T.C. Boyle Stories II: The Collected Stories of T. Coraghessan Boyle, Volume II

by T. Coraghessan Boyle

A man falls from a roof whilst spying on his beautiful widowed neighbour. A newly married couple seeking enlightenment take a three year vow of silence and move to a yurt in the Arizona desert. A handsome young man works in real-estate by day, but has a far more sinister profession by night. An elderly woman is determined to return to her home in the countryside, despite the knowledge that in doing so she may be signing her own death warrant. Giant men are kept in cages to ensure their nightly service to their country. A man develops an unhealthy interest in his recently deceased reclusive rock-star neighbour. And on Christmas day at the San Francisco Zoo a terrible and tragic event occurs...

T.C. Boyle Stories II comprises three later volumes of short fiction - After the Plague, Tooth and Claw and Wild Child - along with a new collection, A Death in Kitchawank. These fifty-eight stories explore the mundane, the devastating, the figurative and the implausible in a masterful and enthralling collection. T.C. Boyle is a writer at the height of his craft.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Literary Fiction, Literature, American

945 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2013

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

[Sam Quixote · Rating 4 out of 5]

TC Boyle: Stories II is an anthology of anthologies - this nearly 1000 page book contains the previously published short story collections After the Plague, Tooth and Claw, and Wild Child as well as an unpublished one, A Death in Kitchawank (hehe). I’ve already read/reviewed the first three (all great) so this review will be on the Kitchawank (hehe) collection.

First off though, some weird omissions/additions to the overall contents. The story Mexico that’s in After the Plague in its singular incarnation is excluded from this bumper book while the wry Orwellian parody Almost Shooting an Elephant is listed under the Tooth and Claw section but doesn’t appear in its separate edition. In his introduction, Boyle mentions that Mexico had appeared in his first giant collection of stories and he didn’t want to double up, which is fine, but there’s no mention of the Elephant story so who knows what happened there.

A Death in Kitchawank (hehe) is easily the worst TC Boyle short story collection I’ve read. Of its 14 stories, only a couple really stood out to me while the others were boring, uninspired and almost instantly forgettable. I liked The Way You Look Tonight, about a young married couple where the husband discovers his wife appeared in a sex tape - now being shared online - from before they were together, which felt like it had real emotional depth to it from the way Boyle wrote both husband and wife characters.

The other story I liked was The Marlbane Manchester Musser Award about a writer going to an obscure town to accept a literary award - and then getting arrested for kidnapping/child abuse! It was unexpected and exciting and had an amusing arc to it. The slob doctor in What Separates Us From the Animals was interesting in that I wondered what his story was and how he became the way he did though Boyle does nothing to develop that angle.

I remember bits and pieces from other stories that stood out - a rock star who lost his three year old daughter during a trip to the beach, a tiger crashing a wedding and killing several guests, a hiking trip that goes wrong - but, unusually for Boyle, the stories themselves had a ponderous pace to them, making the reading experience feel like wading through mud. The writing is competent but the stories for the most part feel half-formed and underdeveloped.

Stories II is worth reading for three of the four collections - a solid four stars each for After the Plague, Tooth and Claw, and Wild Child - but I’d give a woeful two stars for the tedious Kitchawank (hehe) tales. Though you might not get this impression from my review, I think TC Boyle is one of the finest short story writers working today which the majority of this collection attests to.

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

If T.C. Boyle were anything like his characters in his stories, he’d be a hitman-for-hire, killing people on the side with a smile on his face and a twinkle in his eye. Having met the man, he doesn’t look like a serial killer, nor does he act like one, but then all serial killers start out as nice guys. But I digress. And I need to reevaluate my focus, before I’m banned from my reviewing endeavors forever and locked in chains in a basement next to a guy named Moon Shine with a toothpick shoved between two of his missing teeth till the apocalypse.

Divided into four parts and with 58 stories, STORIES II: THE COLLECTED STORIES OF T. CORAGHESSAN BOYLE, VOLUME II clocks you over the head approximately 944 times and doesn’t let up once. The man can turn a phrase, shove you into the microwave with both hands, and then smack you over the head with a shovel. But at least the journey proved intriguing, the characters interesting, and the stories varied and multi-faceted, otherwise this would have been about as easy to swallow as a kitchen utensil.

Rather than let this review reach epic proportions, I’ll give you a crash course introduction to these gloomy tales using a series of words and phrases: mudslides and shovels and plastic surgeons and lies and the apocalypse and sagging breasts; bad dudes and liars and cheaters and bad relationships and losers and miscreants and maleficence; tragedy and loss and pain and suffering and depression and despair and thieves and fraud and kidnapping and adultery and felonies and misdemeanors; fishing and boats and seashells and Darth Vader and dickheads and assholes and sleet and popping pills; studio sessions and smoking and drinking and reefer and nicotine and slitting throats and kitchen knives; historical and present day; slugs and scorpions and cloning dogs and kissing frogs and child performers and parent extortionists and rabies and beasts and priests and lairs; Romulus and Remus; dust and rust and dig and dug and vultures and crows and nobody knows; banging beginnings and abrupt endings; fornication and penetration and hurried hellos and shortened goodbyes and crazy-ass women and asshat men; excitation and inebriation and speculation and observation and intonation; criminals and punishment and confinement and government and failed experiments; wives and husbands and log cabins and ravens and neighborhood watches and Kentucky bourbon and more plastic surgeons; guns and muzzles and black ski masks and walking hitches and thoroughfares to nowhere and incest; dragonflies and desert skies and no-sex retreats and tarantulas and Pepsodent; campfires and canoes and wieners; dog fighting and Lab victims and inhumane cages and failed first dates; breast cancer and radioactivity and radionuclides and bees and honey and X-rays; male rape and impregnate; downloading porn and Jameson bottles and California beach communities and fresh coffee and croissants and clap and chlamydia and plaintive looks; hybrid tigers and zoo weddings and piñatas and tamales and dead mothers and authors and the wrongfully accused; satires and tall tales and the absurd and first person and third.

I received this book for free through NetGalley.

Cross-posted at Robert's Reads

[Kieran Mcmahon · Rating 5 out of 5]

T.C. Boyle, one suspects, has something of a lugubrious aspect to him. It certainly fits with the gloomy demeanour and authentically punk appearance he has long maintained, and the panoply of human failure and chronic fuck-uppery which populates his latest collection of stories does little to dispel this notion. The typical Boyle protagonist, if there is such a thing, is solipsistic, riddled with contradictions and at war with the world. This is not to say that all is misery and despair; there are fifty-eight stories in 'Stories II' and a good many of them offer burgeoning romances, moments of vital emotional connection or transcendental epiphany, but for my money his trump card, the thing Boyle does better than virtually any writer alive, is expose, with the relentlessness of a bloodhound, the frightening brittleness of human goodness. His pen has unerring ability to find those places where idiosyncrasies tip over into madness, to map the roads that good intentions pave to hell, and to see those wars in the heart that a war with the world is almost always a proxy for.

There is, for example the recidivist drug addict, who goes to work at his brothers abortion clinic and embroils himself in a Christian anti-abortion protest against all advice, eventually wading into the crowd itself:

'I looked down at my feet. a woman was clutching my right leg to her as if she’d given birth to it, her eyes as loopy as any crack-head’s. My left leg was in the grip of a balding guy who might have been a clerk in a hardware store and he was looking up at me like a toad I’d just squashed. "Jesus," they hissed. "Jesus!"'

Or the woman who longs to return to her home, located in a Chernobyl-style nuclear fallout zone, because she hates her new life in the city:

'She wanted to agree with him, wanted to say that she didn’t care about radiation or anything else because we all have to die and the sooner the better, that all she cared about was the peace of the forest and her home where she’d buried her husband fourteen years ago, but she was afraid despite herself. She pictured rats with five legs, birds without wings, her own self sprouting a long furred tail beneath her skirts while the meat shone in the pan as if it were lit from within. The night deepened. Leonid huffed for air. She hurried on.'

Though a little less globetrotting than writers like David Mitchell and Nam Le (for whom nothing less than a world-encompassing vision will do), Boyle undoubtedly shares their gift for polyphonic literature. Indeed so fully does he inhabit each fresh character that, taken altogether, this book offers something akin to being briefly reincarnated time and again. Reading it nightly, as I did, a great swarm of distinctive voices builds up, beautiful dooms abound.

Although Boyle completed a highly acclaimed trilogy fictionalising three of the great egomaniacs of the twentieth century (John Harvey Kellogg, Alfred Kinsey, Frank Lloyd Wright, pictured above) in 2009, a feat which merely reaffirmed his position in the top tier of American novelists, he writes in the biographical preface for this book that he has always considered himself primarily a short story writer. The short form was how he began writing and remains where he feels most at home. He did, after all, study at the famous Iowa Writers Workshop under John Cheever and apparently became friends with Cheever's great cohort and short-story supremo Raymond Carver. The influence of two such titans is inevitable on any serious practitioner of short stories in America, but Boyle is quick to point out that Cheever was a writer first, not a teacher (having almost no experience of teaching before he came to Iowa), and that his importance was greater as an exemplar of the art rather than directly instructional. Boyle's prose style has occasionally been referred to as maximalist, this strikes me as overstating it a bit, perhaps it seems maximalist if you live on a diet of pure minimalism, but it's hardly David Foster Wallace. If anything the prose style reflects the craftsmanlike approach to writing he speaks of in interviews; it's a robust mixture of guileless description and carefully deployed metaphor, simple, but with the suppleness and touches of quality that more suggest a masterful artisan at work than some torrid punk genius.

'They wore each other like a pair of socks. He was at her house, she was at his. Everywhere they went—to the mall, to the game, to movies and shops and the classes that structured their days like a new kind of chronology—their fingers were entwined, their shoulders touching, their hips joined in the slow triumphant sashay of love.'

'They were together at his house one night when the rain froze on the streets and sheathed the trees in glass.'

'“Do you love me?” she whispered. There was a long hesitation, a pause you could have poured all the affirmation of the world into. “Yes,” he said finally, his voice so soft and reluctant it was like the last gasp of a dying old man.'

The chief themes of 'Stories II', which collects all the stories Boyle has published since 1990 as well as fourteen new ones, are similar to those of his more recent novels, and the environmentalist and naturalist strains he explored in 'Friend of the Earth', 'Drop City' and 2011's 'When the Killing's Done' crop up frequently again here. For example one story concerns a rancher on the Latin American Pampas who refuses to see that his animals are being blinded by the hole in the ozone layer above his land, another story has a subplot about the decimation of American bird populations as a consequence of the exploding stray and domestic cat populations (a very real problem). Boyle stories are also frequently set in isolated communities and the dichotomy of wildness and civilisation comes into play several times. This is most obvious with the novella 'Wild Child', a tour de force of historical fiction writing which tells the story of a feral child discovered in the countryside in revolutionary France and brought to Paris for scientific study. The novella arrives two thirds of the way through 'Stories II' (which clocks in around 900 pages) and offers a welcome change of pace, it is powerful, evocative (the atmosphere reminded me of Andrew Miller's excellent 'Pure') and utterly gripping, the kind of story that never leaves you and one of many genuine treasures to be found amongst the curios and lesser works on show here.




The British writer Tahmima Anam said in a Granta interview that she can never read novels when she's writing, instead she only reads short stories because, as she puts it “I think of them medicinally... it can be that one spark that you need”. That's probably the best way to approach this book too. Seen this way the 900 page bulk, some 23 years of short stories, becomes a veritable Victorian hamper of Grade A stuff, always good for a dose. If you needed a little something by the bedside you knew you could rely on for the literary hit that takes you out of your own head for a while, or if you're a writer like Tahmima Anam and you need a quick fix to set you on your way, to show you how it's done, well, T.C. Boyle won't let you down, he never does.

http://a-book-inside-a-book.blogspot....

'Stories II' is Published on October 3rd by Viking Press.

Extracts from 'Chicxulub', pp331-340:

'Have you heard of Tunguska? In Russia? This was the site of the last-known large-body impact on the Earth’s surface, nearly a hundred years ago. Or that’s not strictly accurate—the meteor, an estimated sixty yards across, never actually touched down. The force of its entry— the compression and superheating of the air beneath it—caused it to explode some twenty-five thousand feet above the ground, but then the term “explode” hardly does justice to the event. There was a detonation—a flash, a thunderclap— equal to the explosive power of eight hundred Hiroshima bombs. Thirty miles away, reindeer in their loping herds were struck dead by the blast wave, and the clothes of a hunter another thirty miles beyond that burst into flame even as he was
poleaxed to the ground. Seven hundred square miles of Siberian forest were leveled in an instant. If the meteor had hit only four hours later it would have exploded over St. Petersburg and annihilated every living thing in that glorious and baroque city.'

'When it comes, the meteor will punch through the atmosphere and strike the Earth in the space of a single second, vaporizing on impact and creating a fireball several miles wide that will in that moment achieve temperatures of 60,000 degrees Kelvin, or ten times the surface reading of the sun. If it is Chicxulub-sized and it hits one of our landmasses, some two hundred thousand cubic kilometers of the Earth’s surface will be thrust up into the atmosphere, even as the thermal radiation of the blast sets fire to the planet’s cities and forests. This will be succeeded by seismic and volcanic activity on a scale unknown in human history, and then the dark night of cosmic winter. If it should land in the sea, as the Chicxulub meteor did, it would spew superheated water into the atmosphere instead, extinguishing the light of the sun and triggering the same scenario of seismic catastrophe and eternal winter, while simultaneously sending out a rippling ring of water three miles high to rock the continents as if they were saucers in a dishpan. So what does it matter? What does anything matter? We are powerless. We are bereft. and the gods—all the gods of all the ages combined—are nothing but a rumor.'

(Copyright Viking Press, 2013)

[Larry Bassett · Rating 4 out of 5]

You will think from looking at the dates hear that it took me two years to read this book. In a strange way that is true. I bought the hardcover book quite sometime ago and bought one audible book which I thought replicated this very long book. But it took me a very long time to figure out that this book was apparently initially published as four or five individual books which were then ultimately gather together into this one massive volume. So there are multiple audible books and once I finally figured that out I blasted through the audible books one after the other. Several of them were read by the author himself which is a extraordinarily positive experience. I gave the individual books all three or four stars. Basically I felt this author is a treasure whom I easily enjoyed. I am not sure I would’ve made it through the book or books Reading them on the printed page. But the audible books were terrific.

[Stephanie · Rating 4 out of 5]

How did I go my whole life without reading this guy? Holy cow. Amazing. Some of these stories I recognized (and remembered liking) in other collections/magazines but for some reason never put 2 and 2 together and went out looking for more - well now I will. AMAZING.

[Starry · Rating 4 out of 5]

After seeing the cover of this book, I have to admit: I didn't want to like the short stories inside. I mean, look at it. Not only is the author striking a "Helloooo-there-ladies-Come-meet-Mister-Interesting" pose that reminds me of getting trapped in a corner at a cocktail party with a super-intense, pseudo-profound guy who doesn't understand social cues, but then this author does a WARDROBE CHANGE for his OTHER photo on the book's spine! (In case you missed it, he switches out his red jacket for yellow. Don't forget the facial hair, jewelry, and red sneakers. It's a very 80s look, though the book was published in 2013.)

Nonetheless, this guy can write. The stories were remarkably diverse in plot, setting, and voice. I enjoyed the whole (huge) collection... until I shut the book, and its cover tried to send me deep, soulful looks from my nightstand.

My advice to fans of the short story: get the Kindle version.

Addendum: I just listened to a podcast of the author (New Yorker Fiction) and like him much better after hearing him read and discuss another writer's short story. He sounded "normal"--I mean that in the best of ways. Guess it's time to put the troubling book cover behind me and move on.

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I hesitated-- I wish there was a way to indicate 3.5 stars, somewhere between 'liked it' and 'really liked it.' For the most part, this collection is solid. There were several stories that left me so frustrated, but something tells me that was Boyle's point, exactly. It's as if he's saying: "Well yes-- life IS messy. You don't always get to know the ending, life's more complicated than that."

Not for nothing-- but most writers have a... tic-- be it poetic or narrative( or hey, both, am I right?) T.C. Boyle's(at least in this publication) is 'bota bag'. Oy Vey, at some point half way through this collection I thought to myself: "If he writes one more story featuring a 'bota bag full of red wine' I'm gonna stick a a sharp object in my eye, just so I don't have to read that sentence again. That having been said-- I truly admire and enjoy T.C. Boyle. He's a wonderful contemporary writer/observer of life-- this is well worth the read.

[Lori L (She Treads Softly) · Rating 5 out of 5]

T.C. Boyle Stories II: The Collected Stories of T. Coraghessan Boyle, Volume II contains fifty eight stories by Boyle written since his first collection of short stories was published in 1998. Boyle is a amazing, intelligent literary fiction writer who has a remarkable gift of story-telling. As much as he is known for his novels, Boyle is a master of the short story. He can establish the characters and setting, entangle you in the drama, toy with your emotions, and make it seem effortless. The preface is a detailed review of Boyle's life as a writer to date, where he's been, what has led him to this point, and his theories about writing. It is certainly not to be skipped over on your way to the stories.

But I must acknowledge that while the preface is quite interesting, Boyle's stories are the shining stars, especially since many of the stories included in this massive collection have already won honors and acclaim. It's wonderful to have them all gathered in one collection. Stories II includes stories from Boyle's last three collections plus fourteen new stories not previously found in any collection, so, as it has been noted, it is the equivalent of four smaller books. It also needs to be noted that Boyle is including everything from the last fifteen years, so this is not a best of or a selection of hand-picked award winners.
Contents include:

I. After the Plague: Termination Dust; She Wasn’t Soft; Killing Babies; Captured by the Indians; *Achates McNeil; The Love of My Life; *Rust; *Peep Hall; Going Down; Friendly Skies; *The Black and White Sisters; Death of the Cool; *My Widow; The Underground Gardens; *After the Plague.

II. Tooth and Claw: When I Woke Up This Morning, Everything I Had Was Gone;* Swept Away; Dogology; The Kind Assassin; *The Swift Passage of the Animals; *Jubilation; *Rastrow’s Island; *Chicxulub; Here Comes; All the Wrecks; I’ve Crawled Out Of; Blinded by the Light; *Tooth and Claw; Almost Shooting an Elephant; The Doubtfulness of Water: Madam Knight’s Journey to New York, 1702; Up Against the Wall;

III. Wild Child: *Balto; La Conchita; *Question 62; *Sin Dolor; Bulletproof; *Hands On; *The Lie; The Unlucky Mother of Aquiles Maldonado; Admiral; Ash Monday; Thirteen Hundred Rats; Anacapa; *Three Quarters of the Way to Hell; *Wild Child;

IV. A Death in Kitchawank: *My Pain Is Worse Than Your Pain; The Silence; A Death in Kitchawank; *What Separates Us from the Animals; *Good Home; *In the Zone; Los Gigantes; *The Way You Look Tonight; *The Night of the Satellite; *Search and Rescue; *Sic Transit; Burning Bright; The Marlbane Manchester Musser Award; Birnam Wood

I've put an asterisk in front of the titles of the stories that I especially enjoyed, although that doesn't mean that the others aren't as good. This is an expansive collection full of stories that warrant reading and re-reading. I have a feeling that I'll be re-visiting this collection simply to slowly savor many of these stories again and again. Admittedly there is one story that I likely won't re-read because I can't get it out of my head. All I'll say is that it has a dog in it and it makes me weepy and angry.

Very Highly Recommended - this is a must have collection due to be released on October 3, 2013.

Quote:
... after the plague—it was some sort of Ebola mutation passed from hand to hand and nose to nose like the common cold—life was different. More relaxed and expansive, more natural. The rat race was over, the freeways were clear all the way to Sacramento, and the poor dwindling ravaged planet was suddenly big and mysterious again. It was a kind of miracle really, what the environmentalists had been hoping for all along, though of course even the most strident of them wouldn’t have wished for his own personal extinction, but there it was. Location 3916-3920

Excerpt:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/12/boo...

[Bill Glose · Rating 5 out of 5]

This hefty tome (944 pages) is worth its weight in gold. Gathering together the tales from Boyle’s last three story collections plus a group of uncollected stories, it essentially gives you four books in one. Many of the stories have also won acclaim in more than a half-dozen “Best Of” anthologies. These stories showcase one of the finest fiction writers today at the height of his powers. Here is how he describes two parents waiting to discover the severity of their child's injuries after being hit by a car in the story, "Chixulub":

"We are in that room, in that purgatory of a room, for a good hour or more. Twice I thrust my head out the door to give the nurse an annihilating look, but there is no news, no doctor, nothing. And then, at quarter past two, the inner door swings open, and there he is, a man too young to be a doctor, an infant with a smooth bland face and hair that rides a wave up off his brow, and he doesn't have to say a thing, not a word, because I can see what he's bringing us and my heart seizes with the shock of it. He looks to Maureen, looks to me, then drops his eyes. 'I'm sorry,' he says."

Wow. The majesty of Boyle's words is remarkable. This book is a must-have for lovers of literary fiction.

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

These didn't really seem to be stories ABOUT anything. And there's some merit in that, but it became monotonous. There were stories about growing up. Stories about family. And those are all fine, but they could have been smaller moments in a more memorable story. There also seemed to be a bunch of stories that centered on older men in which, as an aside, they had an affair.

Sometimes the symbolism was very good, sometimes it was a bit too obvious. It's not symbolism if it smacks you in the face several times. Most of all, all the stories just sort of ended in the middle. There was no end, not even a hint of one. Which made even the stories I might have considered good feel lacking.

Overall, the writer has a great technique and vocabulary, but it was the subject matter that was lacking. The audiobook is read by the author-- and is well done.

[Roland · Rating 3 out of 5]

TC Boyle's first collection of stories was the size of a phone book and this one (all his short stories of the past 15 years) is probably a larger tome. Boyle's stories are unique and unpredictable and that aspect makes reading the entire collection a fun endeavor. Alas, I had checked the book out from the library to read one story in particular and only read about a dozen or so before its return, so this review is simply a snapshot of the book as a whole.

While my sampling of stories and plots weren't quite as adventurous or intriguing as STORIES I, they still are highly entertaining. I wanted especially to read his story on the infamous SF Zoo tiger attack incident from Christmas Day a few years back. That one was a letdown, a case where fact was more compelling than fiction, but most of the others I read didn't disappoint.

[RICK "SHAQ" GOLDSTEIN · Rating 5 out of 5]

RICK “SHAQ” GOLDSTEIN SAYS: “THE LONG AND SHORT… OF A GREAT WORDSMITH!”
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

If you are an existing fan of T.C. Boyle and you haven’t read a good percentage of the short stories contained herein… then… you should run with the speed of a lightning bolt to buy this book! This collection happens to include the writings of “Wild Child” a previous publication that I read and posted an Amazon review on back in January 2010… and yet I happily purchased this newest collection of fifty-eight short stories… and I can’t thank “myself” enough for doing it. Mr. Boyle is not just a great author… he’s an even more unbelievable short story writer.

Until I bought this short story “encyclopedia”… containing over nine-hundred-pages… I never thought of giving the following example… to explain to unknown readers… why T.C. Boyle is an even better short story writer… than full length author. Falling back on my lifelong love of baseball… I can only try to analogize the following… though Sandy Koufax is the greatest pitcher I ever had the pleasure of seeing pitch in my lifetime… Mariano Rivera… is the greatest short-relief-closer in history. Boyle… is the Mariano Duncan of short stories. But unlike Rivera… T.C. doesn’t need a setup man. Each of his tantalizingly different stories “grabs” the reader from the get go. The subjects are of such varying and wide ranging topics… that you almost have to shake your just completed thoughts and adventures out of your head… like a dog shaking off the cold… after escaping from an icy blizzard… into a fireplace heated abode… before you start the next beckoning story.

After you whimsically complete a number of stories… and are enjoying the wide ranging touching of innumerable emotions… one extra… not often experienced… reading sensation… seems to be twinkling by itself… not only enjoyably… but if it had a life of its own… it would also be… enthusiastically… shaking off dust… and literally stretching… and reaching for a not too often seen… ray of light. It’s hard to configure… what that feeling is… and then if finally hits you… Boyle’s stories do not have the slightest constraint of political correctness!!

What a wonderful sensation… in viewpoints… in characters… in plots… in climaxes… in prejudice… in love… oh… what a feeling. The rapid-fire stories are so gratifying… to a true lover… of the written word… that with a treasure trove of this magnitude… I found myself constantly battling within… “Come on keep reading the next story”… or… these are so good… and hard to come by… perhaps… I should put the book aside… and know I have more short stories… for a rainy day… a sunny day… or for that matter any day… where I want to lose myself temporarily… in a delightful diversion… of literary bliss.

[Edward Champion · Rating 4 out of 5]

I finished this today -- the last act of my self-appointed Summer of Boyle Stories, whereby I reread the entirety of the two collected volumes. These stories are good, but I think I may have outgrown Boyle. Because I'm more interested in contradictions and paradoxes rather than full-bore polarity. If you're in your twenties, you will like him. His characters are motivated by malice, vengeance, lust, and crazed obsession. In other words, the emotional catnip for a younger person. And while these do lead to good yarns -- and there are some great tales in both volumes, particularly "After the Plague" -- it ultimately leads to a template that can be a little repetitive, no matter what the setting, tone, or style. So you're jealous that your wife appeared in a porn video in her twenties and you castigate her and she runs away screaming "You don't own me"? Big deal. What if she DIDN'T run away and you have to live with this? That's the other thing. The women characters are almost always thin. This is something I didn't see when I read these stories as a young man. But they are described physically rather than emotionally. See, this is the Boyle problem, even though I still very much like him. He plots his stories in ways that hinder deep internal character conflict. So his stories tend to hit a cheap emotional angle even as the reader is still enthralled. And Boyle is simply too good a writer for me to not ding him for this. I think I prefer Boyle as a novelist, where at least he is forced to account for human motivations. I'll still read Boyle. I do like him. I'm glad I reread these stories. But cynicism, to me, seems the easy way out for art and life.

[Chelsea Hahn · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I obviously did not read the entirety of this gigantic collection (considering it is big enough to jack up your car), I read a number of the stories for a graduate course. A few stuck out to me, such as "Chicxulub," "Wild Child," and "Thirteen Hundred Rats." These stories had a certain depth to them that I felt lacked in other stories. "Chicxulub" was an emotional rollercoaster in which you are desperately hoping alongside the parents. "Thirteen Hundred Rats" is a heart-wrenching story of a man that loses his wife and seeks affection and interaction but struggles; he happens upon finding compassion for a rat, which leads him to buy more rats as pets until it consumes him. Being based on a true story of a boy growing up in the wild, "Wild Child" is a compelling tale of what it means to be part of a civilized society, and the writing style is extremely distinctive compared to other Boyle stories I've read in this collection.

However, I felt many of the stories in this collection that I read, including "After the Plague," "Jubilation,"All the Wrecks I've Climbed Out of," and "Question 62," bled into one another. It seemed as though the characters were all the same, and it was all written in a glib tone that became monotonous. I'm all for humor and sarcasm in writing, but I wanted more feeling, more depth too, which is why only a few stories will stick with me.

Will I give other stories in this collection a chance? Perhaps, but sitting down and reading story after story (as was the case for my summer course) is unlikely.

[Chase · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pick a page.

Any one.

I can almost guarantee it will have an example of Boyle’s poignant, moving, and fantastic prose. It’s a given.

Boyle has a gift for writing characters and scenarios that flare to life vividly in my head and burn brightly for a couple dozen pages before fading out, to be replaced by the next cast of characters in a seaside town or college campus or Indian jungle. His stories remind me of aspects of what it means to be human, thoughts and emotions and ideas that I’ve forgotten, though they’re always there, just beneath the surface.

His characters truly feel like real people. Their stories make me laugh, make me cry, make me think. And at such a formative time in my life, these stories of the world I’m soon to be thrown into are a comforting reminder that we’re all only human.

I love the concepts of his tales, the mishmash of places and things and people he describes so eloquently. But I will never be able to describe one. I’ve tried, don’t get me wrong. But only reading them yourself will truly do them justice. They’re fantastic.

My favorite? It’s difficult, but I’d say Chicxulub. It has a clever metaphor and heartbreakingly raw emotion in it. I don’t find myself needing context, needing more. It left me thinking, like the best short stories do. I love it.

It’s been 3 months since I first picked up this anthology. I’ve checked it out twice, renewed it half a dozen times. 3 months is a long time, but I think some of these stories will stick with me for longer. As long as this review, though? Probably not :)

[Bailey · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this story after some exposure to T.C. Boyle's "Love of My Life" in my contemporary lit class in college. Unfortunately, I was one of the few students who actually enjoyed it. I think the other students took a disliking to it because the characterization hit a bit too close to home for some. Boyle describes his main protagonists as graduate students who continued to go to school to not have real jobs; they had a cushy life in an apartment they didn't truly have to worry about losing, and I think what was most poignant of all was when Boyle stated how they measured time in semesters, as professional students often do. But for students who move on and look back at that time in life when getting an A meant everything would be fine and dandy, and deadlines didn't exist for anything but the assignments, I think this became an engaging read. The satellite (both literal and figurative) shakes up their orderly world and one half of the couple abandons their cocoon, the other remains unnaturally tethered to it.

[Mary Newcomer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book took me a long time to read, but I read all of his 59 stories. T.C. Boyle is a great writer. I gave him 5 stars because I love how he writes though I don't always like his subject matter. There is a bit too much alcohol in his stories and a lot of young men who really mess up their lives. I couldn't finish "Good Home" about animal abuse. However, there are some real diamonds in this
group of stories which were written over many years.
The book definitely takes you on a long ride through many kinds of terrain, but it is worth the time
and effort.

[Jody · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was only a portion of the full book on audio titled 'A Death in Kitchawank'. My first Boyle read though I have another on the TBR pile. I enjoyed the stories although some, like short stories do, seem to end abruptly. I don't mind as it allows for reader imagination and speculation which is part of what reading is about. It was narrated by the author which in my experience is not always a good thing but in this case Boyle did a great job.

[Gary Newsom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nine. Hundred. Pages. That is just too long. Wayyyy too long. Add to that, the stories themselves are too long; even the short ones are too long (not painfully too long like some of S King's tomes, but they all could be trimmed by about half). Still, most are enjoyable tales.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed the first few stories, but this is like 800 pages long and I have so many other good books to read. I plan to keep at it occasionally.
And a cool thing about this book is Mr. Boyle signed it for me at the Texas Book Festival last year. He did an awesome reading as well.

[Donald · Rating 5 out of 5]

Boyle’s writing draws you in , not always to welcome places but to situations that are intensely human. Reading Boyle to me is mesmerizing...one of my favorites ( along with Vonnegut , Steinbeck & Brautigan)

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

(no. 41 of 2017)

[Erik · Rating 5 out of 5]

Boyle is a master. Yes, some stories are better than others, but the volume of quality writing this man produces is amazing. A wonderful brick of stories to entertain you for a long time.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author's writing is expansive and, at times, unusual. The stories were for the most part engrossing, and occasionally disturbing. I would like to read one of his novels.

[Jaimeoka · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

(review coming)

[Ian Groves · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic

[Parker · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed 3/4 of these. A great storyteller, and some real classics.

[Morts.]

*Not in this collection, not listed.

New Yorker ‘Writers voice’ (2025)

4 stars

Read by the author, both his voice and writing reminded me of Henry Hill’s last monologue in ‘Goodfellas’.