The House of Broken Angels by Luis Alberto Urrea
Little Brown
Pp. 321
Big Angel (Miguel Angel de La
Cruz) is planning his last birthday party before he succumbs to the cancer that
is killing him. And then his mother dies. The family gathers to commemorate her
life and to celebrate his over one Rabelaisian weekend of relationships and
recriminations in San Diego. Among the guests is Little Angel, Big Angel’s half-brother,
who shares the same father, Don Antonio, but a different life: his mother was
not Mexican as the rest of the family are, and the racial resentments are
evident as stereotypes rub shoulders with sensitivity.
The party is raucous with lots of
food and all its cultural associations, and the novel is peopled with a host of
characters; there are so many people (and lots of children), that it is hard to
keep up with who is related to whom by marriage or previous entanglements,
especially when people have nicknames too. When Little Angel arrives he has a
notebook in which he keeps a cheat sheet; this is a great idea and one that is highly
recommended for the reader.
The divide between the Mexicans
and the Americans is blurred. Little Angel wants to speak Spanish to his
family, but they don’t accommodate this wish. “He tried, and they insisted on
answering him in English. Though they knew perfectly well that he spoke Spanish
as well as they did and better than their children did. Each side had something
to prove, and none of them knew what it was.” Two different worlds and cultures
collide in an unspoken competition. Little Angel feels torn between the nationalities
and he refutes the glib assumptions that one has for the other. For many,
America is better, but for others, Mexico is superior in its transparency.
The brothers share a father and
the memories of his toxic masculinity. Although he was a dominating brute who
abandoned both of their mothers, Big and Little Angel loved him and learned
some of their behaviour from him. They share experiences in a series of picaresque
reminisces. “The brothers lay side by side, shuffling through so many memories.
So many imperfect scenes. It felt as though they had opened a box of old
photographs, each of the pictures torn and tattered.”
Big
Angel also thinks in scents and smells, which trigger memory. As his body
deteriorates, other senses float forward: “Early morning before dawn was best,
when he didn’t remember he was dying. For a moment, he thought he had a future.
And he savoured his past. Today, it tasted of butterscotch.” The novel is elegiac,
but it also fluidly distorts linear timelines. It is a riotous, messy book that
depicts a celebration and observance of both life and death with a backdrop of
cultural confusion. Perhaps we shouldn’t have to identify with one thing or
another, but can select the aspects on which we would like to focus, and drift
along on currents of abandon.
