jdilla.xyz

I picked up House of Broken Angels as another stop on my literary tour of California, but after reading it, I wouldn’t call it a California book. It’s a San Diego book, through and through. I’m not sure how it reads to someone who hasn’t lived here, but even as a relatively new resident, I recognized places and neighborhoods.

House of Broken Angels is the story of two half brothers, both named Angel, of a man from Tijuana as the elder Angel (Big Angel) nears death from cancer. The two Angels wrestle (figuratively and literally) with each other’s and their father’s sins, as do the rest of their families. It’s a book about how short life is and about how frail humans are.

The other thing that places this book in San Diego is the connection the characters have to Tijuana, where the main character immigrated from. The two cities, just 20 miles a part, share an economic and social relationship. They mayors regularly meet with each other. Now that I live here, this seems obvious, but it surprised me at first.

The book brings the relationship between the two cities to life. The Angels’ father is from Tijuana, but immigrates to San Diego when he leaves his first wife (Big Angel’s mom) for his second wife (Little Angel’s mom). When I lived in Europe, one of my favorite things were the border regions where cultures bled into each other. The Italian part of Switzerland, which feels like both Italy and Switzerland, the northern part of Spain, the feels both Spanish and French. San Diego has elements of that. This book the way that people, relationships, and culture move back and forth across the border.

To me, the best part about this book was the way that it approached the end of life, the yearning for one more Christmas morning, and regret over mistakes. The other thing I’ll take from it is some understanding of the Mexican-American San Diego experience.