Urrea's ambitious narrative strategy in House of Fallen Angels

I will give Luis Roberto Urrea his props for the extremely ambitious narrative strategy in his new novel, The House of Fallen Angels - essentially a multi-generational family saga about the de la Cruz clan of Mexican-Americans who emigrated in about 1960 from the Baja Peninsula, settling south of San Diego (except for one of half-brother who his moved to Seattle). Urrea chooses to tell this complex story involving multiple characters through the events of just a few days: the funeral of the matriarch, a 70th-birthday party for the oldest of her sons who is pretty much the family patriarch, and I think a 3rd day that comes later in the novel (I'm about 2/3rds through it). Most writers would tell a complex family saga in a straightforward narrative: Think of the Buendia narrative in One Hundred Years of Solitude, for a great example; sometimes this conventional approach, however, can feel boring and tedious, as we work our way, year by year, generation by generation, across a predetermined narrative path (think of the recent successful novel Pachinko, which had many strengths but which at some point I just stopped reading, largely because of this march-through-time approach). So Urrea tells the family story through occasional memories, flashbacks, characters filling others in about family lore - and we get the picture(s) piece by piece, the novel becoming ever more clear as we near the conclusion. And some of the scenes/memories that Urrea presents are terrific: Big Angel's memories of his near-enslavement and physical and sexual abuse aboard a fishing boat and his daring escape and migration north if probably the high point of the novel. All that said, I am still wringing my hands, figuratively, in frustration as I try to keep the characters clear in my mind. As noted yesterday, it's as if we readers had wandered into Big Angel's birthday celebration and we're trying to figure out who's who and who's related to whom. I'm still trying, far too often, even as I near the conclusion. This is a book that, I think, you need to read twice. The same might be said, say, of Ulysses, Absalom Absalom!, or maybe even its forefather, 100 Years. Unfortunately, most readers probably won't do that. There's still plenty of value in a first reading, but it's tough going, by design.