By Heidi Simmons
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Barbarian Nurseries
by Hector Tobar
Fiction
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The beautiful ocean, mountains and deserts of Southern California create varied environments rich with cultural and racial diversity. In Hector Tobar’s novel Barbarian Nurseries (Picador, 422 pages), the struggle for the perfect So Cal lifestyle reveals how complex and tenuous the pursuit is for all who call this remarkable and complicated state home.
Maureen and Scott Torres-Thompson have created a wonderful and seemingly idyllic life for themselves and their three children. They have a mini-mansion in a gated community overlooking the ocean in Orange County. Their two boys are in an elite private school and lavished with private lessons, books and educational playthings. Maureen is a full-time doting mother. Scott owns his business. The educated and socially ambitious parents employ immigrant help to assist with the children and all the demands of their immaculate home.
When a financial crisis arises, the family is forced to scale back the “help.” Araceli, the full-time, live-in maid, is the only domestic to make the cut. Now she must interact with the kids as well as cook and clean. Araceli is not particularly fond of children and there is no extra money with the extra work.
Araceli is an artist and intellectual. She nearly completed art school in Mexico City before coming to the states illegally. Working for the Torres-Thompson family for four years, she and Maureen have found a balance in the care and keeping of the household and its inhabitants. Araceli works hard, does her job well, but keeps to herself. Maureen considers her competent, but strange.
As financial tensions increase, Maureen and Scott fight resulting in physical violence. The next morning, both go their separate ways without any communication to anybody. Scott leaves for work and Maureen takes their baby girl to a desert spa.
It’s a long Fourth of July weekend and Araceli finds herself alone with the boys. After two days without hearing anything from Maureen or Scott, and with dwindling food in the house, she decides it’s better take the boys to their grandfather’s house rather than call the police – fearing they would take her away and put the children in foster care.
Scott’s father was born in Mexico but now lives in Los Angeles. With only an old photograph to go on, Araceli and the boys leave the manicured world of Orange County and find themselves lost in a Los Angeles barrio as they search for the grandfather. For the boys, eight and eleven years old, the extreme excursion to strange and different places becomes an adventure that is both frightening and exhilarating.
When the parents finally come home and find the children and Araceli missing, they call the police. An Amber Alert is made and Araceli makes the news as the children’s kidnapper! Seeing themselves on television, the boys suddenly realize they were “disappeared” and call their parents. Araceli, afraid what the authorities will do to her, makes a run for it, but is spotted by a police helicopter. She is tackled and cuffed by police officers on live TV.
The abandonment and kidnapping of the boys becomes a national news story creating a debate about immigration and the treatment of illegals both at work and in the judiciary system. The event becomes politicized and snowballs out of control. Araceli is center of the madness and awaits her fate.
Barbarian Nurseries is a brilliant and colorful novel. Its social commentary about the multidimensional and dynamic nature of Southern California’s inhabitants is dead on accurate. If you have spent any time in the state, you will recognize yourself, your friends and neighbors somewhere in the pages. Probably your gardener, pool man and cleaning lady as well.
From an immigrant nanny to the district attorney, Tobar uses an omniscient voice so the reader gets every character’s points of view and interior thoughts. Many lines are in Spanish. He successfully channels an array of opinions and insights on the subject in entertaining ways without a heavy hand. He never sermonizes. Tobar shows the reader that there are not just two sides to every story, but multiple sides.
Southern California is an important character in the story as the breeding ground –- the nursery — where the changing population, attitudes and generations can forget their civility and compassion to become something else. Instead of helping one another, we quickly drift to fighting each other like barbarians. But Tobar, with wit and insight, shows us the hope embedded in our commonality. No matter our race, culture or current stature, we all have similar dreams and desires.
A native Californian, specifically Angelino, and son of Guatemalan immigrants, Tobar knows the setting and issues well. He has worked for the Los Angeles Times as a journalist for nearly twenty years and has witnessed the changing demographics and attitudes of Southern California. Tobar is also a Pulitzer Prize winner for his coverage of the LA Riots. Besides being knowledgeable about the subject, his prose are both beautiful and literate with passages that reflect an intimate connection to places and people.
I like to think Araceli represents all of those who struggle to find their “place.” Our gifts and talents are often set aside or unappreciated while we work hard, toiling away at meaningless tasks to please others who don’t matter or care.
Barbarian Nurseries tells a Southern California story that delivers a vivid picture of who we are today both as a culture and as a state.
