Host: Pam M
Attendees: Cheryl, Janna, Allison, Michelle, Susan, JJ
The House of Broken Angels
The House of Broken Angels is, in fact, a party. Also a funeral. When the novel
opens, Big Angel de la Cruz, the patriarch of a sprawling Mexican-American
family, is getting ready to bury his mother, and to die.
(First sentence: "Big Angel was late to his own mother's funeral."
He's in the late stages of terminal cancer, and so he gathers
his relatives for a weekend-long doubleheader. Saturday, funeral. Sunday, his
last birthday party ......... The House of Broken Angels overflows with the pleasure
of family. You wouldn't be wrong to take this book as a rebuttal to Tolstoy's happy-family dictum.
I'm not saying the de la Cruz family is perfect. Its members struggle with addiction,
exhaustion, alienation, frustrated ambition. One is married to a woman who might
be a demon. One spends the whole funeral and most of the birthday party outside
in his car, too stubborn and afraid to come inside. Everyone is grieving, Big Angel
most of all, and yet this is not a novel about grief. It's a novel about how amazing it
is to have been alive. (March 7, 2018 NPR Book Review)
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
This wasn't the most favorite book we've ever read, but seemed to be a book which,
once we dissected it a little, found there was more to appreciate, if not like about it.
We learned that this novel was based on the author's true experience of his
half-brother's death. If nothing else, we were introduced to Luis Alberto Urrea,
a Mexican-American poet, novelist and essayist who has more than a dozen
published works and several literary awards.
We ultimately rated it about 3.2 stars ***
Next month's selection is Where the Crawdad Sings by Delia Owens.
The May book is Maid by Stephanie Land
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