| The Barbarian Nurseries Contributor(s): Tobar, Hector (Author), Alvarez, Frankie J. (Read by) |
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ISBN: 1455111937 ISBN-13: 9781455111930 Publisher: Blackstone Audiobooks OUR PRICE: $26.96 Product Type: MP3 CD - Other Formats Published: September 2011 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Fiction |
| Dewey: FIC |
| Physical Information: 0.6" H x 5.4" W x 7.5" (0.20 lbs) |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: The great panoramic social novel that Los Angeles deserves--a twenty-first-century, West Coast Bonfire of the Vanities by the only writer qualified to capture the city in all its glory and complexity With The Barbarian Nurseries, Hector Tobar gives our most misunderstood metropolis its great contemporary novel, taking us beyond the glimmer of Hollywood and deeper than camera-ready crime stories to reveal Southern California life as it really is, across its vast, sunshiny sprawl of classes, languages, dreams, and ambitions. Araceli is the live-in maid in the Torres-Thompson household--one of three Mexican employees in a Spanish-style house with lovely views of the Pacific. She has been responsible strictly for the cooking and cleaning, but the recession has hit, and suddenly Araceli is the last Mexican standing--unless you count Scott Torres, though you'd never suspect he was half Mexican but for his last name and an old family photo with central LA in the background. The financial pressure is causing the kind of fights that even Araceli knows the children shouldn't hear, and then one morning, after a particularly dramatic fight, Araceli wakes to an empty house--except for the two Torres-Thompson boys, little aliens she's never had to interact with before. Their parents are unreachable, and the only family member she knows of is Senor Torres, the subject of that old family photo. So she does the only thing she can think of and heads to the bus stop to seek out their grandfather. It will be an adventure, she tells the boys. If she only knew. With a precise eye for the telling detail and an unerring way with character, soaring brilliantly and seamlessly among a panorama of viewpoints, Tobar calls on all of his experience--as a novelist, a father, a journalist, a son of Guatemalan immigrants, and a native Angeleno--to deliver a novel as broad, as essential, as alive as the city itself. |
Contributor Bio(s): Alvarez, Frankie J.: - Frankie J. Alvarez is a film and television actor best known for his roles as a gangster or thug. He has appeared on such television shows as 24, CSI: Miami, and Entourage, among others. Tobar, Hector: -Hector Tobar, now a weekly columnist for the Los Angeles Times, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and a novelist. He is the author of Translation Nation and The Tattooed Soldier. The son of Guatemalan immigrants, he is a native of the city of Los Angeles, where he lives with his wife and three children. |