolute, but the execution is off. There's a lot of padding in the third part but the last pages seems rushed, as if the author has a page limit and he's nearing that limit so he better wrap the story up. The conflict in the last part just kind of...hangs there with no development whatsoever beyond a few short paragraphs. I didn't even realize there's a conflict until 3/4 in. Inserting a new conflict at the end of the book is pretty unusual, so I understand if the author wants it to be done quickly, but if that's the case then why does he insert it in the first place? It's completely unnecessary and throws the reader off.

There's also this bizarre subplot involving a minor character that does not have anything to do with the plot, whatsoever. The pages for that, I think, can more efficiently used instead to flesh out the story more, but alas it does not happen. The third part is the most boring of them all, part of the reason why this takes me a long time to finish after whooshing through the middle part.

It is a good book, and it is a good story, but it's marketed everywhere as a love story, and I didn't really feel the whole romance angle. As a war-novel, it's good, it's great; I would've given it a four-star. But you have to call an orange an orange, and as a romance novel it's very unsatisfying. This, coupled with other plot issues and pointless padding, reduces the grade to only three-star.

Final Rating:

Book Information:

Title: Burung-Burung Manyar (English: The Weaverbirds)
Author: YB. Mangunwijaya
Pub./Edition: Fourteenth edition. Jakarta: Djambatan, 2004 (orig pub. date: August 1981)
ISBN: 979-428-560-9