Review: The House of Broken Angels

The House of Broken Angels by Luis Alberto Urrea
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This one has a majestic premise: we get to see as many as six generations reflected in the single month between the deaths of two members of an extended family. Their different stories telescope around the gathering(s), and we get backstory piled on top of backstory. From their roots in Mexico, through their time entering furtively into the U.S., to their all-American Spanglish childhoods, we get a glimpse of several decades of history as it has stamped itself on these individuals.

On top of that, Urrea has a real gift for voices. The oldest generations speak to us in an English (at times given to us as implicit translation) that’s formal and poetic. The next, exemplified by the patriarch and central character Big Angel, speaks matter-of-factly. And the youngest, Big Angel’s children and young adult grandchildren, talk with a cocky ease that’s sometimes reminiscent of a Junot Diaz narrator.

Those are real and memorable strengths, and there were times I was reading this that I thought it might be a masterpiece on the level of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. At the same time, though, there’s something inert about the narrative here. It feels sometimes as if we’re introduced to one family member and then another and then another. In each case we get a full backstory, but it’s already concluded. There’s just not that much at stake, not much that carries narrative uncertainty.

That central problem manifests itself particularly toward the end of this. We know from the start that Big Angel is dying, so there’s not much at stake as he winds down. He’d like to leave on good terms with everyone, but it’s not as if he has any particular amends to make. Various others have problems of one sort or another, but in the teeming cast, none seem really to stand out. There are, at times, almost a soap opera’s worth of mini-crises occupying one and another.

That begins to change somewhat toward the final third when [SPOILER:] one of the younger relatives confronts the gangster who shot and killed a couple of other family members years before. We’ve heard about those murders as a wound that will never heal, but it feels more contrived to be happening in the midst of the reality of the funerals of Big Angel’s mother and Big Angel’s imminent death.

[DOUBLE SPOILER:] Things get even more contrived when the gangster interrupts a family festivity threatening to kill one of the grandchildren and Big Angel, often unable by that point even to stand, puts himself between the would-be gunman and his child. It’s melodramatic, which might be OK if the whole of this were more clearly melodrama, and it feels orchestrated. The accidental machismo of Big Angel’s heroism serves as a climax, but it’s a climax that feels incidental rather than organic.

I’m aware that I read this one a bit too quickly – and took a few days break in between – so I missed some of the nuance of the different characters’ experiences. Still, I can’t help feeling that, beautiful as this is with its different voices and multi-generational span, it doesn’t live up to its early potential. I do love the effect of the first third of this, and I won’t be surprised if Urrea gives us a fuller masterpiece in years to come. As much as this delivers, it feels as if it could have been even more remarkable.


View all my reviews