5 epic family saga stars to The House of Broken Angels! 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 I have found a new author to love. Luis Alberto Urrea is a storyteller, and that is the highest compliment I can give any author. Big Angel de la Cruz is the patriarch of his family, and he is dying. The book opens with him having to say goodbye to his mother at her funeral while also knowing he is living his last days. Big Angel recounts the story of his family and how they came to live in the United States, a tale filled with se...

The House of Broken Angels is a poignant novel featuring a Mexican immigrant family living in California. The beloved patriarch of the clan, Big Angel, is dying from cancer and calls on his entire extended family to gather to celebrate his last birthday. Spoiling the party plan is the fact that Big Angel's mother, Grandma America, dies a few days before the event and her funeral takes place the day before the birthday party. The book is a collection of family memories of different kinds, some ar...

[3+] "This family. They were all crazy. And they talked too much." The words of an intruder to the de la Cruz funeral/birthday celebration resonated with me. I felt like a guest invited to watch the unspooling of intimate memories, rivalries, inside jokes, over the top antics and most of all -- love. There were too many names and relationships to keep track of and my attention drifted in and out. Yet Urrea writes with heart and humor and I was content to hang out until the end.

A funeral, followed the next day by what is to be the last birthday party of the family's patriarch, Big Angel. Big Ange land little Angel, brothers from the same father but different mothers, Little Angels mother is white. A big, extended clan, this family, was difficult to keep track of who was who and who went with whom, but it didn't matter, the message is what counted. What it means to be American, to try to adapt to a new culture.Over the course of one day, this large family comes together...

In 2018 I began to re-read novels with frequency and zeal. I'm not talking about re-reading Shakespeare plays and Jane Austen novels and new translations of The Iliad and all the other stuff we all agree is worth re-reading, if and when we have the time. I'm talking about turning around and re-reading a newly published book within months or weeks or days of my first reading, a practice that I've come to embrace and to even look forward to, even though (like all the other avid readers here) I hav...

I knew I wanted to read this book the minute I heard about it. A very special thanks to Goodreads friend, Truman. His passion and energy for this book had me jumping with my own excitement. “Big Angel, [patriarch of the family], was turning seventy. It felt very old to him. At the same time, it felt far too young. He had not intended to leave the party so soon. I’ve tried to be good, he told his invisible interviewer.” “His mother had made it to the edge of one hundred. He had thought he’d at

Marlin Brando move over - there is a new Godfather in town, the Mexican, Big Angel. Which is an ironic name as he is crippled with cancer and no longer the strong, mammoth man he was.This is the dying of a patriarch, who is getting ready to celebrate his last birthday. The very same weekend turns into a funeral as his 100 year old mother passes away. The party, however, must go on and the entire family mourns and celebrates the end of an era. History is relived and wow, this family is as tight a...

It’s ridiculous how much I liked Luis Alberto Urrea’s new novel House of Broken Angels. This book made me laugh so forcefully that I alarmed the people in the DMV sitting next to me. No doubt they feared the inevitable final collapse of my sanity was at hand. It made me weep so vigorously that the Stop and Shop cashier forgot to scan my double coupons, and the bagger (in such a rush to hand me her hankie) bagged my loaf of ciabatta beneath the cantaloupe. There were moments that enraged my sensi...

I had a couple of minor quibbles reading this but overall I thought it was a great story well told. I wouldn't mind if it won the TOB2019. I need to re-evaluate my brackets.

"The entire history of his family, the world itself, the solar system and galaxy, swirled around him now in weird silence, and he felt blood dribbled down inside his body and the clock, the clock, chipped away at his existence."4.5 starsBig Angel (Miguel Angel De La Cruz) has invited his family to his home in San Diego to celebrate his last birthday. His Mother passed away a few days before his birthday, so the family has her funeral one day and his birthday party the next. Two very different fa...

Miguel Angel de La Cruz (Big Angel) relishes what time he has left as the partriarch of a large family now concentrated on the California side of the border. The main story takes place during a particularly dramatic window starting with his mother’s funeral, followed the next day by what he knew would be his last birthday. Cancer would see to that. The family gathered for both events. There were countless POV characters, and plenty of back-stories to fill in. One character, a half-brother their

Luis Urrea has joined the ranks of great American writers with his new novel, The House of Broken Angels. (Think John Steinbeck here--a worthy comparison). Miguel Angel De La Cruz, known as Big Angel, the patriarch of the family, is dying of cancer and wants to celebrate his last birthday with his extensive family, a blowout party...but first they must bury Grandma America who has so obligingly died first. Urrea writes about the Mexican-American experience with both humor and gravitas but he nai...

Well, of course, I loved this book, but then my beautiful daughter-in-law is hispanic, born in Tijuana, and replanted here in North Carolina, when my son returned to his home state in 2008. I visited their ‘garage kingdom’ in 07' when they were living in her parent's attached garage in San Diego. So many things that Luis Alberto Urrea writes about in ‘The House of Broken Angels,’ I saw while I was there. The border crossing, the border patrol, the food, the generosity of Mexicans, the music, and...

The House of Broken Angels is a beautiful and heartwarming tale of three generations of a Mexican and Mexican-American family taking place between La Paz, Tijuana and San Diego with the Mexican-American border in the mix. Patriarch Miguel Angel de La Cruz, affectionately known as "Big Angel" is dying, and has summoned all of his family to celebrate his seventieth and last birthday. However his mother, Mama America, has just died resulting in her funeral the preceding day. As everyone gathers in

"All believed Big Angel's smile because they needed to. Because they had always believed him. Because he was the law."There are many, many tributaries over many, many years that flow over rutted landscapes and drought-filled pockets. They spread wide and far and in a multitude of unplanned directions seeking distance, and at the same time, longing for familiarity. They ebb and flow from a certain source and a certain essence. And that particular is Big Angel.Big Angel is bent over in his chair w...

This book is lushly written, a detailed description of life in America for a family of Mexican immigrants. The family is coming together for dual events, the funeral of Mama America and the birthday party of Big Angel, her son, who is dying of cancer. There’s a large cast of characters that took me awhile to get straight in my head. Just like Little Angel with his notepad, I needed notes to remember how they were related. It’s a very slow moving book. Don’t expect a lot to happen. It’s much more...

I admired more than enjoyed this story, its literary merits far outweighing my reading pleasure. Starting with a funeral and continuing with a birthday celebration that turns into a living wake, the effort to follow the constantly shifting viewpoints, names and nicknames of this big, raucous family required an attention that took away from the emotion I’d hoped to find in its pages.This is a very personal story for Urrea given that it was inspired by the death of his eldest brother and that love...

I have to admit, this one took me a while to get into. The de La Cruz family is big, so there are lots of characters to keep track of through multiple generations. On top of that, the storyline shifts from past to present, to further in the past, and back again. I was working so hard to keep track of who everyone was, I didn’t have much headspace left for what Urrea was doing on a deeper level.Something happened though in the last third of the book that brought it all together for me. Big Angel

”Big Angel was late to his own mother’s funeral. “He tossed in his bed, the sheets catching his feet in a tangle. Sweat ticked his sides as he realized what was happening. The sun was up – it was bright through his eyelids. The burning pink world. Everybody else would be there before him. No. Not this. Not today. He struggled to rise.” ”Every morning since his diagnosis, he had the same thoughts. They were his alarm clock. How could a man out of time repair all that was broken? And on this

The dying patriarch of an extended Mexican-American family has one last birthday party on the day after his mother's funeral. The immigrant experience, happy memories, dark secrets, sibling rivalries and old grievances are explored. The writing was colorful and there was humor, poignancy and a realistic representation of a family. However, I would have preferred a more linear plot and I found that extended family confusing. I could have used a family tree because there were too many names and ni...