Joy: A Novel

A story of happiness.. Ariston Letrero is a renaissance man: audio producer insurance salesman musician composer part-time fast food mascot and a philanderer who quickly and quietly abandons his wife and son Lucas at the peak of his mottled career for a new life in America with his lover Odette.Years and years later he sends an email to his son Lucas Letrero an advertising man who has been brought up on super robot cartoons Catholic school truisms and a diet of fast food and loneliness and who has reconnected with his childhood sweetheart Dedes who has made a post-annulment life for herself in America.In the 30-odd years in between is a story that sings songs and anthems of identity relations loneliness and loss and how they figure in the lives of contemporary Filipinos who are not scattered across space and time but who are also connected and separated at the same time.Joy is a story of joy-lived forward backward sideways and upside down in lives and loves that are fragmented separated gathered made virtual and made real.