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april_does_feral_sometimes 's review for:
The House of Broken Angels
by Luis Alberto Urrea
The title 'The House of Broken Angels' is a perfect one for this novel. A domestic fiction, the story is loosely based on the author Luis Alberto Urrea's real family.
The history of four generations, from the mid-twentieth century to current time, is told in flashbacks while a birthday party for the family's Mexican-American patriarch, Big Angel, is planned. Big Angel is seventy and dying of cancer. He reflects about his own brutal father, Don Antonio, and about being a Man and a father, while surveying the gathering of the three current generations of his extended family, prematurely in attendance before his planned birthday party because of the unexpected death of his mother, Mamá América. We readers also follow along in the activities of several other members of the family.
Perla is Big Angel's devoted wife. Her sister, La Gloriosa, was and still is the beauty of the family, much desired still by younger brothers-in-law. Little Angel, Big Angel's youngest half-brother is such a one, although his mother was an American woman, Betty, not Perla, a result of Don Antonio deserting his Mexican family to live in America. Little Angel moved to Seattle, and he does not feel very Mexican or accepted by his large Mexican family despite his fluent bilingualism. However, he accepts the invitation to attend Mamá América's funeral and his older brother's birthday party, re-establishing many family relationships. There are some surprising revelations, such as some of the third generations' involvements in drugs and gangs. One of the unexpected developments is the spilling over into Big Angel's party plans a drug-addicted nephew’s issue with a gang banger.
The result of these marriages and pairings was a lot of now adult children - and some of them are profiled in depth in this story through flashbacks as well as current life events. The result is somewhat confusing to read, and I wish some notice that a family tree had been supplied in the back had been said before I discovered it in turning the last page! Explanations of family relationships and connections are brief or slowly revealed in the text, so I recommend paying attention and a close reading is required. These are my only complaints about the structure of the book.
My last quibble is related to my predilections - I felt claustrophobic due to the family dramas. The book is full of heartwarming humor and ordinary family dramas - especially in accurately detailing in brief vignettes the dying body of Big Angel, but I simply find such close large families exhausting in real life. The fact that I was triggered by the book into feeling suffocated is actually a tribute to the author's talent!
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The history of four generations, from the mid-twentieth century to current time, is told in flashbacks while a birthday party for the family's Mexican-American patriarch, Big Angel, is planned. Big Angel is seventy and dying of cancer. He reflects about his own brutal father, Don Antonio, and about being a Man and a father, while surveying the gathering of the three current generations of his extended family, prematurely in attendance before his planned birthday party because of the unexpected death of his mother, Mamá América. We readers also follow along in the activities of several other members of the family.
Perla is Big Angel's devoted wife. Her sister, La Gloriosa, was and still is the beauty of the family, much desired still by younger brothers-in-law. Little Angel, Big Angel's youngest half-brother is such a one, although his mother was an American woman, Betty, not Perla, a result of Don Antonio deserting his Mexican family to live in America. Little Angel moved to Seattle, and he does not feel very Mexican or accepted by his large Mexican family despite his fluent bilingualism. However, he accepts the invitation to attend Mamá América's funeral and his older brother's birthday party, re-establishing many family relationships. There are some surprising revelations, such as some of the third generations' involvements in drugs and gangs. One of the unexpected developments is the spilling over into Big Angel's party plans a drug-addicted nephew’s issue with a gang banger.
The result of these marriages and pairings was a lot of now adult children - and some of them are profiled in depth in this story through flashbacks as well as current life events. The result is somewhat confusing to read, and I wish some notice that a family tree had been supplied in the back had been said before I discovered it in turning the last page! Explanations of family relationships and connections are brief or slowly revealed in the text, so I recommend paying attention and a close reading is required. These are my only complaints about the structure of the book.
My last quibble is related to my predilections - I felt claustrophobic due to the family dramas. The book is full of heartwarming humor and ordinary family dramas - especially in accurately detailing in brief vignettes the dying body of Big Angel, but I simply find such close large families exhausting in real life. The fact that I was triggered by the book into feeling suffocated is actually a tribute to the author's talent!
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