Moderation, Elaine Castillo
Speculative fiction for literary fiction readers, Moderation is a very impressively constructed novel. The storyline follows Girlie’s journey into moderating for a virtual reality theme park, which is very interesting on its own, but there are two equally compelling threads that run through the story: social commentary that comes with Girlie’s life as a Filipina woman in Las Vegas, and a masterfully built slow-burn romance between Girlie and William. I don’t know which one I loved more - I was rooting for Girlie from the start, and I found myself wanting to know endlessly more about every aspect of her life.
What hooked me immediately to this novel is its unique voice. It’s sharp and unapologetic, and the narrator immediately feels like a sarcastic friend who shrugs everything off but we know well enough to know is bothered. Girlie has a tendency to dismiss things, to not dig into them at any more depth than she needs to, but her small observations carry so much weight that I found myself, on more than one occasion, pausing to reflect on a single throwaway comment. Doing so felt unusual for a fast-paced novel like this, but it also felt like the novel’s superpower.
The setting of a VR theme park, and character development explored through this very unusual setting, offers a particular reading experience where the character’s experiences in virtual reality affect her daily life, and our experiences while reading about her daily life affect our real lives. It’s an odd kind of inception, but one that’s so well built (and clearly very meticulously researched), that I never once doubted it.
And the title is genius: Moderation is what Girlie does, but it’s also what is expected of her as a woman of colour, as a person who isn’t allowed the space to process heavy emotions or past trauma of her own, and as part of an expansive family history that regularly overwhelms and erases her.
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