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chelseagirlSorry to be so spammy today; I posted this review on my Librarything as part of their Early Reviewers program, and thought I might as well post it over here as well.
There is much to admire in this engaging novel, particularly the primary of the four narrators, Regina, with her distinctive voice and her determination to make a life for herself and her nephew, Gabo, despite their poverty and his status as an illegal immigrant. Regina is the most compelling of the novel’s four narrators, while Gabo, the high school student with his committed but often self-flagellating take on Catholicism, is the hardest to relate to. Rounding out the four, Miguel, a middle-class school teacher whose political commitment to his self-identified Chicano heritage needs testing in his daily life, and his grandfather Milton, provide additional perspectives. These perspectives, though developed to differing degrees, play off each other nicely, as Regina’s admitted puzzlement by Gabo is succeeded by Gabo’s sometimes unexpected experiences of the same events, and while Regina, who considers herself plain and practical, is proclaimed a raving beauty by both Miguel and Milton.
The sense of place and character is strong, and the heavily Spanish-laced English spoken by these border-dwelling Southwesterners adds to the novel’s realism, though it may puzzle some readers. The details of their everyday lives are absorbing; so, sometimes, are their politics and the plight of Mexicans living (legally or illegally) on both sides of the border. It makes sense that Miguel, whose own middle-class existence is relatively secure (threatened only by an expensive divorce) would talk about his politics, rather than demonstrate them, but he is not all talk. Similarly, a character like Regina, who in many novels might demonstrate her politics through her life, here also discusses them; it is an important statement that a working-class Mexican-American character have a well-developed political consciousness, but a pity that she is sometimes excessively didactic.
While a common complaint about contemporary fiction is that too many novels are overwritten and could benefit from judicious cutting, The Guardians is sometimes underwritten; one episode jumps to another without the reader always being certain how he or she got there. This sometimes lessens the impact of an otherwise compelling plot; the original search for Rafa, Gabo’s father, missing at the hands of the coyotes who prey on the border-crossing Mexicans they purport to aid, gets oddly lost, and is resolved almost as an afterthought. Likewise, the sweet romance between Regina and the younger Miguel is minimized to the point of nonexistence; one appreciates both his respect and her resistance but the relationship occupies an odd middle distance where it neither is nor is not.
The novel perhaps takes its name from the names of the names of the primary characters. While Regina, a virgin widow, is explicitly associated with the Queen of Heaven (the Virgin Mary), and Miguel with her guardian angel, Michael, Gabo (Gabriel), Rafa (Rafael), and the less central but rather more obvious Uriel and Metatron come also from the ranks of the archangels, while near-blind abuelo Milton can be none other than a tip of the hat to blind John Milton, chronicler of the angels, both fallen and not, in Paradise Lost.
There is much to admire in this engaging novel, particularly the primary of the four narrators, Regina, with her distinctive voice and her determination to make a life for herself and her nephew, Gabo, despite their poverty and his status as an illegal immigrant. Regina is the most compelling of the novel’s four narrators, while Gabo, the high school student with his committed but often self-flagellating take on Catholicism, is the hardest to relate to. Rounding out the four, Miguel, a middle-class school teacher whose political commitment to his self-identified Chicano heritage needs testing in his daily life, and his grandfather Milton, provide additional perspectives. These perspectives, though developed to differing degrees, play off each other nicely, as Regina’s admitted puzzlement by Gabo is succeeded by Gabo’s sometimes unexpected experiences of the same events, and while Regina, who considers herself plain and practical, is proclaimed a raving beauty by both Miguel and Milton.
The sense of place and character is strong, and the heavily Spanish-laced English spoken by these border-dwelling Southwesterners adds to the novel’s realism, though it may puzzle some readers. The details of their everyday lives are absorbing; so, sometimes, are their politics and the plight of Mexicans living (legally or illegally) on both sides of the border. It makes sense that Miguel, whose own middle-class existence is relatively secure (threatened only by an expensive divorce) would talk about his politics, rather than demonstrate them, but he is not all talk. Similarly, a character like Regina, who in many novels might demonstrate her politics through her life, here also discusses them; it is an important statement that a working-class Mexican-American character have a well-developed political consciousness, but a pity that she is sometimes excessively didactic.
While a common complaint about contemporary fiction is that too many novels are overwritten and could benefit from judicious cutting, The Guardians is sometimes underwritten; one episode jumps to another without the reader always being certain how he or she got there. This sometimes lessens the impact of an otherwise compelling plot; the original search for Rafa, Gabo’s father, missing at the hands of the coyotes who prey on the border-crossing Mexicans they purport to aid, gets oddly lost, and is resolved almost as an afterthought. Likewise, the sweet romance between Regina and the younger Miguel is minimized to the point of nonexistence; one appreciates both his respect and her resistance but the relationship occupies an odd middle distance where it neither is nor is not.
The novel perhaps takes its name from the names of the names of the primary characters. While Regina, a virgin widow, is explicitly associated with the Queen of Heaven (the Virgin Mary), and Miguel with her guardian angel, Michael, Gabo (Gabriel), Rafa (Rafael), and the less central but rather more obvious Uriel and Metatron come also from the ranks of the archangels, while near-blind abuelo Milton can be none other than a tip of the hat to blind John Milton, chronicler of the angels, both fallen and not, in Paradise Lost.
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