There have been many excellent novels about the immigrant experience in America. But I feel like the richly detailed and engrossing story of “America Is Not the Heart” by Elaine Castillo shows a really unique point of view I've not read about before. The story primarily revolves around Geronima De Vera who is nicknamed Hero when she arrives in America from the Philippines. She goes to live with her aunt, uncle and feisty young cousin Roni in Milpitas (a suburb outside San Jose, California) where she primarily helps looks after the 7 year old girl. As an illegal immigrant she’s not able to seek out work despite being a trained doctor back in the Philippines. Even if she had papers to find employment she’d have to retrain in medicine as her uncle has painfully discovered. Though he was a highly respected surgeon in the Philippines he can only find low-paid manual work in America. Hero has gone through many difficult experiences to arrive here and the novel slowly discloses the complexity of her life over the course of the novel, but it integrates this so gracefully into accounts of Hero’s day-to-day life in this Filipino-American community and her relationship with a woman she meets there named Rosalyn. Of course Hero’s life has been shaped by her heritage, but the story doesn’t hang on the question of national identity as much as how she’s constantly evolving as an individual.

It’s especially striking to read a novel that centres around a bisexual female protagonist and the story powerfully captures the development of Hero’s sexuality – alongside Rosalyn’s who is refreshingly blunt in her forthright desire to be with Hero. Not since reading Amy Bloom’s novel “White Houses” have I read a novel that considers so meaningfully the dynamics of physical intimacy. This novel deals with that so honestly without feeling the need to mask the act using lyrical language or overwrought prose. It straightforwardly lays out how desire, pleasure and emotion mingle in sex. But it also shows the challenges of building a same-sex relationship with the influence of family and a tight-knit community around them.

Surrounding Hero’s very personal story Castillo powerfully describes the way economics shape people’s lives more than questions of nationality or politics. She includes how corporate enterprise manipulates the living standards and health of whole communities. The story also shows how poverty makes people aliens within their own society: “You already know that the first thing that makes you foreign to a place is being born poor in it.” The novel is filled with people trying to belong by buying the right perfume or correcting their skin, but no matter how much they try to change there are elemental parts of their being which stick: “your accent still hasn't left, and you're starting to understand what it means to have baggage. Baggage means no matter how far you go, no matter how many times you immigrate, there are countries in you you'll never leave.” What I loved most about this novel is how it demonstrates that Hero is like a country unto herself changing in time and led only be an instinctual feeling for what she wants her future to be.

Stunning, important, powerful, breathless. I loved it. I think (and hope) that it will become a cult read, a huge book for the summer, and be on numerous lists come the end of this year. Unlike some readers, I struggled to read it quickly as I found it quite heavy, but I adored every second nonetheless.

The prologue is a stunning example of second person narrative that I was just slightly disappointed that Paz fades as a character. I was very emotionally invested in Hero's tale, but I wish that either Paz played a larger part of perhaps that second person narrative was woven into a few other parts of the novel.

This is a really beautiful book.

You hurtle through Pacita's early life in the Philippines. And then she grows up, moves to the US, becomes distant, a mother, wife, aunt, working 16-hour shifts. And Hero takes centre stage, recently arrived and caring for Paz's daughter in exchange for a roof over her head and no questions. We learn her story slowly through flashbacks and her gradual opening up to new friends, as she builds a family and a new life for herself.

Castillo's writing is urgent. This is a multilingual world - you can't expect to understand every word said. She plays with time, some sections racing, others moving more slowly. Even the minor characters seem fully formed, with backstories. But what I loved the most were her depictions of friendship, messy, complicated and real.

Shocking, heartbreaking, deeply affecting, confronting, balls-out, raw, passionate, sensual.

Those are just some of the words I noted down whilst reading this book. An amazing debut from Elaine Castillo who for me epitomises a good writer: someone who is able to convey a range of emotions and feelings that many people would find difficult to articulate.

"There was just a fist of emotion in her chest, but it was too tightly closed to tell just what emotion it was; she figured it was grief, or even just shock, but she knew it wasn’t that, not really. It was close to the feeling of someone finally turning out a light in a room that had long ago been emptied – shelves dustless, floor bare."

Told from the perspectives of three women, each character is richly described, and all have believable intricacies and complexities. Castillo seems to understand people with all of their strengths and flaws and describes them with such eloquence and ease. I don’t often come across a sex scene in a book so beautifully and naturally written, also refreshing is the fact it’s between two women. I also enjoyed the little observations that capture snapshots of real life so effortlessly that help bring the story to life:

"She closed the door, and he shook his head. Nah, it’s not closed all the way. You gotta really slam it. She opened the door again, then yanked it closed with the full strength of her shoulder, making the entire car shake."

The story includes disturbing references to historical events in the Philippines in the 1990s which I immediately wanted to look up and research further. These glimpses of the relatively recent past are fascinating and informative but never detract from the main thrust of the story and the importance of the characters. I was pretty clueless on the history and politics of the Philippines so it was quite shocking to read about the horrors of the civil war and the brutalities committed.

The use of different languages such as Tagalog, Ilocano and Pangasinan was extremely effective – the speech isn’t always translated, which I guess some could find off-putting, but I found it added substance and realism to the characters’ family dynamic. The mentions of traditional food dishes and delicacies were mouth-wateringly described, and made me vividly recall eating pandan desserts and various noodle dishes when I lived in Asia.

While the Filipino immigrant experience in the US looms large over the book, it is not exclusive at all. It is written in a very inclusive way so that I think everyone who reads it will relate to it on a different and personal level. The book’s strength is its cast of characters and Castillo’s skilful creation of them, which allows us to delve so deeply into their lives that at times it feels like a fly-on-the-wall autobiographical account. The book is ultimately about families, friendships, love and pain and I highly recommend it.

Thanks to NetGalley.co.uk for my ARC.

I can’t really fault this book so am giving it 5 stars.

So, this is secretly the best romance novel of the year. It's a lot of other things, too, but I was so breathlessly invested in the love story that I had to keep taking breaks to pace furiously. It's unabashedly warm and often surprisingly funny, and if its web of food and music and sex and family and trauma is sometimes messy and sprawling then that's so clearly the point that it would be churlish to complain. Honestly, though, I'm struggling to focus on things other than Hero and Rosalyn - it's such a lovely, full-blooded queer romance, and I am hugely grateful for it.

There's only one slightly disappointing thing about this book-- that the prologue introduces us to Paz and her compelling story, which completely drew me in, but then she fades into the background as a secondary character for the rest of the book. Don’t get me wrong, I loved Hero’s tale, but I never quite got over losing that connection with Paz.

That being said, this is a beautiful novel. Castillo writes about the Filipino migrant experience across three generations of women and she captures it, not through grand events, but through small details and poignant interactions between characters.

Hero de Vera arrives in California, having left her old life behind but still bearing its scars. Her uncle Pol has given her a second chance in the Bay Area, yet she must navigate this strange new world and the new relationships that come with it - most notably those with Pol's wife Paz, their daughter Roni, and new love Rosalyn.

"As for loving America or not loving America, those aren’t your problems, either. Your word for love is survival. Everything else is a story that isn’t about you."

It's a bit complex in parts, with jumps to two odd, but somehow fitting, second-person narratives, lots of untranslated Tagalog, Pangasinan and Ilocano, and flashbacks. But the characters are so vividly-drawn and the family saga so compelling to me that it was easy to persevere through some of Castillo's more dense and complicated narrative choices.

We've seen a lot of migrant fiction in the last couple of years, but America Is Not the Heart carves out its own unique place for itself. It is a quiet, carefully-crafted family saga, driven by its characters. It is a story of leaving places, but never quite leaving those places. And it is a beautiful queer romance. Personally, I knew nothing about the Philippines and its political history before reading this so it was an educational read, too.