But first... First, he has to bury his mother, hold a massive birthday celebration, repent for his sins and reunite his family.
Seems daunting, right?
It's also a hell of a plot for a book.
I picked up House of Broken Angels after reading that one of my favorite authors (the amazing Jess Walter) was reading it. Now, I can't find where I read that and I might have confused it with someone else. Either way, I checked it out from the library with zero expectations. I was so pleasantly surprised.
While I loved the writing and the larger-than-life characters (from Big Angel to his younger half-brother Little Angel - the names are another story altogether), this book started a bit slow for me. I kept getting the characters confused and it just wasn't picking up for me in the beginning. Then, I found out it was due back at the library, so I knew I needed to buckle down and get into it. Once I did, the pages flew.
Ultimately, it's a story about family and culture and, especially, the mixed cultures in America now that have some generations feeling as though they're straddling two entirely different worlds. In this case, Big Angel is also straddling the world of the living and the world of the dead. He knows he's about to die and welcomes it at times; then, he sees his family swirling around him and desperately wants to hold on.
The characters are rich, the setting is vibrant and I found myself grinning those final few pages. The writing here is beautiful, too.
It's a fantastic read with a cleavage-escaping parrot at the end that you have to read about to believe. This book reads like a movie in all the best ways.
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