San Miguel

by T. Coraghessan Boyle

On a tiny, desolate, windswept island off the coast of Southern California, two families, one in the 1880s and one in the 1930s, come to start new lives and pursue dreams of self-reliance and freedom. Their extraordinary stories, full of struggle and hope, are the subject of T. C. Boyle’s haunting new novel.

Thirty-eight-year-old Marantha Waters arrives on San Miguel on New Year’s Day 1888 to restore her failing health. Joined by her husband, a stubborn, driven Civil War veteran who will take over the operation of the sheep ranch on the island, Marantha strives to persevere in the face of the hardships, some anticipated and some not, of living in such brutal isolation. Two years later their adopted teenage daughter, Edith, an aspiring actress, will exploit every opportunity to escape the captivity her father has imposed on her. Time closes in on them all and as the new century approaches, the ranch stands untenanted.

And then in March 1930, Elise Lester, a librarian from New York City, settles on San Miguel with her husband, Herbie, a World War I veteran full of manic energy. As the years go on they find a measure of fulfillment and serenity; Elise gives birth to two daughters, and the family even achieves a celebrity of sorts. But will the peace and beauty of the island see them through the impending war as it had seen them through the Depression? Rendered in Boyle’s accomplished, assured voice, with great period detail and utterly memorable characters, this is a moving and dramatic work from one of America’s most talented and inventive storytellers.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Historical, Book Club, Novels, Literary Fiction, Audiobook

367 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 2012

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

[Berengaria · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars

Trigger warning animal death, overt racism towards Japanese

short review for busy readers:
Homesteading 101. Wonderfully, lyrically written story of two families on the same island doing the same job (sheep farming) over a 60-year span. Just like on real life farms, a lot happens...and nothing happens. Surprisingly quick read. Very enjoyable literary read about real historical people.

in detail:
Many other reviewers have noted how much more interesting they found the story of the Waters family, that takes place in the 1880-90s, than the Lester family's, that goes from 1930-1945.

That's probably because the first part has a very clear villain/victim dynamic within the homesteading family itself. Captain Waters ruins both his wife and adopted daughter through his iron authoritarian macho rule of the family. It's easy to be horrified at his attitude and behaviour.

The Lesters, on the other hand, are a happy couple with very little internal strife. Their problems and dramas all come from the outside world and large historical evens, like The Great Depression and Pearl Harbour. Happy people in trying times are apparently not nearly as interesting to most readers, perhaps because the villains are abstract and far away.

I found both families interesting and how their stories show how the human inhabitants of the isolated island, and indeed the island itself, changed and developed over the course of 60 years.

TC Boyle has written a number of novels based on known historical figures. Mungo Park, Alfred Kinsey, and Frank Lloyd Wright, to name a few.

The Waters family and the Lester family were also real people who lived and worked the Californian channel island of San Miguel, but they were nobodies in comparison to Boyle's other protagonists, and that makes all the difference in the narrative which is largely focused on the women of the families. That is also a change from his other work. It's really the women's stories he's telling, not those of famous men.

I personally love reading about homesteading and daily farm life, but if you don't, a good portion of this novel you might not find all so interesting. Definitely one to read if you're a Boyle fan, however.

[Constantine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐ ½
Genre: Historical Fiction

I have had this book sitting on my bookshelf for a long time, but I never picked it up for any particular reason. This time, it came up on my “random wheel pick” that I do every month, so it was time to get into it. I was glad to get into it because T. C. Boyle is a new author to me. But don’t ask me why I bought it or who recommended it—I have no idea!

This is a historical novel that is divided into three parts. Each part tells the story of a female character and her family in San Miguel, a remote island off the coast of California. The first two parts concern the Waters family: Marantha Waters and her daughter, Edith. The third part is about Elise Lester.

I loved the first part a lot, which I believe occurred in 1888. It follows Marantha and her family. She is ill and needs fresh air and isolation for her deteriorating health, so the family moves to this isolated island for that. But soon, she finds herself trapped there in harsh living conditions that won’t help with her recovery.

The last part was less interesting compared to the first two. It takes place in the 1930s. Elise and her husband, Herbie, who is a World War I veteran, move to the island to find solitude and escape from the pressures imposed by society. They face many challenges, including the husband’s mental health issues.

The writing is absolutely beautiful, and the author’s description of the island and the setting overall is top-notch. This is one of the novel's biggest strengths. I appreciate the critical themes the author has used here, including isolation, illness, mental health, and struggle.

Despite the slow pace being suitable for the story and what the characters went through, there were times I also, like the characters, felt anxious, impatient, and bleak. It felt like I was living on the island with the characters, where everything moved so slowly. It is a bizarre feeling because this shows that the author has successfully managed to move you as a reader to the island with his characters. Still, at the same time, you are not happy about it because it feels very lonely and isolated!

Regardless, I’m so glad I read the book. Because of its vivid and atmospheric writing, I will definitely read more books by the author.

[aPriL does feral sometimes · Rating 4 out of 5]

T.C. Boyle loves writing about real people who did things in real life which appear utter madness to have attempted, or they are simply mental. Boyce's writing is beautiful and literary, stuffed full of haunting sentences and lyrical descriptions which I want to keep repeating to myself. It appears to me he is writing better and better with each book. Although Boyle’s fictional characters are from actual news stories or real-life history and he follows their actual real-life footsteps in his novels, he uses an imagined interior view for some of the protagonists, allowing us to crack open what these people might have been thinking, given their exterior actual actions and decisions.

To me, the only sane persons in the first family profiled by Boyle in the year of 1888 in the book was Edith, adopted daughter of the Waters, and Carrie Abbott, best friend of Marantha. Marantha may not have approved of the family's move to San Miguel Island. San Miguel is an island sitting off of the state of California's coast. It apparently is a place of fulfillment fantasies for those who hate civilization.

Quotes from the novel, interior dialogues by Marantha: "Why she was always expecting the worst, she couldn't say, except that her illness had colored her view of the world, dragged her down, made her see for the first time in her life what lay beneath the surface of things.....She didn't want to be a cynic....She truly wanted to believe that her life had purpose....-----and she would have prayed for it if she hadn't lost the habit."

I cannot begin to understand Marantha, who is weighed down by tuberculosis, married to a selfish crude heartless man, Captain Will Waters. Waters certainly demonstrated an uncaring cruelty by taking Marantha's money to move the makeshift family to a decrepit makeshift molding filthy leaking house ("It might as well have been lifted up in a tornado and set down in the middle of the Arabian Desert.") for 'a chance' at becoming a successful sheep farmer for a company. This chance would give Marantha the purpose in life of dying more quickly from her disease after moving to damp, cold and windy San Miguel Island. No indoor toilet. No electricity. No running water. No roads. No people - only Ida, their servant, Marantha and Will Waters, daughter Edith and occasional workers, seasonally hired to shear the sheep when required. There is nothing but endless hard labor in the hilltop house and the muddy yard, which suits Will, and only Will. It's a perfect setup to kill off a tuberculosis patient years sooner than she might have lived.

Will is not abusive, but I'd call him passive aggressive when he can't get away with appropriating all of the available assets. Before his wife has finally passed on, he is having sex with, or possibly raping, Ida, their powerless and available young girl servant. He ignores Edith, for awhile.

There is no school for young girl Edith, who also has no friends or neighbors or any activities available to her other than the work of a sheep farmer's stepdaughter. Edith is hopeful of money after her mother dies and she wants to leave the island. Will quickly steps on all of her ideas and forces her into being the cook and servant, letting Ida go. She is trapped on San Miguel, with no regular boats visiting or bridges or any other transportation available to her. Despite this, eventually she manages to run away twice.

Edith is the only character with whom I felt any connection in this novel.

The second family Boyle profiles will warm the hearts of everyone, but in particular farming/ranching mid-westerners who love family life and despise urban civilization. This family takes over the sheep enterprise for a millionaire who has bought grazing rights on San Miguel, who is likewise shearing sheep for profit using a caretaker family, in 1930. The Lester's - Elise, ex-librarian, and Herbie, ex-WWI veteran - settle in to a well-built house. With their hard work and loving partnership, they do very well, although, with the exception of their better house, conditions are almost as primitive as experienced by the Waters. Soon they have two daughters, a home school and much laughter. It's a far different picture from the first family, with much more familial warmth, both figuratively and metaphorically.

The island is what shapes both families, each member either defeated by their imposed loneliness and goals or embracing it happily together within the family unit. Whatever values the two families bring are tested by the lack of society, resources, modernity and any real oversight by government- who, by the way, owns the island. What each adult seems to have in common is a sense of human value from utility and production. There is no time or place for playful frivolity or music. What's wrong with that, right? Right?

The moral seems to be don't become too invested in self-reliance unless you are made of stone, wind and water. These are men who want to prove themselves taming nature, and women who think they want the safety and society of a stiflingly small family group only. So who comes out the best? I'd place my bet that the character Elise had the Right Stuff, at least, for utility and production.

However, my heart was with 'frivolous' Edith, wishful for urban life, educated friends and future movie star. Her, I understood.

Since this is based on documented history, there is plenty of information to be found online:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Migu...
http://lestersstore.wordpress.com/201...

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 2 out of 5]

Desperate airport purchase. Stranded at München Flughafen for a terrible six hours and Edinburgh Airport for a further five, this appalling if readable novel saved me from terminal boredom as I hallucinated to the muffled muzak emerging from distant speakers and spooned a Russian woman sleeping on a bench waiting for the 6am to Moscow (last part untrue—a large woodsman “invited” me to spoon and I could not refuse). T.C. Boyle is a hack and semi-competent craftsman who writes and publishes too much and this novel is a bland and unengaging historical bore dropping nineteen clichés and tired conventions per page, the first two sections concerning the mother and daughter under the thumb of the paterfamilias being the most readable (through crass manipulation and clunking Victorian novel nods), while the third and longest section is completely lacking in momentum or interest, and Boyle fails to make the characters or story do anything except hop around his blandly polished prose for an overlong stretch. The words and correctly placed sentences kept me awake and helped me survive a day’s airport hell—and for that, a shiny and happy two stars have been awarded. Thanks, T.C.

[Chrissie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I see no need in repeating what is stated in the book description.

On completing this book I knew immediately why I liked this book so much. Two reasons, the first, the most important, being that the author captures how people think and talk and relate to each other. Time after time I felt that the relationship between the Lesters, Elise and Herbie, was so realistically drawn that the author must have understood them. They are people that really existed, as well as the first family followed in the book. Neither is fictional. Don't you ever look at a person and only because you know that person well can you understand why they act, say or do what they do? What that person does seems so foreign to your own way of thinking, but you do understand. It is in this manner you look at these characters. This is not the only relationship that is so perceptively portrayed; many relationships were pitch-perfect in their accuracy.

The second reason I liked the book is how the author never distorted the facts. Every single historical or geographical element and character that I checked was correct. I found myself both looking up the island San Miguel and the central characters. They are all true. The book centers around two different couples that lived on San Miguel, the first in the 1880s and the second during the 1930s. San Miguel is one of the Channel Islands off the coast of Santa Barbara, California. I like historical fiction that teaches me history AND has characters that live and breathe. This book has both. The island, its history and geography, its flora and fauna and weather is interesting. The people that lived there are equally interesting.

The language isn't lyrical, but it describes events in a manner that is exciting and gets you thinking.

What did I think about besides relationships? I thought about how different the island was perceived by the two different families that lived there. I think this leaves an important message. Our personal attitude shapes events, but also that no two people will ever see things similarly. None of us have the same health problems or past experiences, and we are all born different. You cannot help but compare the two families.

I bet socially oriented people will be more moved by the first family's experiences, while people like me who instinctively love the thought of living alone on an island will understand the second family more easily. In that these two families were real, many factors complicated their lives.

I liked that what happens to Edith Alice Scott Waters/Inez Dean, from the first story, is clarified in the second story. I like the connection between the two. There is more that I liked. I liked the compassion Herbie Lester felt for animals.

Barbara Caruso ‘s narration of the audiobook was wonderful. Zero complaints.



Here are some handy links:
http://islapedia.com/index.php?title=...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Migu...

[W.D. Clarke · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kurt Vonnegut once famously gave himself a report card, as if he were a mere student being assessed for possible promotion from one level to another in the School of Art (analogous to Leonard Cohen envisioning himself singing on one of the lower floors in the Tower of Song?), and awarding each of his novels, or at least those written up to circa 1981, with a letter grade.

Curiously, Vonnegut gave one of my favourites of his, Breakfast of Champions, a "C", and one of my least favourites, The Sirens of Titan, an "A"—so it goes, I guess! But I am in complete accord with him about the *brilliant* God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater.

Now, if I were tempted to rank the works of another hero of mine, T.C. Boyle, I might affix a gold star to, and scribble a giant "A++" atop, a clutch of his short stories ("Balto", "Filthy With Things", and the masterpiece "56-0"), ranking them above the novels that I've read (he's too prolific by half to keep up with, tho I do try), but among these, I would definitely mark Drop City (2004), A Friend of the Earth (2001) and The Tortilla Curtain (1995) as being all straight "As". Some of the more recent ones still clock in above the mean, thankfully, though The Terranauts (2016,"C") and The Harder They Come (2015,"B") do lack the verbal playfulness of the earlier book-length work, alas, and depend upon the relative three-dimensionality of their imagined worlds and inherent attractiveness of their subject matter for their readerly interest.

Another tendency of Boyle's is to try to put some flesh on the historical bones of such twentieth century icons as Frank Lloyd Wright (The Women, 2009), Dr. Alfred Kinsey (The Inner Circle, 2004) (A- both!), and Timothy Leary (Outside Looking In, 2019, B-), and 2012's San Miguel fits into this mode, though uneasily, and only kinda-sorta, without much to say about anyone historically significant, as the book is based upon the diaries of two women who lived on the island of San Miguel in two different time periods—the late 19th century, and the decade before the Second World War. This would not be a problem, of course, if the novel had any inherent drama or tension to it, and if these two stories fit together in some way which gave the novel a sense of being a meaningful artistic whole. For me, though, that just doesn't happen, and while it was pleasant and diverting enough reading, I found the pacing to be near-glacial and the recounting of incident and the pile-on of description to be somewhat wearying (though never reaching Daniel Defoe levels ofc, thank G-d).

In fact, this novel could have been written by the Offspring of, say, (i) 19thC Canadian Pioneer Susannah Moodie (Roughing It in the Bush, 1852), and (ii) 20thC novelist W.O. Mitchell (Who Has Seen the Wind, 1947): T.C. Boyle has completely disappeared, that is, into the minds and modes of late-Victorian and mid-century realist authors who possess a generic "voice", i.e. are not much known for their sense of style, but to whom you might turn if you wish to vicariously experience homesteading, say, or coming-of-age on the isolated prairies where the train don't stop no more on account of no market for the grain (and where you'd crawl a mile on your knees through the heat for a drop of rain)—that's not in Mitchell's novel, just what reading it felt like....

I felt kinda depressed reading this book, too—or lost, actually, Without a Hero(1994, "A"), an abandoned Pullman car upside-down in the ditch somewhere out in the Badlands along the Reading Railroad. I suppose that San Miguel is a nifty feat of ventriloquism for TCB to have attempted, but this is definitely neither the boxcar to jump onto if you wishin' youssef transported to Boyleston, nor the last station on my own journey out there. No, this book is but a reined-in, superannuated iron horse responding to a "Slow Board" or "Easy Signal" along the tracks of this rusty spur. Yet there remains a loop back to the mainline, thankfully, and I do hope there are many crossings still ahead, and kilometers to go before I sleep.

2.5* rounded up. Cos TCB's one of my heroes--and cos you should.

[Ron Charles · Rating 4 out of 5]

After all the verbal high jinks in the past month from Zadie Smith and Michael Chabon, the clear, transparent storytelling of T.C. Boyle’s new novel sounds positively retro: no 12-page-long sentences, no stream-of-consciousness mingled with menu items and IM chats. Just a well-told tale. “It’s something I’ve never done before,” Boyle told the Wall Street Journal. “A straight historical narrative . . . without irony, without comedy. . . . Just to see if I can do it.”

He can. But that’s not surprising. The­atrical as he appears in those outrageous shirts and jackets, in his fiction Boyle never steals the ­spotlight from his characters, from what they’re wrestling with. His pre­vious novel, “When the Killing’s Done” (2011), took place on the Channel Islands off the coast of California and managed to make the complex issue of environmental reclamation tremendously exciting. His new novel, “San Miguel,” is a kind of prequel that again takes place on one of the Channel Islands, but the story’s tone and pace are entirely different. Instead of violently dramatizing a contemporary debate, “San Miguel” is an absorbing work of historical fiction based on the lives of two real families who resided on San Miguel Island in the 19th and 20th centuries.

All life is a struggle against entropy, but the people in this novel are acutely aware of the encroaching decay, internal and external. “She was coughing,” the story opens, “always coughing, and sometimes she coughed up blood.” That’s Marantha Waters, who has just sailed to San Miguel for “the virginal air” that will make her well again. A ridiculous proposition, of course, but her new husband, Will, is so excited about raising 4,000 sheep on this remote and treeless rock that everyone’s pretending things will work out fine.

Using their last $10,000, they’ve brought their teenage daughter, Edith, and a serving girl named Ida to “the Graveyard of the ­Pacific.” Marantha knows that their house — the only structure on the 14-square-mile ­island — won’t be anything special, but she’s shocked to find a sheep-scented shack: “everything damp, always damp, mold creeping over the mattress like a wet licking tongue and the walls beaded with condensation” — just the first of many bitter disappointments Marantha will endure over the coming months as her lungs noisily rot.

Early one dark evening when young Edith alludes to “Wuthering Heights,” she and Ida laugh, but the spores of gothic tragedy are already lodged in this house. As the days fall away “like the skin of a rotten fruit,” Boyle carefully records the strained breath of a dying woman trying to combat the twin infections of tuberculous and resentment, determined to support her husband in a plan that cannot work. “She didn’t want to spoil things for Will,” Boyle writes. “This was his idea, his venture, his dream, and he’d talked it up so many times over the past months it had become a litany of success and increase and health abounding.” But deep within herself, deeper even than the mycobacteria she can’t cough away, she has lost the habit of hope.

This is a sensitive portrayal of a marriage stressed by the toxic intermingling of illness and naivete — just the right conditions for a host of more pernicious pathogens to breed and transform both partners. We all imagine that someday we’ll be stoic patients or patient nurses, but Will and Marantha have positioned themselves to confront this challenge in a lonely place where everything is “smeared with mud and the very walls reeking of mold and rot and the sort of deep penetrating dampness no stove could ever hope to dry out.” It sounds grim, I know, but the intensity of Boyle’s narrative never lets it flag, and soon enough a story of decline becomes a desperate story of escape.

How striking it feels, then, when the second half of the novel opens decades later in comparatively sunny 1930. Another optimistic couple arrives on the island. The parallels are subtle and unforced. The eager husband, Herbie Lester, is a war veteran like his predecessor, though of World War I instead of the Civil War. Once again, wool from island sheep will weave their fortune. But this time, the wife, Elise, is just as enthusiastic as her husband. After the Waterses’ dismal decline, Herbie and Elise sound like Adam and Eve before the Fall: “That first week was an idyll, the two of them alone in an untamed place and nothing in the world to intrude on the slow unfolding of a peace and happiness so vast she couldn’t put a name to it.”

This second half remains on the island, but the world begins to intrude far more. Curious reporters from Life magazine and elsewhere want to know about “The Swiss Family Lester,” and then concerned Marines want to protect them from Japanese invasion. Constrained perhaps by fidelity to his sources — memoirs by Elise Lester and one of her daughters — Boyle struggles a bit to create engaging incidents. And, frankly, the happier characters of Part II seem bland compared to the haunted folks of Part I. Herbie’s manic depression doesn’t metastasize as dramatically as Marantha’s tuberculosis.

Boyle’s most engaging novels are wrapped around full-bodied arguments that can bring a good book club to fisticuffs: immigration policy in “The Tortilla Curtain,” climate change in “A Friend of the Earth,” the value of the counterculture in “Drop City.” “San Miguel” isn’t that kind of book. It lures you away by yourself, off to a quiet, lonely place, and makes you think about how our lives play out and then pass across the natural world.

http://articles.washingtonpost.com/20...

[Paul · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5 stars
“A glad zest and hopefulness might be inspired even in the most jaded and ennui-cursed, were there in our homes such simple, truthful natures as that of my heroine, and it is in the sphere of quiet homes—not elsewhere—I believe that a woman can best rule and save the world.”

I have no idea how this ended up on my shelves, but here we are. Time to read it and move it on.
San Miguel is an island off the California coast. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries it was lived on by a few sheep farmers attempting to make a living. There are some memoirs available, and Boyle has taken these and constructed a novel based on them. There are three accounts from members of two families, all of them women. The novel starts in 1888 and goes on until the 1940s.
The women are Marantha, who has TB and has ended up on the island under false pretences (husband being the culprit) and her daughter Edith. They arrive on the island in 1888. Elise arrives in the 1930s with her husband Herbie.
The novel moves at quite a pace, it’s a bit frenetic in terms of plot lines and possible crises. The plot feels a bit scattergun. It’s not Robinson Crusoe, but there is always a sense of isolation and scraping an existence. The problem is that it is an account daily life and how to manage men who are really not bothered about what those around them are suffering.
It wasn’t memorable and didn’t grab my attention.

[Ellis · Rating 4 out of 5]

God bless you, T.C. Boyle & your wondrous, sweeping, swooping run-on sentences.

“It was anger – and despair, that too – that gave her the strength to strip the bedding and tear the curtains from their hooks, to ball them up and fling them on the floor for Ida, because what was he thinking, how could he ever imagine she’d regain her strength in a freezing hovel like this as if she were some sort of milkmaid in a bucolic romance?”

Or this: “She watched the sun rise out of the mountains down the shoreline to her left, and that was strange too, because all her life she’d known it to emerge from the waters of Long Island Sound, a quivering yellow disk like the separated yolk of an egg, the waves running away to the horizon and shifting from black to gray and finally to the clean undiluted blue of the sky above – if the sun was shining, that is.”

No one can do it like you, T.C., when you're on you're so totally on, and I love you for it. Thanks a lot.

This book revisits the island of San Miguel, a looming character of sorts in the background of Boyle's last novel When The Killing's Done. This is told from the 1880s perspective of Marantha Waters & then her daughter Edith, as they follow Marantha's husband to the island so he can run a sheep ranching operation & also, hopefully, so Marantha will be cured of her consumption. She's not. After her death, teenage Edith is taken out of school & forced back to the island by her stepfather, where he can keep an eye on her. Here's the thing, though, stepfather of Edith - if you treat teenage girls like prisoners because you don't want them cavorting with boys, they will do anything in their power, up to & including cavorting with boys, in order to get out from under your thumb. Then the book shifts to the 1930s and Elise Lester & her husband taking over the sheep ranch & their lives as the "Swiss Family Lester" out in the middle of nowhere with their eventual children.

Elise's part was the hardest to read because it frankly got sort of boring. While Marantha hates the island & is coughing up blood & being dramatic all the time, & Edith hates the island too & is woeful & impassioned as only teenage girls can be (and willing to resort to some pretty painful things to get away), Elise's life is idyllic & happy & routine. Her husband Herbie appears to be bipolar but other than a few mentions of him being "blue" he's a lot more about the happy mania than anything. Sadly though, Elise ends up being the most profound story of all. Sometimes I'm pretty naive & I will ignore foreshadowing, so I admit I was a little shocked when I finally realized what poor Herbie was up to. The novel ends thus: ”She knew that luck gave out. And she knew that there was nothing to keep, nothing to hold on to, that it all came to nothing in the end," & if that doesn't make you want to cry a little & go give someone you love a hug, than I don't know what will.

[Joyce · Rating 3 out of 5]

Often times when driving in a rural area, I wonder why people choose to live in such isolated places.

Well, this book is about two families who have decided to live on the island of San Miguel, off the California coast near Santa Barbara in earlier times -- no electricity, no indoor plumbing, a wood stove for heat, no radios, phones, limited food supplies, an environment where gardens wouldn't last, dependent on periodic boats for supplies and access to medical care, no schools or playmates for their children

I understand the natural beauty and serenity of such a location, but it does come with hard work and real isolation for months. Then again, there's no perfect place.

So this story goes into their day to day lives, their ups and downs, but also the selfishness of the husbands who influence their wives to come along for better or worse. The book is written from the perspective of the wives, one of which was sickly and not at all happy with her situation, the other young and strong and very happy to be there. Still, they both faced challenges and were confined to the decisions of their respective husbands. Was it worth it? Quite interesting.

[Deborah · Rating 1 out of 5]

If I ever threaten to read another T C Boyle book, just shoot me.

[Laura Leaney · Rating 3 out of 5]

Once upon a time, I actually camped two nights on San Miguel Island, hiking fifteen miles from Cuyler Harbor to Bennett Point and back on a day full of extreme glare. I was in my late thirties and I was still pretty dumb. Late bloomer. I had a fabulous time for all the wrong reasons, mostly because I was not paying attention. Of course I noticed the thousands of pinnipeds, the whales, the dolphins, the birds, the "Do Not Enter" signs posted everywhere, the impressively dense fog, and O.....let me not forget the goddamn wind. But noticing is not the same as paying attention, and my ignorance of the history of the island made it just another cool excursion. I wish I'd been able to read this book beforehand.

T.C. Boyle's research on the white people who inhabited the island in the 19th and 20th centuries is impressive. Nary an error in the history, which is told from the perspectives of three women who were all brought to the island in the wake of strangely obsessed men. Their hardships, boredom, fears, and illnesses would have made a modern-day grown man weep. These troubles though, punctuated continually with sewing, cooking, cleaning, defecating in pots, coughing, and all the rest of the tedium of daily life pre-TV, made for some dry reading despite the beauty of Boyle's writing.

And don't get me wrong - the book is gorgeously written - but I wish there'd been more compression of time, such as this line: "After that, there was a long stretch of time in which nothing much happened, everything placid, the wind blowing, the sheep grazing, the waves rolling on up the shore and pulling back again." Or, "Another spring came and went. The shearers arrived and then they were gone. The days bled into each other, days eternal, each one like the next." Yet, by focusing on the inner lives of women who measure the flat uniform days by chores accomplished, Boyle makes visceral the hardships involved. I cannot imagine living year after year on this bright pastureland of an exposed island.

Reading the book left me wondering about the more ancient inhabitants. How did they fare here before the whites came with their sheep and guns?

[Jeanette · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whew, this was an emotional read for me. The writer has skill and an unusual gift for psychological insight. But it is far rarer here because it is coupled with the excellence of how he portrays the passing of time as it is lived in an ordinary life. How the days are same/same when they are loaded with work and routine, and yet 3 years can go by and there is a difference in the face or body while you had too little time to notice. People have often worked that hard and that long to a goal before this last century- and this book makes you "feel" exactly how that was. Endless tasks, like pumping or carrying water or wood- it just fills so many of the hours. Living by a lake and far from towns, I have felt the same as the patterns of ranching on San Miguel.

But it is all about the place, not only the story of the 3 women who lived there at different times. The barrier to the ocean, the wind, the separateness- we can feel it. And the tides and storms of weeks just like the cycles of a long marriage; periods of sun and also of utter dispassion.

T.C. Boyle does women's thought patterns and sensibilities well. This was nearly a 5 star, it was a 4.5. San Miguel's myriad descriptions of days and era were full 5.

Others complain of the slowness. This is a book about ordinary people and human work or goals for work and emotional and intellectual abilities to seek or achieve those difficult ends. The action is not paramount and doesn't need to be. I'll remember these 3 women and Herbie for quite some time.

And the sheep.

[Brian Gluckman · Rating 3 out of 5]

San Miguel is essentially two-and-a-half books in one, detailing the lives of two different families--and three different women--on the island. An historical novel loosely bases off the stories of real people, the potential seems high in Boyle's capable hands. The unfortunate issue is that these two sets of stories differ significantly in overall quality. The first feels pulled from a bad romance novel, with characters who feel like cardboard cutouts, despite being based on real people. The second half of the novel is where Boyle's prose finally comes alive, with warmer, richer characters, better prose, and even a male protagonist who isn't a complete waste, like so many of the author's past subjects. If you can get through the first half you'll be rewarded in the end, but overall, this isn't as strong an outing as Boyle's last visit to the Channel Islands, When the Killing's Done.

[Michael · Rating 2 out of 5]

T.C. Boyle tells us the story of a family on the San Miguel Island. The desolate island makes for a backdrop for the trials and tribulations of family. Boyle takes us on a vivid join of hard living and stubborn people in a novel of love and hate.

I’ve never actually read a T.C. Boyle novel before but I’ve heard he is a great storyteller, so I was excited to read this novel. This is a book of major family drama, I get the feeling that being stuck on a desolate island off the coast of California isn’t really helping the situation at all. The feeling of isolation is almost like having a cabin fever effect at times and this makes for highly emotional situations.

San Miguel follows the point of views of two different characters, giving us an insight of their inner thoughts and desires. Inspired by historical records, Boyle blends the facts with his own take of the story to bring us a character driven novel of the trials of this family. While at times I found this a highly emotional and somewhat endearing novel, I found myself thinking about novels like Shipping News and remembering just how that was a similar type of novel, only better. It is hard to immerse myself in a novel when I’m too busy comparing it to better novels and I truly think if I was in the right state of mind, this book would have been more enjoyable (perhaps enough to warrant 4 stars).

The characters within this novel are just wonderful; Boyle really knows how to write personalities, desires and inner thoughts, giving them real depth. Marantha and Elizabeth are great protagonists and the isolated location was the perfect backdrop for this story. But I never connected fully with the story, and I think it left too many questions unanswered.

T.C. Boyle is a great storyteller; I will be checking out some more of his work in the future, I’m hoping I can connect with them more than I did with San Miguel. It really didn’t help my enjoyment of this book. So I hope people who decide to give this novel a go, find themselves enjoying the characters and the trials that come there way.

This review originally appeared on my blog; http://literary-exploration.com/2012/...

[Elyse Walters · Rating 4 out of 5]

I already wrote a review --[only to have my computer freeze] --so I've not the energy to do it again --

However: I LIKED this book!

Keynotes:
...3 strong female characters: Marantha, Edith, and Elise.
....Historical fiction novel --(it was interesting learning about the history off the coast of Santa Barbara)....and to read about the 3 different woman who each lived on the island of San Miguel. (the challenges-etc.)

I stand a little taller -just thinking about reading a T.C. Boyle book -- [with having only read two of his books so far --I can 'already' tell that I trust him to write a DAMN GOOD BOOK --well researched -- -raw-deeply profound-sad-funny-and ALL THAT JAZZ!

If this author comes to the Bay Area 'again'....I will be a FOOL--NOT to go see him. Where my 'head' was during his last visit --I have no idea.

[Kasa Cotugno · Rating 4 out of 5]

T C Boyle has found his niche -- after remaining unclassifiable through years of writing diverse works that roamed all possibilities but never settled on one genre, he has taken to a form of historical fiction that breathes life into the past. As he lives in Santa Barbara, in the only Frank Lloyd Wright house in the area, his fascination with his city's past has resulted in several explorations. This latest tells the story of San Miguel Island through the eyes of three women who lived there, two in the late 1800's and one during the 1930's. He brings a modern understanding to earlier times in a way no other author does, and because of his personal attraction to the area, fills the pages with more than usual period detail and verisimilitude. Highly recommended.

[Shelleyrae at Book'd Out · Rating 4 out of 5]

Inspired by historical records, T.C. Boyle tells the story of the Waters and Lester families during their respective tenures of San Miguel Island. Two brides, fifty years apart, journey to the tiny haven off the Californian coast in support of their husbands enthusiasm for its potential but the tiny windswept island resists the determined efforts of its tenants to tame it.

It is the landscape of San Miguel that takes precedence in this novel, the characters little more than visitors to a place that endures. Boyle captures the claustrophobic feeling of isolation of the rocky outcrop that can only be reached by boat. The author's use of language is rich and evocative, so much so that you imagine you can hear the seals bark and the sheep bleat plaintively as the wind howls and the waves crash upon the shore, despite your suburban surrounds.

The narrative of everyday life on the island, especially in a time barely remembered and a place unfamiliar is fascinating, but there is an absence of plot in San Miguel. Drama fails to eventuate, scenes and even characters rarely resolve. It's obvious Marantha will not survive long due to her advanced case of consumption, just as it is clear things are not going to end well for a manic depressive with a gun collection. I felt as though Marantha's and Elise's stories had merit but their scope was forcefully limited. At times Boyle exhibits great insight into the thoughts and emotions of the brides as they struggle with the challenges of island life, and their respective mercurial husbands. Yet I also felt the author was regularly distracted by the island itself, so that the entire novel lacks the cohesion I would have liked.

I haven't read anything else by TC Boyle but I am given to understand San Miguel is a departure from his usual style. Perhaps that explains the flaws in this novel but still I was appreciative of his style (despite the odd pretentious flourish) and hope to read something else of his soon.

[Barbara Burd · Rating 4 out of 5]

San Miguel Island is the strongest character in this novel. The island is seen through the eyes of three different women, who lived on the island during different time periods. Marantha is a consumptive who comes to the island with her demanding husband in the hopes of finding better air quality and a healthier environment to heal her disease. The rugged terrain and lifestyle, along with a controlling husband, set out to defeat her, but she fights for survival, mostly in hopes that she can change her daughter's life. Her daughter Edith becomes the second woman to be imprisoned by the island and her stepfather, who becomes brutal in his treatment of her. Edith fights against the island and her stepfather and eventually leaves the island. Elise is the third woman to come to the island, but for her the island provides the solitary and safe life that she's searching for with her war veteran husband. The two succeed in turning the island into a home for their two children, but the island eventually defeats her husband and she is forced to leave. Jimmie, a ranch hand, provides the thread through which the stories are woven as he has lived on the island as a young man during the time of Marantha and Edith and returns periodically during Elise's time on the island. Boyle has carefully researched the history of San Miguel and the women who lived there. His descriptions of the island, the beauty and the hardship, are carefully crafted and awesome. The novel flows easily. This story presents a slice of history told through the cycles of life as sheep farmers and particularly the women's roles in this lifestyle.

[Alice · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although this book is beautifully written, it gradually becomes less interesting. Perhaps because it is based on diaries and first-hand accounts, it has a journal-like feel to it and the entries become rather stale. The first half is most compelling, yet because it starts with the main character already dying of TB on a beautiful but godforsaken island, it leaves too many questions. Foremost among them is why she married the man she did. An act which greatly increased her chances of dying from her disease. Her daughter's story is compelling but ends abruptly. We only find out what happens to her in an aside.
One can only read about so much dust, so much lamb, so much depression before wanting off the island and out of the novel.

[gwayle · Rating 4 out of 5]

After reading When the Killing's Done and a handful of various other stories by T.C. Boyle, I'd pegged him as a Jonathan Franzen-type: whip smart, invested in current events, darkly humorous, satirical, and all too ready to lord it over and roast his characters any chance he gets--in short, the type of writer who exhausts and ultimately irritates me. But this novel, San Miguel, "makes an ass[of]u[and]me." In it Boyle displays the nuance, empathy, and craft of some of the best Western writers: Stegner, Doig, Woiwode, Houston.

Set on San Miguel Island, off the coast of Santa Barbara, the story centers on two families--one in the late 1800s, the other during the Great Depression and WWII--who take charge of the isolated, weather-beaten island's sheep business. The narratives are filtered through the women: sickly Marantha and her daughter, Edith, feel stereotypically, hopelessly exiled; Elise, on the other hand, happily sheds her high society albeit spinster life for a "simpler," down-to-basics existence. (In case it isn't predictably obvious, the men are happy as clams in this rough-and-tumble, work-sunup-to-sundown life.)

More would spoil the carefully wrought plot; suffice it to say that life on the island exaggerates the best and worst of its inhabitants, and it triangulates--and complicates--all human relationships on its shores. The novel is terribly poignant, and I was deeply impressed by it. Oh, and it's based on true stories--very cool.

[sarah morgan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love TC Boyle's writing. Now that I have that disclaimer out of the way, let me just say that, again, Boyle has written a stunner. He seems to have become infatuated with the Channel Islands, that low-lying chain of small land masses off the southern California coast. (His last book, When the Killing's Done, was set on one of those islands, as well.)

This historical novel is told from the perspective of three generations of women of San Miguel, starting in the late 19th Century. You might be able to see the island from Santa Barbara on a clear day, but life out there was a hardscrabble existence; the families raised sheep and fended off the wild animals that decimated gardens, flocks of chickens, and anything else that might make rural life the least bit more homely. Life was bleak. For women, it was especially so. About the time you are ready to pack it in, he switches to a twentieth-century love story that tells the tale of a woman and her husband who love the island life, wouldn't trade it for the conveniences of the mainland for anything. A bittersweet ending is pure Boyle.

Boyle's prose, as always, is a joy to read. His descriptions of the land, lush, and his deep character studies are part of what make the book so excruciatingly good and so very grim all at once.(

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well researched and well written - and a good read. Based on the lives of two real families in two different time periods who tried their hand at pioneering on San Miguel Island – a desolate, deserted spot off the California coast – it was like reading a double novel in one.

Told from the viewpoint of the women who lived there, the first half of the book is set in the late 1800’s, and the second part takes place in the 1930’s. There were similar elements in both stories – the surprisingly harsh climate, the isolation, the lack of basic supplies, etc. - but the stories differed significantly in the women’s situation and outlook. It was interesting to see how opposite their perceptions were, how they individually managed the hardships they were dealt, and how they interacted with the men and children in their lives.

Even more interesting is the fact that these stories are based on factual events and real people - and you can even visit San Miguel today, which is once again deserted. The homes are gone, the sheep are gone… but apparently campers are permitted (when the weather allows). I've added San Miguel to my bucket list!

[Roman Clodia · Rating 4 out of 5]

'The island was crushing her, she'd known it all along'

This is a bleak and harsh read, as desolate as the eponymous, unwelcoming island which is almost a character in its own right. Focalised through three women, and set between 1888 and sometime after the second world war, there is little dialogue or external drama in this book, and instead the tensions are internalised. Misunderstanding and gulfs of experience open up between characters, rendering them isolated and frequently shorn of human warmth, even if unintentionally.

The narrative is punctuated by common events: the arrival of the sheep-shearers, the discovery of mice, Christmas. And even the war feels distant as the years flit by.

Ultimately this contrasts the futility and littleness of human lives with the enduring island which remains indifferent to the lives which have been lived upon it.

So not a book to choose if you're feeling even the slightest bit down as this certainly isn't a consoling read. I admired the writing, the control, and the restraint of the book but the austerity of the emotional vision can be depressing.

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love the clarity of this author's prose, his Drop City is one of my favorite books. This one did not disappoint as I loved the history behind the story. The first half of the novel was rather grim and bleak, the island and the house barely habitable. I always know an author has done a great job when I can feel the dirt, the wind, the rain and the mud, the seclusion and isolation and all that these people experienced. Could picture the rain entering my bedroom from a leaky ceiling, soaking all the bedclothes. Would have liked to have known what eventually happened to Edith but since that part of the story ended on a positive note I decided thing must have turned out well. Looking forward to seeing what this author tackles next. ARC from NetGalley.

[Mij Woodward · Rating 5 out of 5]

FASCINATING!

Compelling.

I was taken back in time and to a new place for me to get to know--San Miguel.

Got into the shoes of three women, each with their own particular story. Riveting.

And how does a guy write a work from a female's point of view, and "get it"? Superb writing.

While I was reading this novel, I controlled myself to not Google the names of people and places; to stay away from Wiki for the duration of the novel. So, it was sheer joy and stimulating to follow along with these interesting personal stories.

After I finished, off to Google and Wiki and the rest.

Sorry to repeat myself: one word--fascinating.

[Brian Fagan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Isn't there something refreshing about a novel that can't be buttonholed? When it's not a mystery, not a romance novel, not a crime thriller, not a fantasy story? T. C. Boyle's 2012 "San Miguel" is certainly an historical piece, but beyond that broad category, it is just a good story well-told. That's a big plus for me - lately I have fallen into the habit of reading mainly within favorite genres. And maybe that's true of most readers and most books in the last 30 to 40 years or so. I imagine many publishers want books that appeal to niche audiences. I guess I'm showing my age ...

San Miguel is a small eight-by-four mile island, one of the Channel Islands off the coast of Santa Barbara, California. The story tells of the two families who lived on the island - Will and Marantha Waters and their daughter Edith, who arrive in 1888, and later Herbie and Elise Lester, who raise two daughters there in the 1930's and -40's. Jimmie, a hired hand, connects the two stories. The author Boyle, who lives near Santa Barbara, used the memoirs of three of these real-life people, to form the backbone of the novel.

The most obvious theme of the work is the effect the island's remoteness and isolation has on its inhabitants. Nearly all of them (except the teenage Edith) came to San Miguel with dreams of peace and independence and the gratification of self-sufficiency. Marantha Waters was also looking for a cure or at least a respite from her tuberculosis. The great sweep of the story involves the playing out of those dreams for each character. In general, the Waters family encountered more in the way of frustration and heartbreak, and the Lester family more in the way of bliss and contentment, with notable exceptions.

Boyle writes with facility. His descriptions of the characters' lives on the island and it's weather moods are captivating:

"And here it was spring and she was out walking in this grand majestic place she had all to herself. The sky stretched flat overhead, sheep glanced up at her, startled, and trotted off on stiff legs, still chewing, the ocean smells drifted up the cliffs and the gulls shone white against the bruised gray backdrop that ran out over the water and faded away to infinity."

Although life there was hard work, and maybe because it was, it felt like the story could have been balanced out with some more humor. And a problem for readers with medical backgrounds is the frustration of being stopped cold with medical incongruities. A war veteran is shipped back to the mainland with a medical emergency - an old piece of shrapnel has shifted in his abdominal organs. Other than flesh wound shrapnel, that is exceedingly rare. I'm not sure why Boyle didn't just give him some common surgical ailment.

The isolation of life on the island was compared to that of the Swiss Family Robinson by a character living there. Fair enough. But in its overall feel, I compare the novel to Willa Cather's frontier novels and to the Laura Ingalls Wilder works. Perhaps even more, because of the shared context of bleak surroundings, a wife's illness and a husband's infidelity, to a book I love dearly, Edith Wharton's "Ethan Frome".

[Helen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. Wow. Wow. I just finished this historical novel and am duly impressed with the depth of the writing and the breadth of the story. It was a slower read than I usually like, but now I know I’m going to miss engulfing myself in the world of San Miguel the way it was once upon a time. Thank you TC Boyle!

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the end I quite liked it. But it did take a while to warm to it — that didn't happen until about a quarter of the way through.
I didn’t really appreciate until much further along that so much of it is based on historical events on the island of San Miguel, one of the Channel Islands across from Santa Barbara in California. Windy, often fogbound, cold, wet and isolated, it was a harsh environment for the sheep ranching family that tried to make a go of it in the late 1800s. They are the subject of the first part of the book.
Marantha Waters was a consumptive who thought she was escaping city air to breathe in the healing fresh Pacific air, so she hopefully accompanied her second husband with their adopted teenage daughter to their new adventure on the island. The book opens with “She was coughing, always coughing, and sometimes she coughed up blood. The blood came in a fine spray, plucked from the fibers of her lungs and pumped full of air as if it were perfume in an atomizer.” They are taking over the sheep ranching duties from another family. There are no other families on the island, only them and some ranch hands, the hired help. Nothing has prepared them for how hard their life will be — the decrepit shack that will be their home, the poor diet rich only in mutton and seafood, the exhausting work required just to eke out a subsistence living. They are not prepared for how destructive the isolation can be. This would be hard enough for a fit person to deal with, but Marantha is in no shape for it with her frequent relapses of TB.

The second part of the book is about another lone family living on the island 40 years later, through the Depression and into the Second World War. The characters are more sharply defined here than those of the first family; this part of the book was a lot more enjoyable and interesting. It is here that I finally figured out that these stories are steeped in fact. The “Swiss Family Lester” was profiled in Life Magazine back in 1940. http://books.google.ca/books?id=xj8EA... .
MGM used the island to film the Pitcairn Island scenes of Mutiny on the Bounty in 1935. The original story of this family, The Legendary King of San Miguel , was written by the wife in 1974, and one of the daughters also wrote a memoir; both were used by Ford as source material.
San Miguel is now a National Park.
This was an ARC from Penguin via Goodreads Giveaway.

[Dawn · Rating 2 out of 5]

SPOILER ALERT****I'm a huge T.C. Boyle fan as his books are normally so engrossing in characterization and development over the span of the story. In this case though, San Miguel is very disappointing. It seems more like some short story ideas thrown together to form a novel. I'm not a short story fan, so perhaps that's why I liked this book less than his others. This book was supposed to be more about the island life and the isolation than about the characters, perhaps. I was very intrigued by the first half of the book with The Captain, Marantha and Edith. Though they weren't very happy on the island as a family, their struggles together were interesting. The tension was palpable.

After one of the main characters dies, it's hard to recover that story, but Boyle picked up with the fate of the adopted daughter. Then, he left it again. He abandoned that story line for the story of a couple that loved the island life. I did find their relationship somewhat interesting, mostly because I felt Herbie was a bit of a ticking time bomb with mental quirks, but I still felt a bit cheated by the interference of this story into the flow of the novel.

We learn the fate of the adopted daughter through a conversation later in the novel. I found Edith much more interesting than the couple.

If you like novels with a strong sense of place and want to understand the history of this unique and isolated island a bit more, then this novel would be a good choice. Apparently, my longing for a sense of place in a novel is much less important to me than the characters themselves.