The Barbarian Nurseries
Author: Héctor Tobar
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (September 27, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0374108994
ISBN-13: 978-0374108991
THE BARBARIAN NURSERIES is an amazingly intricate and highly readable story of class differences told in the story of an affluent family and their Mexican maid Araceli. The Torres-Thomas family don’t understand their surly maid, but it never occurs to them that she might have hopes, dreams, or a life outside the caring of their home. Araceli cleans the large house and does it extraordinarily well, settling into her life that is not the one she dreamed for herself when she attended art school at Bellas Artes in Mexico City. That is until the other Latina in the house, is suddenly let go as is the gardener leaving Araceli simmering with resentment. Now she is expected to care for the children and not even asked to do so, rather it is thrust upon her.
Things are falling apart.
The recessing and his own bad investments have hit Scott Torres hard and his wife’s spending isn’t helping. The eventual fights about money grow more frequent and one night, there’s a huge one that becomes violent and that Araceli sees. The next day, she and the two boys realize both parents are gone. After a few days with no word, no calls, Araceli makes the fateful decision to trek with the boys down to L.A to find their grandfather. Doing this sets in motion a series of events that are all too believable.
Héctor Tobar writes with eloquence. The story is wry, funny, maddening and told with such heart that you can’t help but be drawn into these lives on both sides of the dividing line. His characters are complex, imperfect and multi-layered. I couldn’t put it down. As a Native Angeleno myself, I fell in love with his wonderful descriptions of my city. The stoic and impassive, yet daydreamer Araceli reminded me of so many women I grew up with and loved. I couldn’t help feeling she was family.
Check out the video below to see an interview with the author about Los Angeles history and the city’s Latino inhabitants.
About the book (from the publisher):
A New York Times Notable Book for 2011
A Boston Globe Best Fiction Book of 2011
The great panoramic social novel that Los Angeles deserves—a twenty-first century, West Coast Bonfire of the Vanities by the only writer qualified to capture the city in all its glory and complexity
With The Barbarian Nurseries, Héctor Tobar gives our most misunderstood metropolis its great contemporary novel, taking us beyond the glimmer of Hollywood and deeper than camera-ready crime stories to reveal Southern California life as it really is, across its vast, sunshiny sprawl of classes, languages, dreams, and ambitions.
Araceli is the live-in maid in the Torres-Thompson household—one of three Mexican employees in a Spanish-style house with lovely views of the Pacific. She has been responsible strictly for the cooking and cleaning, but the recession has hit, and suddenly Araceli is the last Mexican standing—unless you count Scott Torres, though you’d never suspect he was half Mexican but for his last name and an old family photo with central L.A. in the background. The financial pressure is causing the kind of fights that even Araceli knows the children shouldn’t hear, and then one morning, after a particularly dramatic fight, Araceli wakes to an empty house—except for the two Torres-Thompson boys, little aliens she’s never had to interact with before. Their parents are unreachable, and the only family member she knows of is Señor Torres, the subject of that old family photo. So she does the only thing she can think of and heads to the bus stop to seek out their grandfather. It will be an adventure, she tells the boys. If she only knew . . .
With a precise eye for the telling detail and an unerring way with character, soaring brilliantly and seamlessly among a panorama of viewpoints, Tobar calls on all of his experience—as a novelist, a father, a journalist, a son of Guatemalan immigrants, and a native Angeleno—to deliver a novel as broad, as essential, as alive as the city itself.
Suggested hashtags: #hectortobar #books #reviews #amoxcallireviews #latinolit
Disclosure: I bought the Kindle version of this book. This is from my personal e-library.
