MANILA, Philippines—More than being a novel, Alan Navarra’s “Girl Trouble” is a journey into the depths of a young, creative and painfully hip Filipino male mind. It’s about the thought processes of Robin, a young man from the province who has joined Manila’s urban workforce.

The book is a look into his psyche as he navigates through the city and its denizens, trying to understand the often unpredictable opposite sex in what may very well be a modern, albeit jaded, quest for love.

The book deviates from the story-telling techniques of most books. “Girl Trouble” is not a straight-up story. It begins with a one-page radio script, with some mass-market radio station DJ doing his spiel after song lyrics before entering into a rapid first-person narration of Robin himself.

After two pages of this, we go to a poem before we see the first digitally enhanced black and white photo and then a dialogue between the protagonist and his friends, in script form. It reads like a post-modern, hip poem.

There are more scripted parts of people talking to each other. There are more digitally manipulated B&W photos, music playlists detailing what he’s listening to, illustrations and story boards. It’s an almost dizzying foray into all the possible mediums of print but put together, they end up chronicling the life of Robin based on his thoughts.

This is the most extreme version of first-person narrative.

Jumping from Filipino to English with graceful ease (and sometimes Ilonggo), the book is about Robin’s thoughts through and through. More amazingly is how Navarra captures the surrealistic quality of dreams when Robin shares these with us and how he captures the playful banter of people, whether it’s between friends or lovers. Early in the book, Robin is having a drinking session with his friends and, like friends do, ask hypothetical questions like who would you rather sleep with and both choices are people you would never sleep with in the first place. They dissect their college experiences with the self-assurance provided by the present and then, out of the blue, ask personal questions without provocation.

Be warned: much like the vocabulary of most Filipino male young adults, there are tons of curse words and vulgarities, but they are part and parcel of the book’s reflection on the male condition at that age. There is a lot of frustration and anger in Robin; he details his strategy in getting a girl, whoever is within reach, to bed and while they are in the act of sex, details his exact thoughts of her in a monologue. He exerts so much effort only to regret it later. Robin wants everything but will settle for whatever he can get. The book is powerful because it is brutally honest in its portrayal of its main character: ambitious yet already defeated by the rigors of the everyday struggle. It doesn’t pull punches in presenting a not-so-typical young Filipino today.

The book manages to explore the wants and needs, the very nature of a not-so-typical young Filipino man, and by doing so, ends up exploring the mysteries of what he constantly pines for—the opposite sex.

Inventive and real, Alan Navarra’s “Girl Trouble” is a brave and bold new work with the contemporary reader in mind. The cover warns that parental guidance is advised for explicit content but it doesn’t warn you of an engrossing reading experience. But I guess Navarra didn’t want to give it away so soon.