A difficult novel but worth reading further - House of Broken Angels

I'm accepting that Luis Roberto Urrea declined w/ intent to not include a family tree in his new novel, The House of Broken Angels, because he wants us to feel uncertain and to grope around, trying to figure out the relations and interrelations and family histories of all the members of this clan - and even at 1/e of the way through this novel I'm still groping and trying to remember characters' names and to keep the relationships straight. But it's a feeling, I think, much as if we'd walked into the family gathering in progress and got to know the people present in bits, snatches, and pieces; only toward the end (I hope!) will the family stories clarify. At this point I'm pretty sure of the main character, Big Angel, 70 years old and w/ about a week to live (his family members know he's ill but don't know the dire prognosis, his wife, Perla - we see them in a tender scene lying in bed next to each other, Big Angel unable to move much and sexually impotent but with an alert mind full of many observations about death and dying and trying to take stock of his long and complex family life; and his youngest brother (half-brother), Little Angel, who's other was white and who has drifted farthest from his Mexican-American family, living in Seattle where he teaches college English, a life and locale that seems to his family like life on another planet. There are many hints and references to a dead brother, possibly shot in a gang incident, but we don't know a lot about his death at this point. If this novel weren't written w/ such vivid intensity I (and many readers I think) would shrug and put it down at some point, but Urrea's fine writing carries the day, even when we're unsure of where this plot is heading (the first 1/3 of the novel is about the day of Big Angel's mother's funeral and the post-funeral family gathering) or even who's speaking. Urrea gives us some beautiful descriptions of the Mexican-American neighborhood south of San Diego, some barbed and witty dialog, and much access to the peculiar mind of Big Angel, on the verge of death and its mysteries.