The Tortilla Curtain

by T. Coraghessan Boyle, T.C. Boyle

Excellent Book

Genres: Fiction

Paperback

Published January 1, 2010

About the author

T. Coraghessan Boyle (also known as T.C. Boyle, is a U.S. novelist and short story writer. Since the late 1970s, he has published eighteen novels and twleve collections of short stories. He won the PEN/Faulkner award in 1988 for his third novel, World's End, which recounts 300 years in upstate New York. He is married with three children. Boyle has been a
Professor of English at the University of Southern California since 1978, when he founded the school's undergraduate creative writing program.

He grew up in the small town on the Hudson Valley that he regularly fictionalizes as Peterskill (as in widely anthologized short story Greasy Lake). Boyle changed his middle name when he was 17 and exclusively used Coraghessan for much of his career, but now also goes by T.C. Boyle.

Reviews

[Emily]

Good, but uncomfortable. Don't go looking for a character you can root for it a happy ending for anyone.

Though it's set 20 years ago, so much is just the same, which is a good reminder for people who think we're living in unprecedented times. The wealthy elites are as smug as ever, the immigrant question is perennially unsolved, and line of good and bad still runs right down the heart of every man, as Solzhenitsyn observed.

[Tina Susak]

Brutal.

[Judy Williams]

Good but idk if I enjoyed it…. Like grapes of wrath. The story needs to be told and the twist at the end redeemed the book.

[Georg Ludwig]

made me sad :/

[Laura Curvin]

Telecom technology (pay phones, cordless phones, giant car phones!), the always reliable marker of a story's era, is the only element that prevents us from assuming this novel isn't set in 2025. I'm not sure I needed more reasons to feel rage towards my own race -- and even political leanings -- but TC Boyle expertly skewers all of us, hypocritical liberals in particular, in the context of immigration, brown people, unhoused people and humanity. Incredible writing. Thoroughly gripping.

[Heather Bivona]

Good story about illegal immigration

[Beth]

Two friends from book club urged me to read it and I may never forgive them. It is extremely depressing.

[Tabea Ludwig]

I read „América“ actually, but wanted a Boyle book for my statistics

[Kat]

I truly hated this book, I do not believe the author had the right to write about a Hispanic persons life/experience when he is not Hispanic/Mexican himself.

[Lauren Strick]

An absolutely scathing, satirical commentary about immigration and xenophobia. Once again, T.C. Boyle’s writing had me enraptured from beginning to end.