This sounded like it would be a funny book. It wasn't. It is about the stereotypical California family doing well before the financial crash, and their Mexican help, most of whom are let go in the beginning of the book due to financial constraints and how the parents can't do without them. The main part of the story is about how the children wind up in the care of the Mexican cook Araceli,through some incident. What that incident is I don't know, because this book bored me to tears and I could not continue reading it. I wonder if the author was paid by the word, because this is the wordiest book I have read in a long time. Every time the Mexican cook makes an appearance we get endless narration of what she is thinking, feeling, believes. This is true of every character and the information is never interesting nor required for the story. The other problem I had with what little I got through this book was while the stereotyping of the narcissistic upper middle class Californians was repeated over and over, the same was true of how wonderful, perfect pleasant, hardworking the Mexicans were. I am tired of being preached to about how they just want to be in the USA to work hard and do the jobs Americans don't do. This may not have been the case throughout the book, but I will not know because I didn't care enough about the story after the first 75 pages to continue.
Here is an example of how painfully wordy the book is. It is Araceli the cook describing Pepe the grounds keeper who is let go before the reader ever meets him in the book.

"Pepe never had any problems getting the lawn mower started. When he reached down to pull the cord it caused his bicep to escape his sleeve, revealing a mass of taut copper skin that hinted at other patches of skin and muscle beneath the old cotton shirts he wore. Araceli thought there was art in the stains on Pepe’s shirts; they were an abstract expressionist whirlwind of greens, clayish ocher, and blacks made by grass, soil, and sweat. A handful of times she had rather boldly brought her lonely fingertips to these canvases. When Pepe arrived on Thursdays, Araceli would open the curtains in the living room and spray and wipe the squeaky clean windows just so she could watch him sweat over the lawn and imagine herself nestled in the protective cinnamon cradle of his skin: and then she would laugh at herself for doing so. I am still a girl with silly daydreams. Pepe’s disorderly masculinity broke the spell of working and living in the house and when she saw him in the frame of the kitchen window she could imagine living in the world outside, in a home with dishes of her own to wash, a desk of her own to polish and fret over, in a room that wasn’t borrowed from someone else".
The author can clearly write, the problem for me was he did way to much of it, in this book. ( )

Los Angeles in all its diversity, from gated communities in the hills to blighted urban neighborhoods. Hector Tobar focuses on the plight of an undocumented domestic worker, Araceli, who is mistakenly left to care for two young boys when their parents check out on each other at the same time. Neither parent realizes they've left the boys alone in the house with Araceli, and she is ill equipped for, and mostly uninterested in, taking care of them. She embarks on a bus and train journey to deliver them to their grandfather, even though she isn't sure where he lives any longer. The boys are exposed to a vastly different world from the privileged enclave where they live, and Araceli taps into a community for aid she didn't know existed. Eventually, she is reported as a kidnapper and the law intervenes in a very Kafkaesque way.

The story is interesting enough to sustain the book, but none of the characters are particularly palatable or interesting on their own. In fact, most of them, including Araceli, are unlikable to the point of distaste. The urban locales of Los Angeles kept me reading when I wanted to abandon the book.

3 bones!!! ( )

A journalistic comedy of errors between an affluent Los Angeles family and their Mexican housekeeper and reluctant caregiver of children. Misunderstandings and inconvenient mistakes propel the plot. The omniscient narration works but there are a few minor characters for only a few pages, which seems like an odd choice in an already dense novel. I would have liked to see more of Araceli's mind and background - we hardly know more of her than her employers. I would read a sequel. I'd like to fit this on a shelf with these books: 'White Noise' by Don DeLillo (a great epigraph choice), 'The Tortilla Curtain' by T.C. Boyle and 'City of Refuge' by Tom Piazza. ( )

maybe it could've been longer. quest-through-city part, in particular. the exploring-ancillary-characters thing could've been peppered in earlier and developed more, I think. some of them didn't seem to add anything. yea, i guess a little more development in general. ( )

I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/12549037

What a lovely novel! I enjoyed it all the way through.

It is a story of Los Angeles by someone who understands this city. It is about Araceli, the Mexican maid with an unusual artistic talent. It is about the couple who employ Araceli - Maureen and Scott, privileged, progressive, ambitious. Mostly Araceli, though. And she is a joy as a main character.

Araceli is a hard-working determined maid who knows how to cook, clean, and keep ants out of the house. She also feels no need to hide her feelings and therefore earns a reputation for being disapproving much of the time. She doesn't complain about her work but she doesn't pretend it's her life's ambition either. A large intelligent woman from near Mexico City, she can be imposing and direct.

We follow Araceli after Maureen and Scott have a big fight over money and in some confusion leave the house separately, with Araceli and the two boys left behind. How she manages and what adventures await I will not divulge here. Suffice to say I loved the largeness of the story, with its many mini-biographies and its accurate descriptions of Los Angeles over the years, and especially the largeness of Araceli herself. ( )