Wednesday, January 23, 2013

The Barbarian Nurseries by Hector Tobar

The Barbarian Nurseries by Hector Tobar, Literary Fiction, 422 pages.



Araceli Ramirez finds her expected duties growing when her co-workers in the Torres-Thompson household are let go. Maureen and Scott Torres-Thompson have fallen on hard times. They're still rich, they still have the palatial house with a pool, the live-in staff, and the private elementary school whose tuition is about half that of Princeton annually, but they are having to cut back.
Maureen and Scott don't communicate too well, and a rather massive misunderstanding about their finances precipitates a confrontation that reverberates through the rest of the book. Steps are taken, and things are said that cannot be taken back, and soon the domestic drama becomes the center of a criminal case.
As the legal troubles mount, the story becomes somewhat more didactic and the characters lose a bit of their depth and recede toward caricature. It's still a compelling read, but Maureen, Scott, Araceli, and the DA all become more symbolic and less interesting.

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