San Francisco Chronicle Alexis Burling
A raucous, moving, and necessary book...Intimate and touching...The stuff of legend...There's deep heart and tenderness in this novel.The House of Broken Angels is, at its most political, a border story...Chillingly accurate, they're heartbreaking, and infuriating.
Minneapolis Star Tribune
Urrea re-creates the time and place beautifully but allows room for surprise, building to the novel’s crescendo.”
Washington Post Michael Lindgren
The House of Broken Angels is a big, sprawling, messy, sexy, raucous house party of a book, a pan-generational family saga with an enormous, bounding heart, a poetic delivery, and plenty of swagger...More than once while reading the novel, I thought of James Joyce's 'The Dead,' another kaleidoscopic fable of family life that skillfully mixes perspectives...The House of Broken Angels is a book about celebration that is, itself, a celebration.
From the Publisher
A heart-wrenching wartime drama, a rich portrait of friendship, and an exploration of the trials and triumphs of the human spirit, Good Night, Irene is historical fiction at its finest. Using the little-known true story of women who worked behind the front lines for the Red Cross during World War II, Luis Alberto Urrea weaves a novel about the enduring bonds, devastating losses, and heroism of ordinary people who put their lives on the line for freedom. This is a story that needed to be told and remembered.”
—Christina Baker Kline, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Orphan Train and The Exiles
Good Night, Irene isn’t just a marvelous novel, though it is indeed marvelous. It’s a marvelous novel that returns the brave Donut Dollies and the WWII Clubmobile Corps to their rightful place in history. With grace and compassion, Luis Alberto Urrea makes their story soar again.”
—Ann Hood, New York Times bestselling author of The Knitting Circle
NPR Lily Meyer
Urrea's gifts as a storyteller are prodigious...The book's spirit is irrepressibly high. Even in its saddest moments, The House of Broken Angels hums with joy...The noveloverflows with the pleasure of family...And all that vulnerability, combined with humor and celebration and Urrea's vivid prose, will crack you open.
Publishers Weekly
A moving and graceful tribute to friendship and to heroic women who have shouldered the burdens of war.”
Christian Science Monitor
Hails the camaraderie and deep bonds formed between people thrown together in dire circumstances."
Boston Globe John Freeman
An immensely charming and moving tale...Urrea deftly inhabits many points of view, dreaming up an internal voice for each...It is a testament to his swift and lucid characterizations that one does not want to leave this party...A novel like The House of Broken Angels is a radical act. It is a big, epic story about how hard it is to love with all of your heart, and all of your family—regardless of which side of the border they live on.
New York Times Book Review Viet Thanh Nguyen
Epic . . . Rambunctious . . . Highly entertaining . . . Sorrowful and funny . . . Cheerfully profane . . . The quips and jokes come fast through a poignant novel that is very much about time itself . . . A powerful rendering of a Mexican-American family that is also an American family.
New York Times Book Review
His immersion in the existing documentation is clear.”
New York Times bestselling author of The Many Daug Jamie Ford
Every once in a while the universe opens its heart and pulls out a book like this novel, gifting it to the cosmos. In Good Night, Irene, a new element has been created, and the literary world is reborn in the image of Luis Alberto Urrea. His voice comes alive on every page of this magnificent novel.
Entertainment Weekly
A sweeping novel loosely based on his mother’s experiences…of WWII, and the love stories—both romantic and platonic—that followed her home.”
Time
A touching portrait of female friendship and valor in wartime.”
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2023-04-11
Two women witness the horrors of World War II via a snack truck.
Pulitzer Prize and NBCC Award finalist Urrea’s remarkable, elegantly written novel focuses on the Red Cross’ little-known Clubmobile Corps, which during World War II was charged with bringing coffee, doughnuts, and good company to weary GIs. The women had no medical training and were often condescended to as “Donut Dollies,” but because they were stationed in the heart of battle, they played no small part in improving morale and required a steely resolve of their own. Irene Woodward, who’s escaped New York and an abusive fiance, and Dorothy Dunford, who’s left her family and failing farm in Indiana, are paired together in a massive truck that, across the novel, heads from England to France and Germany in 1944 and 1945. En route, they witness some of the worst the post–D-Day European theater has to offer, from bombs to snipers to death camps; during lulls, the two fend off their share of harassment as well. (It’s all a recipe for PTSD and overwhelming for many; the Clubmobile was designed to be operated by three women, but so many drop out there’s a running gag about an unnamed “Third Girl in the Truck.”) Irene, artsy and romantic, has an opposites-attract rapport with the no-nonsense Dorothy, which Urrea plays for both humor and pathos, but he stresses how unified they are in absorbing the constant surprises and tragedies of warfare; a sunny retreat to Cannes is followed by a trek to Buchenwald. This material is personal for Urrea, whose mother served in the Clubmobile Corps, and a few sentimental notes slip into the story. But there’s plenty of grit, detail, and twists that make for both a fine page-turner and an evocation of war’s often cruel randomness.
Top-shelf historical fiction delivered with wit and compassion.
