OCBookBlog: “The Barbarian Nurseries” by Hector Tobar

By Randy Kraft on February 01, 2012 1:28 PM | Comments (0)

Hector Tobar

This is not the first fiction of immigrant life in Los Angeles, but it is one of the most provocative and profound. Perhaps the first to challenge TC Boyle’s “Tortilla Curtain” as the penultimate story of the haves and have-nots in Southern California.

“The Barbarian Nurseries” pits one illegal immigrant against her employers. The catch—well there are several actually—the husband is himself the son of migrant farmworkers, the children are exceptionally aware and articulate, and the city of Los Angeles is as much a character as landscape.

And, it’s a page-turner. Once you get through the set-up and early preamble —wealthy parents facing financial worries, gossip-mongering in suburban neighborhoods, a maid trained in Mexico City in the arts who find herself a servant to help her family pay the bills… you get the picture.  Once past, you will find yourself with your heart in your throat as the Mexican maid, having been inadvertently left by warring spouses alone with the family’s two young sons, and without knowing where their parents are, sets out on foot and on public transportation [this is LA so you can imagine that nightmare] in search of the children’s paternal grandfather, and by the time the parents return home, they believe that their sons have been abducted.

An illegal Mexican maid wandering the dark urban heart of Los Angeles with two seemingly white kids quickly becomes the subject of a high-profile search and the target of media madness. What will happen to the children? What will happen to the slightly hapless but sassy servant, and how will the parents resolve the mess they made without falling afoul of the law?

Author Hector Tobar weaves an elegant yarn, with tremendous insight into the American immigrant dilemma as well as Orange County and Los Angeles lifestyles – beautifully rendered in elegant prose, interspersed with just enough Spanish to make it all the more plausible. This is a novel of class and cultural warfare and a close, often painful study of what America has become. And what it might be. Highly recommended.

Available at Laguna Beach Books or as an e-book. Happy reading.

The Barbarian Nursuries by Héctor Tobar; 422 pp. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $27

Randy Kraft

L. Randy Kraft is a New Yorker who was pulled like the surf to SoCal five years ago. A woman with eight of nine lives, she has been a business-woman, teacher, magazine and newspaper journalist, bookstore buyer, non-profit communications consultant, as well as wife/mother, failed novelist and blogger. She has a passion for film, theater, music, art, and most of all, books. She only blogs positive book reviews, as she knows how hard it is to write a good book so won’t waste anyone’s time trashing. When she’s not reading, she writes brochures, newsletters, annual reports, grants and web content for charitable organizations from coast to coast. Also a culture column for Laguna Beach Independent. Despite her marketing expertise, she doesn’t have a website, she works only on referral. Contact Randy at writer4hire@maple57.com.