A nonfiction love story and mystery.
Alexis Tioseco and Nika Bohinc were two young film journalists deeply in love. Alexis was the only child of his Filipino Canadian family who chose to stay in the Philippines. He wrote an open letter to Nika asking her to join him in his country. So she did, for love, leaving her own homeland, Slovenia, behind.
On September 1, 2009, four intruders murdered the couple in their Quezon City home. Alexis was 28 and Nika was 29. The couple’s tragedy rippled across the Philippines and the world, leaving devastation and few answers in its wake.
A year later, a young Filipina American author felt haunted by the unsolved case. So she began an investigation of her own.
Reviews
“In these politically charged times fraught with conflicting readings on race and patriotism, Filipino-American author Laurel Fantauzzo may be the country’s most important writer. Humble and soft-spoken, Fantauzzo would probably object to such claims, but in her explorations on what it means to be mixed race, she has, through an outsider’s lens, grazed upon what it really means to be Filipino. . . . At once a foreigner and a compatriot, she writes with an objective distance most of us who are too mired in the chaos cannot afford, but it is the distance of a conscience, outside the body but of the soul.”
— The Philippine Star
“The First Impulse invites and deserves a wide readership. It's a capacious book and an ambitious one, and it will reward readers interested in how we make our lives worthwhile in the midst of all we can’t control. And, too, it will reward anyone who has felt caught between homes, or caught between love and worry and frustration and anger for the home they've chosen, but who hopes their own first impulse will always be, as Alexis Tioseco put it, of love.”
— Cha: An Asian Literary Journal
“Meticulous in its storytelling, and searing in its social commentary, The First Impulse is probing and plaintive, its answers inviting more questions. It is at its height a meditation on identity, migration and art, and as much or more than it does or is any of these things, it is also a love story. . . . Like certain letters, The First Impulse lays itself open and invites us in. It has something to show us.”
— Positively Filipino
“Through Alexis and Nika, and her own encounters with it, Fantauzzo tells the story of contemporary Philippines. The First Impulse is a brutally honest dissection of an infuriatingly flawed society on the verge of disruption. It was written shortly before the rise of Duterte, the murders of thousands, and the applause by millions; when one could still criticize the status quo without being swarmed by the offended with the zeal of religious fanatics. . . . In unraveling the mystery, Fantauzzo brings the reader into urban poor communities, the dynamics of internal migration, the relations between boss and domestic servant in a quasi-modern society.”
—GMA News
“A mix of true crime, memoir and love story that tries to make sense of the unsolved murder of two young film critics in love. This window into Manila’s film scene grapples with questions of identity and commitment to place.”
— Philadelphia Inquirer, Best Books of 2017
“The First Impulse holds a story that is so many things at once: romance, film criticism, memoir, travel, politics, crime. But all of it is held together by Fantauzzo’s amazing prose. The book would be good enough to read just for her writing, but her text coupled with this stunning story makes for a powerful read. . . . Alexis Tioseco and Nika Bohinc are celebrated and grieved for through Fantauzzo’s The First Impulse. Like their loved, lost lives, this book is unforgettable.”