The Barbarian Nurseries by Hector Tobar

Welp, of course it happens this way. The minute I confess that I only read crap in the year 2011, I go and read a real, bona fide, amazing, literary novel. I could have written about it instead if I had only waited a few days, but I didn't, and so now you all know my shame.

The book was The Barbarian Nurseries by Hector Tobar. The New York Times gushed all over it and picked it as one of this year's notable books, and so I read it because I have this contrarian, hatery compulsion to go THAT'S NO SO GREAT whenever anybody gushes all over anything. But this book really was so great. I agree with you, New York Times. Which I know must make you very happy.

Scott and Maureen Torres-Thompson's affluent life is distintegrating along with the economy and their marriage is following suit. They've had to let all of their Mexican staff go, save for Araceli, their brusque, no-nonsense maid. When their fights over money escalate, husband and wife decide to abscond from home, each to teach the other a lesson, and Araceli is inadvertently left stranded with the two young Torres-Thompson boys. When the parents haven't returned after four days, Araceli sets off to find the boys' estranged Mexican-American grandfather, armed only with a decades-old photograph with an address printed on the back. Their journey takes them from their comfortable enclave on Paseo Linda Bonita in McMansionville into the seedier suburbs of Los Angeles.

And then the Torres-Thompson parents return home to find their children missing and sic the law on their illegal maid. And suddenly this woman who people used to look past without seeing, who only existed fuzzily in the background of family photographs, is front and center in the middle of a media shitstorm that encompasses the entire Torres-Thompson family.

Through the courtroom battle that ensues, Tobar shines light on every conceivable viewpoint regarding the immigration debate in a way that shows how well he understands all sides of the issue. It's all very interesting and compelling in that ripped-from-the-headlines way that Law & Order is supposed to be but actually isn't, because it sucks, and you see the million ways that people misunderstand each other every day but how they depend on each other, too, and how this dynamic weaves a fabric of bitterness, paranoia, loyalty, and hatred.

It's all very well done and GOD KNOWS I love me a good courtroom drama, but the best part of this book, the meat and drink of this book, is the journey undertaken by Araceli and the Torres-Thompson boys. As they roam the alleyways and ghettos of Los Angeles, searching for old Abuelo Torres, the narrative shifts so that we slip seamlessly into the lives and thoughts of everybody they encounter in this rich, Joycian way, sometimes for only a few lines, sometimes for longer.

The effect is a panoramic view of a certain place in a certain time, seen through the eyes of the African-American old-timer who remembers when the city had "a proper stiffness to it," to the Princeton-bound daughter of a Mexican-American councilman, to the Korean boutique owner whose rich uncle has bankrolled her dreams of success in America, all the while expecting her to fail. What Steinbeck did for the Salinas Valley region of California, Tobar does for L.A.: defines it, familiarizes it, guides us into it and lets us see it for ourselves. Araceli and Scott and Maureen are the three main characters in this story, but the story itself is that of a city in flux, a "very strange North American circus" in which none of the actors know their roles because their roles are rapidly changing.

When you live far away, you never associate California with clutter. When Araceli was in a messy home, when the beds were not made and the dishes were left unscrubbed, she invariably felt pangs of disappointment and loss....Now Araceli could see that this place called California was like a home that had fallen in a state of obsolescence and neglect...She wanted to take all the exhausted American people she'd seen and give them freshly starched clothes to wear and she wanted to take all the misplaced objects and put them back where they belonged. [p. 350-351].

Hector Tobar won a Pulitzer Prize for Journalism in 1992 (when he was um, TWENTY FREAKING NINE, which means I have exactly FOUR days left to win one if I'm going to follow his life plan) for his coverage of the Rodney King race riots for the L.A. Times. Nobody seems to be predicting it yet, but I think he should probably win another in 2012--this time for Fiction. "Distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life?" The Barbarian Nurseries is all about American life--from the perspective of both "real" Americans and those who linger in their shadows with deep, rich dreams of their own.

Have you read Tobar's book? What did you think of it? I'd love to hear your thoughts so comment or post a link to your review.