An innate part of me loves how unabashedly irrational these characters behave and how those behaviors somehow still feel perfectly normal. The character Magos drove me up a fucking wall and also melted my heart, probably because I've seen my mother grieve her father in a frustratingly stubborn and vicious way, planting her feet and vowing to war against la familia with her own personal monument of pain. Grief and infighting is universal, but, somehow, the Mexican passions I grew up seeing and feeling frightened of, inspired by, annoyed by, colored in these characters in a special way. A younger me dismissed any proud, animalistic flare as juvenile and ignorant, a signal for me to zone out and withdraw, but maybe I've just always been embarrassed by facing things that can lay you low longer than for a moment or two. Good writing, good book! Obviously not a pleasant story, so there's that aspect to mind. My only qualm is that it does feel slightly insular in scope and the characters felt foreign to me with their unfamiliar open-mindedness and forgiveness. (PERSONAL PROBLEM UH-OHH)