The House of Broken Angels

My most memorable birthday party was my 20th, for a multitude of reasons I won't get into here, but since then I've been mostly low-key about birthdays. Aging has made me mellow, and instead of celebrating birthdays, I ease into them with quietness. For Big Angel's 70th birthday, ostensibly his last one, he wants one last party, one last celebration—and to him, I can relate. When you know there will be no more reasons to celebrate, you want your last party to be a big one, a memorable one, not just for yourself, but for everyone you love. This is the setting of Urrea's novel: it is a novel about a party, but more a novel about celebrating the ones we love, about relishing in their presence, and about knowing that our bonds extend well beyond life and death. It is one of the best novels I have read in a long time; it is a novel that makes me want to party.