The House of Broken Angels by Luis Alberto Urrea

Published by Little, Brown and Company on March 6, 2018

Big Angel de La Cruz is almost 70 and he knows he will die soon. He lives in San Diego, where he was the director of a computer center for Pacific Gas & Electric, despite having long ago entered the country without papers. He has always seen America as filled with “possibilities and opportunities,” where a humble house would become his palace. Over the years, Big Angel became not just the family patriarch but a legend, a fearless protector of family and friends.

Big Angel is no longer big, “carved down to the size of child” by the tumors in his abdomen and lungs, perhaps a week away from death, the end of an era. His mother has died and he is late for her funeral, another failing for his mother to criticize, this time from beyond the grave. Big Angel is joined at the funeral by his half-brother, Little Angel, who long ago moved to Seattle to avoid the family drama.

Family drama doesn’t begin to describe The House of Broken Angels. Clashes among family members are a daily occurrence and grudges attain mythical status. Love and lust are common in the family, with some family members keeping lust in their hearts for years after the objects of their desire chose other relatives.

Big Angel’s son Braulio has been dead for ten years. His son Lalo has a drug problem that began after he returned from Iraq with a leg injury and a missing testicle. An Army recruiter told Braulio and Lalo that they would be citizens when they left the Army. The “least we can do” as a reward for service turned out to be a lie (at least they weren’t deported, the government’s current version of “thank you for your service”). Lalo’s older brother Yndio is not traditionally gendered and, as a matter of mutual choice, hasn’t seen his parents for a decade.

Only Big Angel’s wife, Perla, and his daughter, Minnie, seem to have Big Angel’s complete approval, although the reader eventually learns why Braulio and Yndio have a complicated relationship with the family. The novel moves back in time to develop the charming story of Big Angel’s young love/lust for Perla and their extended, disrupted courtship. Some of novel’s dramatic impact comes from the anguish that Perla feels, wondering if the family will at last come together, grievances set aside, for the sake of celebrating Big Angel’s last birthday.

Big Angel is convinced at times that he will get better. He wants to “charge at death and knock the hell out of it.” He wants to do all the things he regrets not doing. Some members of his family are convinced that Big Angel will recover because he has always been invincible. At the same time, Big Angel is bargaining with God. He at least wants to make it to his 70th birthday, a celebration that no one will ever forget. He’s also making a list of things that are important to him (“banana slices in fideo soup with lots of lime”) that he will pass on to his kids as a legacy.

Small details bring The House of Broken Angels to life. The Hello Kitty parasol that Big Angel holds as Lalo directs his wheelchair to his mother’s grave. The perfume of wet dirt in California rain. The parrot that flies to freedom as it escapes from a woman’s bosom while crossing the border. Big Angel’s memory of lying on a beach and seeing, for the first time, the buttocks of the girl he would marry.

The story has moments of sweetness that are genuinely touching. Many involve Big Angel and Perla, who made a full life together, defined by unfaltering love and unabashed desire. Other characters come to their own realizations about life during the story (Lalo, for example, finds himself reconsidering the concept of “payback”), but the big question, the question that torments Big Angel, is how to face a death that seems unfair, regardless of its inevitability. The answer — at least in a large and unruly Mexican family, but probably for everyone — is found in love. That sounds trite, but the sprawling and multifaceted story told in The House of Broken Angels recognizes the complexity that overlays simple truths. The novel is rich and honest and poignant and sad and very, very funny. Family dramas don’t get much better.

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Brother by David Chariandy

Published by Bloomsbury Publishing on July 31, 2018

Michael and his brother Francis were born in Canada to parents who were born in Trinidad. They grew up in a neighborhood that became rougher as they entered their teens. Francis was killed ten years before the story begins. Flashbacks acquaint the reader with the ugly days at the time of Francis’ death, the anti-immigrant fervor and the neighborhood condemnation of Michael for being Francis’ brother. We also see Francis’ anger management problem, the way provocation triggered a form of crazy violence that earned him, for better or worse, a reputation as someone who would stand his ground. And we see how Francis suffers an unjust death because he stood his ground, although the precise cause of that death is something that David Chariandy withholds until late in the novel.

Now Michael lives with his mother. She may be experiencing the first symptoms of dementia or (as Michael’s friend Aisha believes) she may be suffering from complicated grief that left her “stuck,” unable to mourn properly because she cannot accept Francis’ death. Michael has made it his mission to care for and protect his mother, but the reader will wonder whether Michael’s actions are protecting his mother from reminders of Francis’ death or harming her by keeping her isolated from people who might help her grieve.

Aisha has returned to Canada after ten years in Europe to be with her father during his last days. After he dies, Michael invites Aisha to visit him, staying in his bedroom while he sleeps on the couch. Aisha and Michael were high school friends. Michael doesn’t really want to deal with the grief of someone who is no longer stuck at home, but Aisha believes that the best way to process grief is to share it, and to that end triggers a reunion of sorts, bringing people who knew Francis into Michael’s home.

The novel’s initial drama derives in part from the flashbacks that lead up to Francis’ death and in part from a conflict between Michael and Aisha about the proper way to care for Michael’s mother. The latter conflict presents something like a coming-of-age moment for Michael, and suggests that the right kind of help might make grief less debilitating, even if it can never be overcome.

Brother is a short novel, almost a character study that focuses on key formative events in the lives of a few people. Apart from Chariandy’s graceful prose, atmosphere and music are the keys to its success: the neighborhood barbershop that bring together immigrants of different cultures; the mixing of music from different eras and styles in a way that finds their commonality; the way people share a heritage through music; the rise of the DJ mix as an art form. Despite its narrow focus, the novel touches upon broad themes of social injustice endured by immigrants and the children of immigrants as they try to define an identity and a path to happiness in an unwelcoming society. For that reason, Brother is as timely as it is rewarding.

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Cold in July by Joe Lansdale

First published in 1989; movie tie-in published by Tachyon in 2014; published digitally by Particle Books on July 10, 2018

Joe Lansdale often writes novels and stories that are funny and playful, even if the comedy is dark. When Lansdale decides to write a dark novel that isn’t meant as a comedy, few writers are better at pushing the reader’s buttons of dread. I admire Lansdale’s versatility, but I like him best when he shakes my ability to face the hidden horrors of humanity. At the same time, there are few writers who are more humane than Lansdale, who are better able to look into the frigid darkness and find an ember of hope that deserves to be nurtured.

Richard Dane kills a burglar, quite legitimately, in self-defense. The encounter triggers thoughts of mortality, his and his son’s, who might easily have been shot by the burglar if he had wandered into the living room.

Dane lives in a small Texas town. Local jerks congratulate him for “getting one.” The decent people appreciate that he is going through a rough time because killing, in self-defense or otherwise, should never be a source of pride.

Dane feels compelled to attend the burglar’s burial, despite being warned by the police that the burglar’s father had just been released from prison and might be in the mood for vengeance. The father, Russel, makes a not-so-veiled threat against Dane’s own four-year-old son. The story’s tension builds from that point, as Richard puts bars on his windows and begins to realize that the facts are not what they appeared to be and that threats may be approaching him from unexpected directions.

A colorful and profane private detective named Jim Bob Luke enters the mix, hired by Dane to get to the bottom of an apparent conspiracy, but true to the novel’s tone, a vague sense of menace surrounds the man. Eventually Jim Bob and Russel and Dane chase a mystery, only to make a horrifying discovery.

Cold in July is the kind of story that confronts relatively good people with hard moral choices. The story eventually gives Dane the opportunity to act as a vigilante in what seems to him (and possibly the reader) to be a just cause. Typical vigilante fiction features a resolute and self-righteous protagonist with military training and lots of guns who makes the world a better place by cleaning up the polluting people he defines as scum. Dane is just an ordinary guy. He doesn’t see himself killing anyone. Whether he will or won’t take on the vigilante role and what effect that choice will have on him is the question than builds suspense in the novel’s second half. Readers can debate whether Dane makes the right choice, which is part of the reason to read a book like Cold in July. Lansdale makes clear that there really is no choice that can clearly be viewed as morally correct.  Whatever Dane does will lead to harm, and any choice he makes will leave a permanent scar on his soul.

Lansdale always tells a good story and he doesn’t waste words doing it. His characters are as real as they need to be. Readers understand a character's essential characteristics without wading through every detail of their formative years. Lansdale avoids making the villains stereotypes by largely ignoring them. We know what they did, but we don’t know them as people. Nor do we need to know them. The focus instead is on the good guys, who are flawed but far from evil, making it easy for the reader to hope for the best when the shooting starts.

Cold in July builds suspense until the story reaches its bloody climax. It isn’t possible to close one’s eyes when reading a book, but readers might find themselves holding their breath. I don’t know if the movie adaptation is any good (Roger Ebert didn’t think so), but Cold in July played as a thumbs up movie in my mind.

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Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata

Published in Japan in 2016; published in translation by Grove Press on June 12, 2018

As a child, Keiko Furukura decided to teach another child some manners by braining him with a shovel, a decision she regarded as perfectly reasonable. She was thereafter viewed as a strange and troublesome child. Realizing that her straightforward approach to life kept getting her into trouble, she learned to mimic the behavior of other kids and to follow instructions, never speaking or acting on her own initiative. The conformist strategy worked for her, as it does for many people.

Convenience Store Woman follows Keiko’s life from college, when she takes a part-time job in a Smile Mart, until Keiko is in her late 30s. The convenience store job suits her because a convenience store “is a forcibly normalized environment where foreign matter is immediately eliminated.” In other words, conform or leave. Keiko adapts perfectly to the convenience store lifestyle, faithfully following her trainer’s instructions about shouting greetings to customers, looking them in the eye, smiling, asking if they want anything else, bagging purchases and making change. Thanks to the scripted work and clear expectations, Keiko finally feels comfortable interacting with others. It is her first time as “a normal cog in society.” She is so happy that she is still working there eighteen years later.

Keiko draws her malleable personality from her co-workers, taking a bit from each one until she has amalgamized a personality of her own, albeit one that changes as a function of employee turnover. She believes she has been “infected” by their speech patterns and vocabulary, causing her own speech patterns and word choices to change as new co-workers replace the old ones. Even her gestures change as she absorbs the behavior of new workers. Keiko has no desire to look for a better job because this job has allowed her to master the art of pretending to be a person.

The story has several themes. One is socially-enforced normalization. Being a convenience store worker is fine for a college student, but as time goes on, Keiko doesn’t fit in with society’s expectations because she lacks the ambition to find a better job or to pursue marriage. On the few occasions she socializes, she is ostracized or criticized because she doesn’t fit society’s vision of how a maturing woman should live her life. Living a fiction of normalcy isn’t easy, particularly for a woman; to justify her low-end job as a middle-age woman, Keiko contrives excuses and finds a relationship partner, even if the platonic and rather unpleasant relationship is one of convenience.

The culture of gossip is another theme. Keiko is happiest when she is talking with co-workers about essential convenience store issues, like whether the store can make its sales goal for deep-fried chicken skewers. When co-workers realize Keio is having contact with a fired worker in her free time, they can’t stop grilling her about her relationship. They also feel compelled to lecture the ex-worker and Keiko about their respective failings. In Japan as everywhere, people want to meddle when they should mind their own damn business.

Perhaps the overriding theme is the importance of being true to one’s nature, regardless of society’s expectations. Keiko’s sister is distressed about having to cope with the fact that Keiko is not “normal,” but Keiko is content just the way she is. Her life has definition. The convenience store speaks to her in a voice that only she can hear. She knows exactly what the convenience store needs. Being a convenience store worker makes her happy, while the prospect of looking for a better job or getting married and having sex are antithetical to Keiko’s ability to live a fulfilling life.

That, I think, is the great lesson of Convenience Store Woman: when someone is happy and content to live in a way that doesn’t harm others, whether the person has a “normal” life isn’t the business of anyone else. Being happy and harmless is just fine, and trying to change a person who isn't hurting anyone because they don't "fit in" is an act of cruelty. Convenience Store Woman teaches that profound lesson in an allegorical story that is both appealing and deceptive in its simplicity.

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Only to Sleep by Lawrence Osborne

Published by Hogarth on July 24, 2018

Only to Sleep is a Philip Marlowe novel. To his credit, Lawrence Osborne gives the impression of Raymond Chandler without trying to ape his style. Robert Parker tried to emulate Chandler’s style in a couple of Marlowe novels and wasn’t up to the task. Osborne writes in an eloquent style of his own that doesn’t purport to be the second coming of Chandler.

Osborne also makes a wise choice in crafting a novel that takes place decades after the Chandler novels. Parker couldn’t quite capture the west coast noir that Chandler invented; Osborne wisely chose not to try. He does, I think, engage in a credible exploration of Marlowe’s soul as it might have evolved in the detective’s declining years, and he incorporates elements of noir without trying to recreate a literary time and place that belonged to Chandler alone.

Osborne’s Marlowe is 72, retired, living in Mexico and fighting boredom when two men from an insurance company ask him to investigate a death that might be suspicious. An American developer named Donald Zinn drowned near a remote coastal village in Mexico, leaving a good bit of debt and a big insurance policy behind. His widow, Dolores Araya, identified the body and had it cremated in Mexico. The insurance company wonders whether Zinn might have been involved in something illegal, which would give it an excuse not to pay the widow. The men ask Marlowe to find out what Zinn had been doing in Mexico in the days before his death.

Marlowe talks to the widow and to the federales and to local fishermen before he gets a tip that sends him inland to talk to the man who went into hiding after finding Zinn’s body. Marlowe later takes the reader on a tour of inland Mexico, to places “of lanterns on chains and dozing habitués perched on sofas.” The local color is convincing; perhaps Osborne drove around Mexico before he wrote the novel, conducting research while he swatted mosquitos and drank cerveza.

The plot of Only to Sleep is much simpler than the convoluted story Chandler told in The Big Sleep, from which it repeatedly draws the titular metaphor of death. Osborne’s story at least makes sense, and to that extent simplicity is a virtue. Most of the detecting is done in the novel’s first half. In fact, the mystery has been solved the novel’s midway point. The second half addresses a mystery about Marlowe: now that he knows the truth, what will he do about it? He’ll get himself into trouble, of course, because as often as Marlowe decides it is time to let something go, he finds himself incapable of letting loose ends dangle.

This version of Marlowe is worn down and made porous by a life filled with grit. He dreams about the victims of violent death, some of whom he watched or helped die. He carries a cane, both to help him walk and because it conceals a sword, a last line of defense for a man who can’t use his fists as ably as he did in younger days. Marlowe relishes the opportunity to feel alive, “not yet senile and not yet shelved,” one final time before he returns to retirement and the inevitability of slow decline. Readers should also welcome the opportunity to join the icon of noir in one last adventure. It isn’t Chandler, but it stands on its own merit.

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