I've always enjoyed Paul Theroux as an author, so when I saw this at the library, I just had to pick it up. Even more so, because I always enjoy reading about the relationship between brothers.
Cal and Frank Belanger - known around town as the Bad Angel Brtothrs - could not be more different and their relationship is troubled from the time they are children. Their mother dotes on Frank and feels he can do no wrong. Cal does not agree, all too aware of the way Frank manipulates the truth and steals other peoples' stories to make himself look better.
As they grow up, their relationship becomes more distant. Frank becomes a successful lawyer and a pillar of the community it their small hometown. Cal becomes a geologist and works in the mining industry, usually outside the States. Yet, despite the contentious nature of their relationship, Cal is constantly drawn home for visits with his mother and Frank. Visits he tolerates, but rarely enjoys.
As they grow into middle age and are forced to deal with first their mother's decline and then her death, what has been a distantly unsteady relationship, becomes a full-blown war in which there can really be no victor.
I enjoyed this book. Cal was a delightfully slippery narrator and I was kept wondering through most of the book if Frank was as truly awful as he was through Cal's eyes. Especially since everyone else in their small town from their mother to random people on the street all seemed to think Frank was some kind of saint. I started wondering if Cal was an unreliable narrator or if Frank really had this entire town duped into believing he was a good person. It makes for compelling reading.
As I expect from Theroux, the sections about Cal's travel to far-flung places as part of his mining work were detailed and well-drawn. And while demonizing Frank, Cal was under no illusions about his own failings as a man and a husband and father. But, by the end of the book, you really feel Cal's pain as he struggles to find his feet in a life Frank has all but destroyed.
So, I'd recommend this one. It's a distinctive portrait of two people and a lifetime of struggling to negotiate each other.
But don't just listen to me. Here's the blurb:
An evocative novel about two brothers whose rivalry as youths in the Massachusetts town of Littleford reverberates throughout their lives, with striking consequences. As they grow into men, they develop into very different people on very different paths - Frank becomes a successful lawyer, and Cal becomes a geologist - but they are constantly drawn back to one other. As they grow into middle age, their relationship reaches crisis point after the death of their widowed mother. The Bad Angel Brothers is an intimate portrait of family, resentment, and the bonds that shape our lives.
