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Wild Child
A new collection from the American master of the short story
A feral boy is captured and ‘civilised’ in the Languedoc region. A young woman is hired to look after a cloned dog that cost its owners $250,000. A widower in a self-satisfied suburb engulfs his loneliness in a sea of rats. A weary city GP is baffled by a Mexican boy, the son of a taco-seller, who can feel no pain. A junior film editor invents the death of his own daughter because he can’t face going in to work. A vindictive teenager with a gasoline fixation runs into trouble with his Japanese neighbour. Two washed-up crooners in 1950s New York get creative while recording a schmaltzy Christmas special. In this beguiling new collection of stories, T. C. Boyle, one of the world’s greatest storytellers, explores the improbable, the tragic, the allegorical and the altogether ordinary.
A feral boy is captured and ‘civilised’ in the Languedoc region. A young woman is hired to look after a cloned dog that cost its owners $250,000. A widower in a self-satisfied suburb engulfs his loneliness in a sea of rats. A weary city GP is baffled by a Mexican boy, the son of a taco-seller, who can feel no pain. A junior film editor invents the death of his own daughter because he can’t face going in to work. A vindictive teenager with a gasoline fixation runs into trouble with his Japanese neighbour. Two washed-up crooners in 1950s New York get creative while recording a schmaltzy Christmas special. In this beguiling new collection of stories, T. C. Boyle, one of the world’s greatest storytellers, explores the improbable, the tragic, the allegorical and the altogether ordinary.
304 pages, Paperback
First published December 22, 2009
147 people are currently reading
1420 people want to read
About the author
T. Coraghessan Boyle
159 books3,018 followersT. 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 309 reviews
August 12, 2021
Wild Child: Stories by T. C. Boyle
The title story is a re-telling of the true story of Victor of Aveyron, a French boy found in the late 1700’s, who had lived most of his youth as a feral child.
The doctor who “civilized” him didn’t always have the most honorable of motives.
That title story is an odd juxtaposition to the rest which are about modern themes set in California, lonely women, road rage, mudslides, botox, feral cats, a school board fight over teaching evolution and worry about the ozone layer. In one story a father pins his DWI on his daughter.
Two themes come up in Boyle’s California stories: it’s always raining and everyone tends toward alcoholism. Other stories are about a Mexican kid who feels no pain and is turned into a circus freak by his father, and a Venezuelan kidnapping.
You can see the genesis of Boyle’s novel “When the Killing’s Done" in several of these stories. The author, Thomas Coraghessan Boyle (b. 1948), has written almost 20 novels and 100 short stories. He’s probably best known for his novels The Tortilla Curtain and The Road to Wellville. The latter, the story of Kellogg of cereal fame, was made into a movie.
Review edited, pictures added 8/12/2021
Top photo: a still from one of the many movies made, this one from The Wild Child, François Truffaut, 1970. From sensesofcinema.com
Photo of the author from shareable.net
The title story is a re-telling of the true story of Victor of Aveyron, a French boy found in the late 1700’s, who had lived most of his youth as a feral child.
The doctor who “civilized” him didn’t always have the most honorable of motives.
That title story is an odd juxtaposition to the rest which are about modern themes set in California, lonely women, road rage, mudslides, botox, feral cats, a school board fight over teaching evolution and worry about the ozone layer. In one story a father pins his DWI on his daughter.
Two themes come up in Boyle’s California stories: it’s always raining and everyone tends toward alcoholism. Other stories are about a Mexican kid who feels no pain and is turned into a circus freak by his father, and a Venezuelan kidnapping.
You can see the genesis of Boyle’s novel “When the Killing’s Done" in several of these stories. The author, Thomas Coraghessan Boyle (b. 1948), has written almost 20 novels and 100 short stories. He’s probably best known for his novels The Tortilla Curtain and The Road to Wellville. The latter, the story of Kellogg of cereal fame, was made into a movie.
Review edited, pictures added 8/12/2021
Top photo: a still from one of the many movies made, this one from The Wild Child, François Truffaut, 1970. From sensesofcinema.com
Photo of the author from shareable.net
September 20, 2020
Herr Boyle is a personal favourite, and a hard man to keep pace with. This collection is a bit uneven perhaps (as is usually the case in a writer so prolific), but was always entertaining, and showcased TCB's enviable ability to inhabit such a wide variety of fictional narrators' worlds. The long title story is a particularly strong channeling of Flaubert, all pitiless show and no tell in its covering of the same non-fictional terrain (a feral young boy is discovered in the forest of a post-revolutionary France that intends to civilise the savage out of him) that was brought to cinematic life by Truffaut decades ago. But "Balto", which is a split narrative concerning a ne'erdowell single father facing a second DUI and the loss of his two daughters if his eldest refuses to lie for him in court, is damn near miraculous. I have probably read it 20 times, and could easily read it 20 more.
**************************
Stories
1. Balto: see above...
2. La Conchita: not-too-congenial self-employed white guy gets involved in digging out a family from a California mudslide, in spite of himself
3. Question 62: woman who feeds stray cats gets involved with a man pushing to have stray cats euthanized
4. Sin Dolor: ageing doctor relates his history with a young male patient who was born unable to feel pain
5. Bulletproof: man attends school board meeting where teaching of evolution is being debated, becomes involved with a woman who believes in [sic] Intelligent Design
6. Hands On: how far would you go with the plastic surgeon?
7. The Lie: I've always wanted to make up the perfect lie to get out of going to work, but man, this one takes the cake
8. The Unlucky Mother of Aquiles Maldonado: Hobson's choice: if you don't negotiate with peeps who kidnap your mom, you lose. If you do negotiate with them, you lose.
9. Admiral: Rich folk clone a dog, hire the woman who walked the original Admiral to dog-walk Admiral II. All goes well, hahaha.
10. Thirteen Hundred Rats: What the title sez. Not pretty.
11. Anacapa: Two overprivileged 40-something white boys prolong their friendship past its sell-by-date, hit on same woman during a just-like-the-old-days reunion
12. Three Quarters of the Way to Hell: Great story about two personal-baggage-laden session musicians who somehow get Platonically right in time with each other during the recording of a really cheesy Xmas tune. A fave in this volume.
13. Wild Child: see above....
**************************
Stories
1. Balto: see above...
2. La Conchita: not-too-congenial self-employed white guy gets involved in digging out a family from a California mudslide, in spite of himself
3. Question 62: woman who feeds stray cats gets involved with a man pushing to have stray cats euthanized
4. Sin Dolor: ageing doctor relates his history with a young male patient who was born unable to feel pain
5. Bulletproof: man attends school board meeting where teaching of evolution is being debated, becomes involved with a woman who believes in [sic] Intelligent Design
6. Hands On: how far would you go with the plastic surgeon?
7. The Lie: I've always wanted to make up the perfect lie to get out of going to work, but man, this one takes the cake
8. The Unlucky Mother of Aquiles Maldonado: Hobson's choice: if you don't negotiate with peeps who kidnap your mom, you lose. If you do negotiate with them, you lose.
9. Admiral: Rich folk clone a dog, hire the woman who walked the original Admiral to dog-walk Admiral II. All goes well, hahaha.
10. Thirteen Hundred Rats: What the title sez. Not pretty.
11. Anacapa: Two overprivileged 40-something white boys prolong their friendship past its sell-by-date, hit on same woman during a just-like-the-old-days reunion
12. Three Quarters of the Way to Hell: Great story about two personal-baggage-laden session musicians who somehow get Platonically right in time with each other during the recording of a really cheesy Xmas tune. A fave in this volume.
13. Wild Child: see above....
September 29, 2014
Each story in Wild Child is assured, in-your-face, and perfectly executed; Boyle is a master of the genre. The stories are so deep and insightful that I could imagine any one of them being extended into a full-length, absorbing novel. His themes seem peculiarly contemporary and American – very much of their place and time, but not as if that is a limitation. With the exception of two stories, this is California incarnate: immigrants, people of Asian and Latino descent, sushi, coastal and island scenery, the music and movie biz. Boyle alternates expertly between third- and first-person narration, and his tales are rich with foreboding and tragic potential. Many begin with a simple hint of menace: a hidden gun, a small lie that becomes overblown, a few pet rats that horrifyingly, nauseatingly multiply to 1300.
I am convinced Boyle could write an engrossing story on any subject, but especially interesting for me is his preoccupation with cutting-edge science, including conservation: there is an imagined new ‘Scopes monkey’ trial, debating the right of teachers to teach on evolution in schools (“Bulletproof”), the cloning of beloved pets (“Admiral”), organ transplantation (“La Conchita”), the possibility of a person never feeling pain (“Sin Dolor”), gratuitous cosmetic surgery (“Hands On”), and house cats threatening songbird populations (“Question 62” – similar in theme to Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom). There are also foretastes of the subject matter of When the Killing’s Done, such as the plague of rats and a boat trip out towards Anacapa island.
“Wild Child,” the final novella of 60-some pages, is the only historical story, but unlike, say, the final story in Wells Towers’s collection, Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned, it does not feel strained or out of place here. Boyle retells the story of Victor, the ‘Wild Boy of Aveyron,’ and specifically his training with Doctor Itard. Feral children are fascinating test subjects for questions of domestication versus wildness, instincts versus learned behavior, and so on. A few years ago I read an intriguing study of the feral child phenomenon (Savage Girls and Wild Boys, by Michael Newton), and it’s no surprise to me that authors find the idea inspiring. As Boyle asks of Victor’s experience:
Wild children occupy a rare gray area between humans and animals and thus provide a kind of metaphor for Boyle’s concerns: what the relationship is – and/or should be – between mankind and nature, and how human interaction can transcend mere beastly reactions.
(This review originally appeared at Bookkaholic.)
I am convinced Boyle could write an engrossing story on any subject, but especially interesting for me is his preoccupation with cutting-edge science, including conservation: there is an imagined new ‘Scopes monkey’ trial, debating the right of teachers to teach on evolution in schools (“Bulletproof”), the cloning of beloved pets (“Admiral”), organ transplantation (“La Conchita”), the possibility of a person never feeling pain (“Sin Dolor”), gratuitous cosmetic surgery (“Hands On”), and house cats threatening songbird populations (“Question 62” – similar in theme to Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom). There are also foretastes of the subject matter of When the Killing’s Done, such as the plague of rats and a boat trip out towards Anacapa island.
“Wild Child,” the final novella of 60-some pages, is the only historical story, but unlike, say, the final story in Wells Towers’s collection, Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned, it does not feel strained or out of place here. Boyle retells the story of Victor, the ‘Wild Boy of Aveyron,’ and specifically his training with Doctor Itard. Feral children are fascinating test subjects for questions of domestication versus wildness, instincts versus learned behavior, and so on. A few years ago I read an intriguing study of the feral child phenomenon (Savage Girls and Wild Boys, by Michael Newton), and it’s no surprise to me that authors find the idea inspiring. As Boyle asks of Victor’s experience:
What must it have been like to be abandoned, to have your throat cut, to be captured and imprisoned and without defense except to sink your teeth into the slowest and weakest of your tormentors? To throw off your clothes, indifferent to the cold? To cower and hide and hunger?
Wild children occupy a rare gray area between humans and animals and thus provide a kind of metaphor for Boyle’s concerns: what the relationship is – and/or should be – between mankind and nature, and how human interaction can transcend mere beastly reactions.
(This review originally appeared at Bookkaholic.)
May 18, 2025
I was happy to find the collection in one of the libraries, a day after really enjoying one of the stories from it 🙂
I've been really impressed with T.C. Boyle's short stories - the language, the structure, the momentum and rhythm, the layers of observation and description, the humour, the sadness.
while the content varied wrt how much I liked these stories, all the the stories were of the same quality of writing.
🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟
❗spoilers beyond ❗
⚖ Alto 🤔
🌟 🌟 🌟 +
kinda mundane content, courtroom drama and family drama... but nicely strung out and suspenseful. also a nice portrait of a young girl, just come into her teens - her understanding and perspective.
🪨 La Conchita 🌧
🌟 🌟 🌟 +
an LA courier driver, a liver in the trunk. comments on road rage! 😉 rain 😆 then a mudslide at La Conchita leads to alsorts of dramatic events... and a shifting perspective 🙂
🐌 Question 62 🐦
🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟
two sisters, two parallel days/evenings... a tiger (in the garden) in one, a one-eyed tom cat (under the trailer) in the other 🐯😺
🦂 Sin Dolor 🦂
🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟
a medical clinic in Mexico, the doctor, his assistant-and-lover. an unusual birth... the child later comes back to the clinic with his mother with burned palms. he doesn't feel pain. back again at 7/8 years old walking on a broken leg. the doctor becomes interested in the cause of his lack of pain, the boy interested in the doctors scorpions.
🎚📖 Bulletproof 🐍
🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟
The Sticker - the conversation in the bar.
Jesus and Where He Resides - the meeting in the school hall, evolution vs intelligent design.
The Weak - in the carpark, the girl Mary-Rose (with Jesus in her heart) and her mother (who'd come in late and stood next to him).
The Fit - trying to get the car out of the mud, making each others acquaintance.
The Fittest - at the bar with Dave a week later. having started dating Lenisse (spelled by ear).
The Petitions - before the trial.
I liked how the story structure took a kinda biblical form, in some ways, with the subheadings 🙂
Mutation and how it Operates in Nature - hiking, a chance encounter with Mary-Rose, the snake "they were like ribbons, she said, ribbons of God"
👁 Hands On 👃
🌟 🌟 🌟
a woman seeking botox treatment, her interest in the doctor. her house... all the things people think they want that bring little actual pleasure.
👶 The Lie 😯
🌟 🌟 🌟 ++
a couples' life changed by having a baby.... truanting work, wanting space for oneself... and The Lie!! 😉 generated abit of suspense wrt whether the lie will be discovered. and at the same time, the grief is kinda real (for the life before). also kinda funny how the lie begets more lies, and the thoughts around how to manage the lies... 😉
⚾ The Unlucky Mother Of Alquiles Maldonaro (spelled by ear) 💅
🌟 🌟 🌟++
a baseball player, his mother is kidnapped, the police chief, the boy kidnappers... how it resolves and impacts going forward.
🐶 Admiral 🧬
🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 +
the Strikers, and their Afghan dog Admiral... and a pup! Admiral 2. Nisha is hired to look after the pup... the first cloned dog 😉
🛻 Ash Monday 🚗
🌟 🌟 🌟 +
Dil, remembering Grady, the smell of gasoline... lighting the stove and cooking the meat for his mother... the racism he expresses towards the neighbour
Ichiguro, his garden 🙂 his feelings about their neighbour 😉
lots of threads to this story, and well described. kinda melancholic feel to the whole story.
🐍 Thirteen Hundred Rats 🐁
🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟
previously read on its own. I really liked this story.
grief, loneliness, the neighbours, getting an animal companion, the snow, the mall, the rats 😉 all exquisitely described. abit creepy and sad
🛥 Anna Kappa 🐟
🌟 🌟 🌟
a couple of friends reuniting, Hunter and Damien... their ritual of going out on a boat fishing... their history, conversation... the boat staff, including Julie...
🎵 Three Quarters Of The Way To Hell 🎶
🌟 🌟 🌟 +
snow in the city... a man... a woman... both music artists... their individual paths thru the day/evening to their meeting to record a Christmas song together... and their individual thoughts about the job and each other. finally finding some harmony 🙂
🌳 Wild Child 🌰
🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟
Languedoc, France. a child glimpsed, over time on different occasions.
this story felt like it has a fairytale element - in the time period hinted at in descriptions and language, and a boy taken out to the woods to be killed by a stepmother. but he survives there.
captured... he swiftly escapes to the forest again. in the winters cold and hunger, the boy wanders into the yard of the dyer Vidal, who lets him into his home... tho to later bring in the village commissioner. his humanity is debated abit, but the commissioner takes him home.... then to an orphanage. he's written about in journals... he's taken for study.... for education...
a tender story of attempts to sometimes empower, sometimes just 'civilise', and in many ways tame. the degree of understanding yet sense of failure within his tutor. the small sense of family he finds.
there was some lovely language and descriptions. a couple of favourites (tho better within context):
"... the minute vibrations sent out by the escargot as it rides along its avenue of slime"
"...and night came down like an axe"
this was the longest of the stories, at around 2 hours twenty, the other stories generally 30-45 minutes in length.
🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 + 🙂
accessed as a library audiobook, read by the author 🙂
the only thing that let the audiobook down was appalling indexing - in the contents view, breaks were there for what happily turned out to be between stories mostly, but story titles were missing, and instead the first few words from the section were listed, with eg a few words from the introduction titling the first story 🙄 something so basic 🙄
I've been really impressed with T.C. Boyle's short stories - the language, the structure, the momentum and rhythm, the layers of observation and description, the humour, the sadness.
while the content varied wrt how much I liked these stories, all the the stories were of the same quality of writing.
🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟
❗spoilers beyond ❗
⚖ Alto 🤔
🌟 🌟 🌟 +
kinda mundane content, courtroom drama and family drama... but nicely strung out and suspenseful. also a nice portrait of a young girl, just come into her teens - her understanding and perspective.
🪨 La Conchita 🌧
🌟 🌟 🌟 +
an LA courier driver, a liver in the trunk. comments on road rage! 😉 rain 😆 then a mudslide at La Conchita leads to alsorts of dramatic events... and a shifting perspective 🙂
🐌 Question 62 🐦
🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟
two sisters, two parallel days/evenings... a tiger (in the garden) in one, a one-eyed tom cat (under the trailer) in the other 🐯😺
🦂 Sin Dolor 🦂
🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟
a medical clinic in Mexico, the doctor, his assistant-and-lover. an unusual birth... the child later comes back to the clinic with his mother with burned palms. he doesn't feel pain. back again at 7/8 years old walking on a broken leg. the doctor becomes interested in the cause of his lack of pain, the boy interested in the doctors scorpions.
🎚📖 Bulletproof 🐍
🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟
The Sticker - the conversation in the bar.
Jesus and Where He Resides - the meeting in the school hall, evolution vs intelligent design.
The Weak - in the carpark, the girl Mary-Rose (with Jesus in her heart) and her mother (who'd come in late and stood next to him).
The Fit - trying to get the car out of the mud, making each others acquaintance.
The Fittest - at the bar with Dave a week later. having started dating Lenisse (spelled by ear).
The Petitions - before the trial.
I liked how the story structure took a kinda biblical form, in some ways, with the subheadings 🙂
Mutation and how it Operates in Nature - hiking, a chance encounter with Mary-Rose, the snake "they were like ribbons, she said, ribbons of God"
👁 Hands On 👃
🌟 🌟 🌟
a woman seeking botox treatment, her interest in the doctor. her house... all the things people think they want that bring little actual pleasure.
👶 The Lie 😯
🌟 🌟 🌟 ++
a couples' life changed by having a baby.... truanting work, wanting space for oneself... and The Lie!! 😉 generated abit of suspense wrt whether the lie will be discovered. and at the same time, the grief is kinda real (for the life before). also kinda funny how the lie begets more lies, and the thoughts around how to manage the lies... 😉
⚾ The Unlucky Mother Of Alquiles Maldonaro (spelled by ear) 💅
🌟 🌟 🌟++
a baseball player, his mother is kidnapped, the police chief, the boy kidnappers... how it resolves and impacts going forward.
🐶 Admiral 🧬
🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 +
the Strikers, and their Afghan dog Admiral... and a pup! Admiral 2. Nisha is hired to look after the pup... the first cloned dog 😉
🛻 Ash Monday 🚗
🌟 🌟 🌟 +
Dil, remembering Grady, the smell of gasoline... lighting the stove and cooking the meat for his mother... the racism he expresses towards the neighbour
Ichiguro, his garden 🙂 his feelings about their neighbour 😉
lots of threads to this story, and well described. kinda melancholic feel to the whole story.
🐍 Thirteen Hundred Rats 🐁
🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟
previously read on its own. I really liked this story.
grief, loneliness, the neighbours, getting an animal companion, the snow, the mall, the rats 😉 all exquisitely described. abit creepy and sad
🛥 Anna Kappa 🐟
🌟 🌟 🌟
a couple of friends reuniting, Hunter and Damien... their ritual of going out on a boat fishing... their history, conversation... the boat staff, including Julie...
🎵 Three Quarters Of The Way To Hell 🎶
🌟 🌟 🌟 +
snow in the city... a man... a woman... both music artists... their individual paths thru the day/evening to their meeting to record a Christmas song together... and their individual thoughts about the job and each other. finally finding some harmony 🙂
🌳 Wild Child 🌰
🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟
Languedoc, France. a child glimpsed, over time on different occasions.
this story felt like it has a fairytale element - in the time period hinted at in descriptions and language, and a boy taken out to the woods to be killed by a stepmother. but he survives there.
captured... he swiftly escapes to the forest again. in the winters cold and hunger, the boy wanders into the yard of the dyer Vidal, who lets him into his home... tho to later bring in the village commissioner. his humanity is debated abit, but the commissioner takes him home.... then to an orphanage. he's written about in journals... he's taken for study.... for education...
a tender story of attempts to sometimes empower, sometimes just 'civilise', and in many ways tame. the degree of understanding yet sense of failure within his tutor. the small sense of family he finds.
there was some lovely language and descriptions. a couple of favourites (tho better within context):
"... the minute vibrations sent out by the escargot as it rides along its avenue of slime"
"...and night came down like an axe"
this was the longest of the stories, at around 2 hours twenty, the other stories generally 30-45 minutes in length.
🌟 🌟 🌟 🌟 + 🙂
accessed as a library audiobook, read by the author 🙂
the only thing that let the audiobook down was appalling indexing - in the contents view, breaks were there for what happily turned out to be between stories mostly, but story titles were missing, and instead the first few words from the section were listed, with eg a few words from the introduction titling the first story 🙄 something so basic 🙄
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 20, 2011
A new TC Boyle short story book is a literary event and Boyle's latest short story collection is like his other collections - that is, it is nothing short of brilliant. He is the best short story writer alive at the moment and "Wild Child" cements his reputation for crafting well written stories that draw you into the characters' strange worlds and have you wanting more.
The best story here is a short novella called "Wild Child" about a young boy found hiding in the woods in 18th century France, apparently animal-like due to years of living in the wild. He is taken in and, like the real life case of Caspar Hauser, is taken to the city where he is taught and educated. Unlike Hauser though, the wild child is never tamed. Boyle's characterisation of the child is a perfect rendering of what you would imagine to be a feral child, part human, part animal. You feel the frustrated attempts by doctors to make him speak as well as the surroundings of 18th century Paris and Languedoc. If all the other stories in this book were bad (and they're not) the book would be worth reading for this novella alone.
"The Lie" is about a man who, unable to face work, crafts a lie that his baby has died and thus gains a few more days off. However he's unable to backtrack and then his wife finds out...
"La Conchita" is about an organ courier in California who sees a mudslide happen on the motorway and gets caught up in rescuing trapped people from their cars, imaging an alternate life where one woman's husband dies and he takes his place.
"Bulletproof" is about the battle between secular education and religious views with stickers on biology textbooks that read "Darwin's theory of evolution is just a theory" dividing parents and teachers alike. The narrator, a single man, is torn between loyalty to his secular friend and a Christian woman.
"The Unlucky Mother of Aquiles Maldonado" is about a Venezuelan baseball star whose mother is taken hostage.
"Admiral" is about a rich couple who clone their dead dog and try to recreate conditions as they were years ago.
Those are the stories that stood out for me but none were terrible and all drew me into the story despite being only a dozen pages long. The characters and settings are so vivid that you become instantly interested in the stories. It's the mark of a great writer and a master storyteller who can do that so well. I would heartily recommend this book to any fans of fiction or fans of TC Boyle, who is sure to go down in literary history as the American Chekhov. A must read, fantastic book.
The best story here is a short novella called "Wild Child" about a young boy found hiding in the woods in 18th century France, apparently animal-like due to years of living in the wild. He is taken in and, like the real life case of Caspar Hauser, is taken to the city where he is taught and educated. Unlike Hauser though, the wild child is never tamed. Boyle's characterisation of the child is a perfect rendering of what you would imagine to be a feral child, part human, part animal. You feel the frustrated attempts by doctors to make him speak as well as the surroundings of 18th century Paris and Languedoc. If all the other stories in this book were bad (and they're not) the book would be worth reading for this novella alone.
"The Lie" is about a man who, unable to face work, crafts a lie that his baby has died and thus gains a few more days off. However he's unable to backtrack and then his wife finds out...
"La Conchita" is about an organ courier in California who sees a mudslide happen on the motorway and gets caught up in rescuing trapped people from their cars, imaging an alternate life where one woman's husband dies and he takes his place.
"Bulletproof" is about the battle between secular education and religious views with stickers on biology textbooks that read "Darwin's theory of evolution is just a theory" dividing parents and teachers alike. The narrator, a single man, is torn between loyalty to his secular friend and a Christian woman.
"The Unlucky Mother of Aquiles Maldonado" is about a Venezuelan baseball star whose mother is taken hostage.
"Admiral" is about a rich couple who clone their dead dog and try to recreate conditions as they were years ago.
Those are the stories that stood out for me but none were terrible and all drew me into the story despite being only a dozen pages long. The characters and settings are so vivid that you become instantly interested in the stories. It's the mark of a great writer and a master storyteller who can do that so well. I would heartily recommend this book to any fans of fiction or fans of TC Boyle, who is sure to go down in literary history as the American Chekhov. A must read, fantastic book.
August 29, 2011
This is my first taste of TC Boyle's writing and I have to admit to being impressed by his style, his unusual imagery and turns of phrase that capture the imagination.
It's difficult to sum up an anthology containing so many short stories (14, to be precise, each fairly lengthy), but many of these contain vivid, very human and ultimately flawed characters -- there is a sense of disillusion, loneliness, and of the compromises we make with ourselves in order to find some sort of love or companionship.
But despite the technical greatness of the writing and the interesting characters, many of the stories left me feeling unsatisfied; the endings often felt incomplete, anticlimatic. It furthermore did not help that all the stories run along similar themes, making reading this book in one sitting (as I did) a little repetitive -- perhaps it is best to dip in and out of this one.
Nonetheless many of the stories provide food for thought. Some that stood out for me were:
- "Question 62", about two women faced with the animal rights vs. hunting rights issue. It's one of my favourites because it has a very powerful female perspective, and I found the chemistry between the characters very realistic and evocative.
- "Balto", which follows a young girl asked to lie in court about her father's drunk driving, with an excellent teen point of view.
- "Admiral", about a rich eccentric couple who clone their dead dog and try to recreate the same environment the original dog grew up in.
- "Sin Dolor" follows a child impervious to pain and is a disturbing but striking read.
- Last (but not least) "The Unlucky Mother", where a baseball player's mother is kidnapped. There was something charming about Boyle's evocation of Latin America.
Certainly an interesting anthology, and one I'd recommend dipping in and out of rather than reading in one sitting.
It's difficult to sum up an anthology containing so many short stories (14, to be precise, each fairly lengthy), but many of these contain vivid, very human and ultimately flawed characters -- there is a sense of disillusion, loneliness, and of the compromises we make with ourselves in order to find some sort of love or companionship.
But despite the technical greatness of the writing and the interesting characters, many of the stories left me feeling unsatisfied; the endings often felt incomplete, anticlimatic. It furthermore did not help that all the stories run along similar themes, making reading this book in one sitting (as I did) a little repetitive -- perhaps it is best to dip in and out of this one.
Nonetheless many of the stories provide food for thought. Some that stood out for me were:
- "Question 62", about two women faced with the animal rights vs. hunting rights issue. It's one of my favourites because it has a very powerful female perspective, and I found the chemistry between the characters very realistic and evocative.
- "Balto", which follows a young girl asked to lie in court about her father's drunk driving, with an excellent teen point of view.
- "Admiral", about a rich eccentric couple who clone their dead dog and try to recreate the same environment the original dog grew up in.
- "Sin Dolor" follows a child impervious to pain and is a disturbing but striking read.
- Last (but not least) "The Unlucky Mother", where a baseball player's mother is kidnapped. There was something charming about Boyle's evocation of Latin America.
Certainly an interesting anthology, and one I'd recommend dipping in and out of rather than reading in one sitting.
October 30, 2013
This collection of stories deftly tackles the main literary conflicts in such a brilliant way (man v man, society, self, and nature). Boyle's style is always on the mark and oftentimes deadpan funny. Though I wasn't happy with how some of the individual stories ended, the final story, Wild Child, nearly took my breath away in how it surprisingly pulled the entire collection together. If I were still teaching HS English, I would want to assign this, though there are some sex scenes that might not make that possible. As a HS student, I felt like I was forced to read too much stuff that was just plain awful, and if I didn't already love reading, school would have killed it for me.
June 14, 2024
3.5
Overall, this T.C. Boyle collection - the 4th collection of his that I've read - is never less than competent. Even the less-successful stories (the ones that lean more toward being forgettable) are still well-written.
About half of them - the over-achievers - more or less had me at Hello:
'Balto': A young girl has to testify in court re: her alcoholic father.
'Question 62': My favorite story in this collection. A two-tier tale of two sisters, in different parts of the US, who are each in their own way having experiences with 'cat-forms'. This is one of those instances in which, in a short story, Boyle hits a kind of perfect storm in his storytelling (and it partially explains why I keep coming back to his shorter stories; in the hope of coming across real gems like this one).
'Sin Dolor': The tragedy - from a doctor's POV - of a young boy born without the ability to feel pain.
'The Lie': As a young husband's will begins to snap, so does his hold on reality. A potent illustration of Sir Walter Scott's aphorism, 'Oh what a tangled web we weave / When first we practice to deceive'. Things go wonky indeed.
'The Unlucky Mother of Aquiles Maldonado': A pro-baseball player's beloved mother is momnapped.
'Admiral': Dog-cloning, anyone?
'Thirteen Hundred Rats': I'm not a big fan of anything with 'rat' in the title - even if it's called 'Willard' or 'Ben'. But Boyle makes something mournfully tragic out of something Stephen King would turn into a gore-fest.
After 13 short stories, there's the novella 'Wild Child' - which closes the book. It's a perfectly fine and respectful (possibly a bit more authentic) version of the same-title story Francois Truffaut filmed in 1970 - one of the few Truffaut films that I like. Like the other short stories that I haven't mentioned here, it's skilled and seems content with being adequate.
Overall, this T.C. Boyle collection - the 4th collection of his that I've read - is never less than competent. Even the less-successful stories (the ones that lean more toward being forgettable) are still well-written.
About half of them - the over-achievers - more or less had me at Hello:
'Balto': A young girl has to testify in court re: her alcoholic father.
'Question 62': My favorite story in this collection. A two-tier tale of two sisters, in different parts of the US, who are each in their own way having experiences with 'cat-forms'. This is one of those instances in which, in a short story, Boyle hits a kind of perfect storm in his storytelling (and it partially explains why I keep coming back to his shorter stories; in the hope of coming across real gems like this one).
'Sin Dolor': The tragedy - from a doctor's POV - of a young boy born without the ability to feel pain.
'The Lie': As a young husband's will begins to snap, so does his hold on reality. A potent illustration of Sir Walter Scott's aphorism, 'Oh what a tangled web we weave / When first we practice to deceive'. Things go wonky indeed.
'The Unlucky Mother of Aquiles Maldonado': A pro-baseball player's beloved mother is momnapped.
'Admiral': Dog-cloning, anyone?
'Thirteen Hundred Rats': I'm not a big fan of anything with 'rat' in the title - even if it's called 'Willard' or 'Ben'. But Boyle makes something mournfully tragic out of something Stephen King would turn into a gore-fest.
After 13 short stories, there's the novella 'Wild Child' - which closes the book. It's a perfectly fine and respectful (possibly a bit more authentic) version of the same-title story Francois Truffaut filmed in 1970 - one of the few Truffaut films that I like. Like the other short stories that I haven't mentioned here, it's skilled and seems content with being adequate.
March 20, 2019
3.5 stars maybe. Did not like this collection as much as Greasy Lake, not by far. The writing is good, supple, flowing but not as enjoyable as in the stories of the other collection. The first three here, Balto, La Conchita, Question 62 are bland, nice but unexciting. Yuo cannot help thinking the author could have done more with the material, but chose the easy way out instead. Like in La Conchita where the rifle is introduced elaborately, with emphasis, only to be virtually negelected later on. Why? The idea of Admiral is excellent but the end disappointing as if the author was in a hurry to finish it.
From the fourth story on Boyle reaches the level of his other collection, with Sin Dolor, Bulletproof, Hands On and The Lie. After that we return to the minor quality of the first stories. Thirteen Hundred Rats especially is very predictable, even the title of the story reveals the outcome! No surprises, no thrills.
The title story, or rather novella, did me convince least of all. It is told by an omniscient narrator, resulting in a lot of description, at the loss of the one thing that kept the other stories more or less afloat: the author’s style. Wild Child is a dull, again rather predictable report. It would have be better if told by (a range of) bystanders.
From the fourth story on Boyle reaches the level of his other collection, with Sin Dolor, Bulletproof, Hands On and The Lie. After that we return to the minor quality of the first stories. Thirteen Hundred Rats especially is very predictable, even the title of the story reveals the outcome! No surprises, no thrills.
The title story, or rather novella, did me convince least of all. It is told by an omniscient narrator, resulting in a lot of description, at the loss of the one thing that kept the other stories more or less afloat: the author’s style. Wild Child is a dull, again rather predictable report. It would have be better if told by (a range of) bystanders.
August 2, 2018
The late Cratis Williams who taught me contemporary literature announced in class that any man who used an initial instead of a first name was obviously impotent. He then began The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. My own prejudices stretch to include people who hyphenate their names, people with weird names, and writers who are also creative writing teachers at a college, With all of that out of the way, here’s a collection by T.C. Boyle. Yes, every time you turn around there’s a New Yorker with a new story in it by him, and LOOK! There’s another new novel, and it’s six hundred pages. But face it. The man can write. And he writes quality fiction. This collection shows that in spades. He lets his mind wander over the past and in some very different locales, always at home with his multi-faceted characters and his clever plots. What’s more, each is a short story. Not some truncated or incomplete novel. Brave T.C. Bold T.C. Keep it up, ---please.
September 30, 2017
Another masterful collection of short stories by one of the form's best current practitioners. This collections hits many of Boyle's thematic sweet spots, including the troubling relationship between humans and nature, explored in the very strong (and historically-based) title story, about a feral child and the frustrating and ultimately failed efforts to reclaim him into the human world. Most of the rest of the stories are comparably strong. One or two, perhaps, don't fully work, but most do. The result is a heady mix of cynicism, satire, and unsentimental human drama,punctuated by rare--and therefore all the more effective--moments in which characters seem to transcend the petty and mean concerns that usually govern life in Boyle stories. Powerful stuff, and highly recommended to fans of literary short fiction that manages to avoid the preciousness and self-consciousness of much literary fiction.
April 25, 2011
The stories in WILD CHILD confirmed my suspicion that T.C. Boyle is the most interesting fiction writer working in the U.S. today. I won't say North America, as Canada has Atwood and Munro, but Boyle is clearly in their all-star league. He wasn't always one of my favorites. His earlier stories were too white and male for me. But he steadily widened his point of view and improved his always impressive technical abilities until he was able to produce what I consider one of the finest novels of the past twenty years, DROP CITY. In both DROP CITY and WILD CHILD, Boyle demonstrates the ability to ground stories with the resonance of myth in the fabric of convincing reality. There are other American writers who excel at the creation of myth, notably Toni Morrison, but, lacking the grounding in reality that Boyle provides, her dream worlds fail to move me as there isn't enough at stake. My prejudice in favor of fiction that carries with it the convincing bite of a reality external to human minds and culture narrows down the field of writers whose latest can get me to pull out my credit card for a hardback purchase to a handful: Smiley, Lethem, Franzen, Boyle.
Smiley used to be the writer whose latest work I most looked forward to, and GREENLANDERS remains one of my favorite novels, but though she still writes with great skill and knows how to tell a good story, Smiley lost me when she retreated into the narrow world of the richest one percent, full of thoroughbred horses and architecturally significant houses in the hills. Another one of my prejudices: I can't stand fiction that fawns on the wealthy.
Lethem wrote wonderfully about the underclass in FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE and though his next, CHRONIC CITY, was a fascinating novel about a member of the cultural underclass, it seems that success might soon have the same effect on Lethem that it did on Smiley. So far I've liked Lethem's subjects and prose enough to pardon his flirtation with post-modernism, which I don't like for the same reasons I don't like magic realism or too much mythologizing, but I much prefer Boyle's less affected style, and if Lethem's next is a post-modern novel about New York's cultural elite, he'll drop off my list of must-read writers.
I admire Franzen as much for his courage in writing about the ecological collapse of our planet, a topic that bores and annoys many readers, as I do for his wit, but with FREEDOM Franzen too is exhibiting symptoms of the Smiley syndrome, dulling of his satirical edge and increasing his tendency to have everything end up in a warm financially secure place.
You won't find many warm safe fuzzy places in the stories in WILD CHILD. There are bars and restaurants where men, reaching for the pleasures of the moment, slip, fall, and fail. There's a monumental mudslide where one of these failed, always potentially violent men grabs at a shovel and an illusory chance of redemption. There's the house in a middle class suburb where a lonely man falls in love with a rat and ends up dead in a sea of rodents. There's the gated mansion where a black unemployed college girl takes a job dog sitting a quarter million dollar puppy. There's the early 19th century French institution where the wild child of the title is introduced to Enlightenment civilization. There's a trailer park where a woman decides that a feral cat's worth sacrificing for a dubious male lover while across the country her married sister falls in love with an escaped tiger. There's a run-down recording studio in wintery New York where a second-string backup singer finds a moment of heaven. And my favorite, a terrorist camp in the jungles of Venezuela where the middle-aged mother of a Mexican baseball millionaire survives by doing what she always has, which is the daily work of recreating civilization. All of these settings are places for Boyle to explore the conflicts between men and women, rich and poor, man and animal, and to think about the nature of Nature, in stories that are never didactic and always amusing. Financial success hasn't caused Boyle to forget what the world looks like to most of its impoverished inhabitants, and age has only increased his ability to see the world through the eyes of women. In fact it's Boyle's ability to create female characters whose lives aren't subsumed by men that makes him stand out from his talented male (and most of his female) contemporaries.
Boyle can write as beautiful a sentence as any language-obsessed writer, like the one that begins his title story "Wild Child":
"During the first hard rain of autumn, when the leaves lay like currency at the feet of the trees and the branches shone black against a diminished sky, a party of hunters from the village of Lacaune, in the Languedoc region of France, returning cold and damp and without anything tangible to show for their efforts, spotted a human figure in the gloom ahead."
What's great about this sentence, and all of the sentences in this collection, is that they never call so much attention to themselves that they get in the way of the story. Rather they carry you forward into a life you couldn't have imagined on your own while depositing just a trace of extra loveliness on the way, like using the right amount of good scent instead of a whole cheap bottle of flowery verbiage.
In WILD CHILD, Boyle displays all the literary qualities I like: the courage to write about serious social problems; convincing characters of many classes, genders, and nationalities; a sly satirical but not too obvious wit; and smooth beautiful unobtrusive writing. I'm looking forward to many more years of reading his very fine work.
Smiley used to be the writer whose latest work I most looked forward to, and GREENLANDERS remains one of my favorite novels, but though she still writes with great skill and knows how to tell a good story, Smiley lost me when she retreated into the narrow world of the richest one percent, full of thoroughbred horses and architecturally significant houses in the hills. Another one of my prejudices: I can't stand fiction that fawns on the wealthy.
Lethem wrote wonderfully about the underclass in FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE and though his next, CHRONIC CITY, was a fascinating novel about a member of the cultural underclass, it seems that success might soon have the same effect on Lethem that it did on Smiley. So far I've liked Lethem's subjects and prose enough to pardon his flirtation with post-modernism, which I don't like for the same reasons I don't like magic realism or too much mythologizing, but I much prefer Boyle's less affected style, and if Lethem's next is a post-modern novel about New York's cultural elite, he'll drop off my list of must-read writers.
I admire Franzen as much for his courage in writing about the ecological collapse of our planet, a topic that bores and annoys many readers, as I do for his wit, but with FREEDOM Franzen too is exhibiting symptoms of the Smiley syndrome, dulling of his satirical edge and increasing his tendency to have everything end up in a warm financially secure place.
You won't find many warm safe fuzzy places in the stories in WILD CHILD. There are bars and restaurants where men, reaching for the pleasures of the moment, slip, fall, and fail. There's a monumental mudslide where one of these failed, always potentially violent men grabs at a shovel and an illusory chance of redemption. There's the house in a middle class suburb where a lonely man falls in love with a rat and ends up dead in a sea of rodents. There's the gated mansion where a black unemployed college girl takes a job dog sitting a quarter million dollar puppy. There's the early 19th century French institution where the wild child of the title is introduced to Enlightenment civilization. There's a trailer park where a woman decides that a feral cat's worth sacrificing for a dubious male lover while across the country her married sister falls in love with an escaped tiger. There's a run-down recording studio in wintery New York where a second-string backup singer finds a moment of heaven. And my favorite, a terrorist camp in the jungles of Venezuela where the middle-aged mother of a Mexican baseball millionaire survives by doing what she always has, which is the daily work of recreating civilization. All of these settings are places for Boyle to explore the conflicts between men and women, rich and poor, man and animal, and to think about the nature of Nature, in stories that are never didactic and always amusing. Financial success hasn't caused Boyle to forget what the world looks like to most of its impoverished inhabitants, and age has only increased his ability to see the world through the eyes of women. In fact it's Boyle's ability to create female characters whose lives aren't subsumed by men that makes him stand out from his talented male (and most of his female) contemporaries.
Boyle can write as beautiful a sentence as any language-obsessed writer, like the one that begins his title story "Wild Child":
"During the first hard rain of autumn, when the leaves lay like currency at the feet of the trees and the branches shone black against a diminished sky, a party of hunters from the village of Lacaune, in the Languedoc region of France, returning cold and damp and without anything tangible to show for their efforts, spotted a human figure in the gloom ahead."
What's great about this sentence, and all of the sentences in this collection, is that they never call so much attention to themselves that they get in the way of the story. Rather they carry you forward into a life you couldn't have imagined on your own while depositing just a trace of extra loveliness on the way, like using the right amount of good scent instead of a whole cheap bottle of flowery verbiage.
In WILD CHILD, Boyle displays all the literary qualities I like: the courage to write about serious social problems; convincing characters of many classes, genders, and nationalities; a sly satirical but not too obvious wit; and smooth beautiful unobtrusive writing. I'm looking forward to many more years of reading his very fine work.
January 17, 2020
This is a collection of 14 short stories of different genres and different subjects. The titular story is about a young boy who was discovered living wild in the forests of Napoleonic France and “civilized.” We also see a young Mexican boy who feels no pain, a bereaved man who adopts a snake, and then prefers the mice he buys it for lunch, a cynical man saving a life, a baseball player’s mother being kidnapped for ransom...
Some of these stories were weaker than others, but overall I enjoyed this collection quite a bit. I didn’t always love how the stories ended (abruptly sometimes), but they were always well written and fun to read.
Some of these stories were weaker than others, but overall I enjoyed this collection quite a bit. I didn’t always love how the stories ended (abruptly sometimes), but they were always well written and fun to read.
January 31, 2023
I have been a fan of TC Boyle for a number of years but had not read any of his short fiction. Now that I read this excellent collection, I can see what I have been missing. The guy kicks butt with the short fiction format. Many of the stories have environmental themes embedded in them and such a nice range too. 4.5 stars
February 2, 2017
Few writers can achieve the consistency in voice and poignance that T.C. Boyle does. Though his rhythms and pacing can begin to repeat when reading an entire collection, I never tire of them. I will always go back for more.
This collection in particular is a meaty, juicy thing, filled with visceral, sometimes horrifying things ("Thirteen Hundred Rats", which I read to freak myself out; and "Wild Child", the novella about a feral boy in medieval France); people in complicated situations whose behavior complicates them tenfold ("The Lie", "Balto" & "Admiral"); and a handful of people who find themselves heroic or disappointed, sometimes both ("La Conchita" & "Question 62"). There are no duds here.
(And the author himself reads the audiobook. Nobody can read his own rhythmic language better.)
The stories in order as I loved them:
"The Lie" (ch 7)
"Thirteen Hundred Rats" (ch 11)
"Ash Monday" (ch 10)
"Balto" (ch 1)
"La Conchita" (ch 2)
"Bulletproof" (ch 5)
"Admiral" (ch 9)
"Question 62" (ch 3)
"Wild Child" (ch 14)
"The Unlucky Mother of Aquiles Maldonado" (ch 8)
"Sin Dolor" (ch 4)
"Anacapa" (ch 12)
"Hands On" (ch 6)
"Three Quarters of the Way to Hell" (ch 13)
This collection in particular is a meaty, juicy thing, filled with visceral, sometimes horrifying things ("Thirteen Hundred Rats", which I read to freak myself out; and "Wild Child", the novella about a feral boy in medieval France); people in complicated situations whose behavior complicates them tenfold ("The Lie", "Balto" & "Admiral"); and a handful of people who find themselves heroic or disappointed, sometimes both ("La Conchita" & "Question 62"). There are no duds here.
(And the author himself reads the audiobook. Nobody can read his own rhythmic language better.)
The stories in order as I loved them:
"The Lie" (ch 7)
"Thirteen Hundred Rats" (ch 11)
"Ash Monday" (ch 10)
"Balto" (ch 1)
"La Conchita" (ch 2)
"Bulletproof" (ch 5)
"Admiral" (ch 9)
"Question 62" (ch 3)
"Wild Child" (ch 14)
"The Unlucky Mother of Aquiles Maldonado" (ch 8)
"Sin Dolor" (ch 4)
"Anacapa" (ch 12)
"Hands On" (ch 6)
"Three Quarters of the Way to Hell" (ch 13)
May 13, 2011
ugh. i just don't like short story collections. i keep trying, but no. it's like me and radiohead. i will admit, however, that i started reading this under false assumptions (that this was a. a classic and b. semi-autobiographical of the author's childhood), but i pretty quickly amended my expectations. still, i just didn't like it. i can't even explain myself. i won't think less of anyone who does like this book, but i really disliked it.
May 16, 2020
I remember several years ago, I was at a used book store and bought a novel by Boyle. I don't remember which of his novels it was but I do remember the bookstore owner telling me that Boyle is known more for his excellent short stories than for his novels. I can't disagree with that statement but I do love both his novels and his stories.
This collection was especially good and well worth reading. Boyle is really a master of the English language and his stories keep you engrossed throughout. The stories were really wide ranging and I enjoyed all of them. Included was a story about an underage girl who drives for her father when he was inebriated (Balto); one about a man delivering a donor liver when he gets stopped by a mudslide and must help in the rescue effort (La Conchita); a story about a boy who is unable to feel pain and its consequences (Sin Dolor); one about a man who lies about the health of his child to get out of work (The Lie); one about a rich couple who pay $250,000 to clone their dog (Admiral); one about a man who loses his wife and ends up getting a pet rat and is then inundated with them (Thirteen Hundred Rats); and the titular tale about a child who was left in the wilds of France by his mother and was then captured and unsuccessfully civilized (The Wild Child). The Wild Child was based on the true account of the wild boy of Aveyron which occurred around 1800.
As I said, all of these stories were enjoyable and I would highly recommend this volume along with most anything written by Boyle. Of his novels, I think I enjoyed Drop City probably the most but all are worth reading. I'll be looking forward to more of his works.
This collection was especially good and well worth reading. Boyle is really a master of the English language and his stories keep you engrossed throughout. The stories were really wide ranging and I enjoyed all of them. Included was a story about an underage girl who drives for her father when he was inebriated (Balto); one about a man delivering a donor liver when he gets stopped by a mudslide and must help in the rescue effort (La Conchita); a story about a boy who is unable to feel pain and its consequences (Sin Dolor); one about a man who lies about the health of his child to get out of work (The Lie); one about a rich couple who pay $250,000 to clone their dog (Admiral); one about a man who loses his wife and ends up getting a pet rat and is then inundated with them (Thirteen Hundred Rats); and the titular tale about a child who was left in the wilds of France by his mother and was then captured and unsuccessfully civilized (The Wild Child). The Wild Child was based on the true account of the wild boy of Aveyron which occurred around 1800.
As I said, all of these stories were enjoyable and I would highly recommend this volume along with most anything written by Boyle. Of his novels, I think I enjoyed Drop City probably the most but all are worth reading. I'll be looking forward to more of his works.
July 30, 2025
A few stories are in the 4-5 star range for sure: Balto, La Conchita, The Lie, Anacapa
Most are 3 stars. But all well structured, well written, often ambitious, and each with a clear defining image or moment at least.
The weakest stories seem to be 90% premise and a one paragraph twist or unique moment. like the story of the Venezuelan baseball players mom being kidnapped. That happened to a number of players. It feels mostly like a dramatization than a story. Thought the relationship between the mom and kidnappers was compelling.
Or the creationism in school debate which is pretty 'meh' until the closing scene.
Definitely a collection with stories I would be happy to revisit.
Most are 3 stars. But all well structured, well written, often ambitious, and each with a clear defining image or moment at least.
The weakest stories seem to be 90% premise and a one paragraph twist or unique moment. like the story of the Venezuelan baseball players mom being kidnapped. That happened to a number of players. It feels mostly like a dramatization than a story. Thought the relationship between the mom and kidnappers was compelling.
Or the creationism in school debate which is pretty 'meh' until the closing scene.
Definitely a collection with stories I would be happy to revisit.
December 26, 2018
I've never been into short stories but hey, these are rather novellas or short novels. The characters instantly get you, even if they are not likeable at times.
April 7, 2021
Interesting enough but nothing special.
This selection from T.C. Boyle was just a retelling of the boy raised by wolves story. It kept my interest but was not outstanding. I expected more from him. Three stars.
This selection from T.C. Boyle was just a retelling of the boy raised by wolves story. It kept my interest but was not outstanding. I expected more from him. Three stars.
November 14, 2010
In one of those weird confluences of coincidences, I was traveling west on the Pacific Coast Highway with my mother and father and sister towards Santa Barbara (home of T.C. Boyle). At La Conchita, traffic suddenly jammed up, and we just squeezed past a serious accident, a small pickup loaded with white sacks of something soft, now scattered across the highway, its cab flattened nearly below the load bed, an SUV turned toward oncoming cars, horn blaring, onlookers rushing to help, already talking to 911 on their cells. Scary.
My mother noted that accidents always happen here, cars crossing north into the little hamlet against a lethal flow of eighty-mile-per-hour traffic, but not only that—also the disastrous mudslide that bottled up the highway and killed ten in 2005, the source for T.C. Boyle's ‘La Conchita,’ which we had all read in ‘The New Yorker.’
Later, on a Saturday night, while making a run for groceries, I ended up happily sitting in the parking lot listening to ‘Selected Shorts' because Isiah Sheffer announced he would read the short story most requested by listeners, ‘La Conchita.’
A few days later I was browsing in the library, looking for something quick. There displayed in the new fiction section was Boyle's latest collection of short stories, ‘Wild Child,’ which, of course, includes ‘La Conchita.’
Sometimes things really do call to you—like a short story.
Boyle is a master of the form, and ‘La Conchita’ a shining example of that mastery. The thirteen other pieces in ‘Wild Child,’ while not all at the same level, are testimony to the care and craft Boyle puts into his work.
Just when I think Boyle has overused the sort of voice the narrator of ‘La Conchita’ has—a savvy but somehow clueless guy, blunt and staccato, quintessentially American prole—he surprises me by stretching a bit.
In ‘Three Quarters of the Way to Hell,’ he goes back to Manhattan in an alternate 60s, and a studio session where some washed-up crooners are enlisted to try and cash in on a cheesy novelty Christmas record—‘Little Suzy Snowflake.’ In a matter of several pages, Boyle turns his tale of woebegone has-beens resentfully punching the clock into a paean to the transforming power of song.
Boyle uses more pages in the long title story, his version of the actual events that made up the life of the wild boy of Aveyron in post-revolutionary France. It’s an archetypal narrative because it is universal and unique, bound by the facts and open to fantasy. I’ve seen Truffaut’s ‘L’Enfant Sauvage,’ and read Mordecai Gerstein’s children’s novel, ‘Victor,’ as well as his picture book, ‘The Wild Boy,’ all powerful interpretations, but Boyle brings something new to the story in unusually restrained, unadorned, and elegant prose.
‘La Conchita,’ ‘Three Quarters,’ and ‘Wild Child’ are my favorites of the bunch, but Boyle also veers away from his vernacular shtick in ‘Sin Dolor,’ a kind of parallel warm-up for ‘Wild Child’ about a boy who feels no pain, and a doctor who cares about and for him.
Boyle, it should be said, is maybe only slightly lazy with the average-joe thing. It’s pretty dang authentic, he always tells a good tale, and in some of the stories in 'Wild Child,' he's not bound to it. Every one of these fourteen is worth reading.
My mother noted that accidents always happen here, cars crossing north into the little hamlet against a lethal flow of eighty-mile-per-hour traffic, but not only that—also the disastrous mudslide that bottled up the highway and killed ten in 2005, the source for T.C. Boyle's ‘La Conchita,’ which we had all read in ‘The New Yorker.’
Later, on a Saturday night, while making a run for groceries, I ended up happily sitting in the parking lot listening to ‘Selected Shorts' because Isiah Sheffer announced he would read the short story most requested by listeners, ‘La Conchita.’
A few days later I was browsing in the library, looking for something quick. There displayed in the new fiction section was Boyle's latest collection of short stories, ‘Wild Child,’ which, of course, includes ‘La Conchita.’
Sometimes things really do call to you—like a short story.
Boyle is a master of the form, and ‘La Conchita’ a shining example of that mastery. The thirteen other pieces in ‘Wild Child,’ while not all at the same level, are testimony to the care and craft Boyle puts into his work.
Just when I think Boyle has overused the sort of voice the narrator of ‘La Conchita’ has—a savvy but somehow clueless guy, blunt and staccato, quintessentially American prole—he surprises me by stretching a bit.
In ‘Three Quarters of the Way to Hell,’ he goes back to Manhattan in an alternate 60s, and a studio session where some washed-up crooners are enlisted to try and cash in on a cheesy novelty Christmas record—‘Little Suzy Snowflake.’ In a matter of several pages, Boyle turns his tale of woebegone has-beens resentfully punching the clock into a paean to the transforming power of song.
Boyle uses more pages in the long title story, his version of the actual events that made up the life of the wild boy of Aveyron in post-revolutionary France. It’s an archetypal narrative because it is universal and unique, bound by the facts and open to fantasy. I’ve seen Truffaut’s ‘L’Enfant Sauvage,’ and read Mordecai Gerstein’s children’s novel, ‘Victor,’ as well as his picture book, ‘The Wild Boy,’ all powerful interpretations, but Boyle brings something new to the story in unusually restrained, unadorned, and elegant prose.
‘La Conchita,’ ‘Three Quarters,’ and ‘Wild Child’ are my favorites of the bunch, but Boyle also veers away from his vernacular shtick in ‘Sin Dolor,’ a kind of parallel warm-up for ‘Wild Child’ about a boy who feels no pain, and a doctor who cares about and for him.
Boyle, it should be said, is maybe only slightly lazy with the average-joe thing. It’s pretty dang authentic, he always tells a good tale, and in some of the stories in 'Wild Child,' he's not bound to it. Every one of these fourteen is worth reading.
May 14, 2013
Until I read T C Boyle, I don't think I had encountered another fiction writer who takes a sensitive consciousness of nature, ecology, and environment, and blends it intricately with an understanding of people and of humanity. His stories are well written, well told, too (as I heard him read 'The Lie', a story in this book). As a fiction writer, Boyle deftly uses stories to explore human dimensions of environmental issues and activism, by going into the lives of activists as well as the people they are apparently in opposition with. He does this very well, for instance, in his short story 'The Siskiyou, July 1989' (in the anthology I'm With the Bears: Short Stories from a Damaged Planet), where a couple and their child dig a trench across a road that carries logging trucks and set themselves in it with quick-dry concrete. In his novels like When the Killing's Done and A Friend of the Earth, he sets human dominion over nature as backdrop to explore the extents to which people will go over things they want or cherish. Environmental activism, he reveals, is not just about fighting against some ongoing or imminent environmental threat, but also about striving for particular values, memories, and ideas of people as a part of nature. And what do we ultimately have on both sides that we need to understand better? People.
June 12, 2010
Wild Child is T.C. Boyle's latest collection of short stories. The majority of these stories are about the chaos that nature injects in everyday, orderly life and how that chaos changes people. Mudslides, escaped tigers, thousands of rats, and feral boys all rampage across these pages challenging people and changing them. There is a tinge of magical realism in some of the stories, plenty of tragedy, and even a sprinkling of hope.
What struck me most about these stories was how often I wanted more of the story. The characters themselves were often not very likable, but the situations and their actions were so interesting that I was left curious about the outcome. Did the two pothead singers make amazing music together and become famous? Did the liver make it to the recipient in time? Short stories are not normally my favorite genre, but when they are well written they show you a slice of a life, just a moment or two, that marks something significant and reveals the essence of that life. TC Boyle accomplishes that with this creative, wild collection.
I listened to the audio version of this book, read by the author himself. He does a fine job of the reading especially emphasizing the irony and dry humor in the stories. I passed many hours happily immersed in these stories and was reminded to pick up more by T.C. Boyle.
What struck me most about these stories was how often I wanted more of the story. The characters themselves were often not very likable, but the situations and their actions were so interesting that I was left curious about the outcome. Did the two pothead singers make amazing music together and become famous? Did the liver make it to the recipient in time? Short stories are not normally my favorite genre, but when they are well written they show you a slice of a life, just a moment or two, that marks something significant and reveals the essence of that life. TC Boyle accomplishes that with this creative, wild collection.
I listened to the audio version of this book, read by the author himself. He does a fine job of the reading especially emphasizing the irony and dry humor in the stories. I passed many hours happily immersed in these stories and was reminded to pick up more by T.C. Boyle.
April 5, 2014
Downloaded from library and it is NOT Wild Child and Other Stories. Just Wild Child. Interesting enough and ultimately very sad about a French boy about 5 y.o. in the 1700s who is taken to a woods by his mother (who just had too many children). She cuts his throat, but not fatally and he survives as a feral child until he is captured when he is about 12.
Some people try hard to tame and educate him, but learn that certain aspects of humanity must be mastered by an early age or the maturing brain moves on and will never be able to accomplish them.
And poor Victor has moved beyond the age where he can learn these things. He does learn to depend upon and even care about some of the people who take care of him, but in the end, it's about his lost humanity. Alas...
Some people try hard to tame and educate him, but learn that certain aspects of humanity must be mastered by an early age or the maturing brain moves on and will never be able to accomplish them.
And poor Victor has moved beyond the age where he can learn these things. He does learn to depend upon and even care about some of the people who take care of him, but in the end, it's about his lost humanity. Alas...
March 15, 2014
I think the reason I marked this to-read was because I liked his short story in Harpers about a girl re-hired to train a couple's puppy, this the cloned pup reincarnated from the remains of her original charge. Half way through these short stories I likened them to a catalog of all the reasons I was so happy to have left California (over-entitled adolescents, mudslides, wild fires, alcoholic vegetarians...).
I didn't like the second half of this book as much as the first, but I enjoyed them all so much I went ahead and checked out a second volume of T.C. Boyle short stories from the library.
I didn't like the second half of this book as much as the first, but I enjoyed them all so much I went ahead and checked out a second volume of T.C. Boyle short stories from the library.
November 8, 2016
I listened to the audible version of this book which was read by the author himself. I consider it an asset to listen to an author read his or her own work. Many of the characters are quite odd and as a result enjoyable in a strange way.
My least favorite of the stories is the one after which the book is named Wild Child the long story of a feral boy. I give that story two stars whereas most of the other stories are four stars. Thus overall the book gets three stars.
My least favorite of the stories is the one after which the book is named Wild Child the long story of a feral boy. I give that story two stars whereas most of the other stories are four stars. Thus overall the book gets three stars.
March 24, 2016
I was not familiar with Boyle prior to reading "Wild Child." I enjoyed his writing style, very eloquent and most of the time it worked to keep me immersed in the story at hand. That being said, I felt only a few of the stories in this novel really captured my attention. "Balto" notably being one of those. Otherwise, it was more background noise for me and I lost interest quickly.
August 6, 2011
T.C.Boyle is a master of the short story with an incredible variety of characters, locales, plots. Satisfying in every way, especially the unforgettable title story.
May 7, 2023
RICK “SHAQ” GOLDSTEIN SAYS: “14 SHORT STORIES REFLECTING VARIOUS ANGLES OF THE HUMAN CONDITION”
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When an author decides to write short stories as compared to full length books there are additional pressures that must be faced. How to build interesting characters and plots quickly… and how to build enough emotion in the story “and” the reader to make a certifiable climactic ending possible in a limited amount of pages. T.C. Boyle has succeeded in that quest “almost” all of the time in this collection. His very few misses are still worth reading but you’re left at the end of these anomalies with “nowhere to go.” (Even though the journey was enjoyable.) The stories range from a twelve-year-old girl having to testify in her Father’s trial after a car accident involving drinking… to a story that zig-zags back and forth from California to the frigid Midwest. In California a woman is killing snails in her garden when a large… very real… tiger appears… simultaneously… in the Midwest a lonely midnight shift nurse gets involved with a stranger with a coonskin hat who doesn’t like stray cats. Another story takes place in Mexico and centers around a young boy who can feel no pain. A kindly doctor who delivers and treats him first thinks it’s parental abuse… but then finds out he has stumbled upon a scientific miracle… which unfortunately leads to a side show carnival like waste of life. There are stories that debate evolution and creation… and others that depict loneliness and abnormal pets. Fleeting fame and the highs and lows of the music industry is diagnosed with a meticulous unblinking character study.
The longest “short” story by far is “WILD CHILD” which is sixty-five pages long and is based on the true facts of “THE WILD BOY OF AVEYRON”… a young child who was abandoned in the wild with his throat slit and became an animal to survive. My favorite of them all was “LA CONCHITA” which culminates in an exhilarating adrenaline rush as a delivery boy/man who is not at all happy with the world… he delivers everything from screenplays to the valuable package he was transporting today: “THIS WAS THE KIND OF THING I HANDLED MAYBE TWO OR THREE TIMES A MONTH AT MOST-AND IT NEVER FAILED TO GIVE ME A THRILL. IN THE TRUNK, ANCHORED FIRMLY BETWEEN TWO BIG BLOCKS OF STYROFOAM, WAS A HUMAN LIVER PACKED IN A BAG OF ICE SLURRY INSIDE A BUD LIGHT FUN-IN-THE-SUN COOLER, AND IF THAT SOUNDS RIDICULOUS, I’M SORRY.” This delivery takes place in a driving rain storm which makes his normal bursts of unconscionable speed very dangerous… and then there is a giant mud slide. Bodies are buried alive and traffic is at a standstill. At the hospital that is awaiting his delivery… seconds are ticking off the clock of life for the recipient… and a frantic knock on his mud-locked car by an overwrought unknown woman… changes this heretofore soulless driver… into the epitome of the “human-condition”. Your heart will be pounding as your hands can’t stop from turning to the next page.
This is a well written collection that many times leaves you alone with your own thoughts as to how the story really ends… because the real culmination could have gone either way. Unfortunately there are one or two stories that just leave you… but you will be glad you invested your time and money in this book.
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When an author decides to write short stories as compared to full length books there are additional pressures that must be faced. How to build interesting characters and plots quickly… and how to build enough emotion in the story “and” the reader to make a certifiable climactic ending possible in a limited amount of pages. T.C. Boyle has succeeded in that quest “almost” all of the time in this collection. His very few misses are still worth reading but you’re left at the end of these anomalies with “nowhere to go.” (Even though the journey was enjoyable.) The stories range from a twelve-year-old girl having to testify in her Father’s trial after a car accident involving drinking… to a story that zig-zags back and forth from California to the frigid Midwest. In California a woman is killing snails in her garden when a large… very real… tiger appears… simultaneously… in the Midwest a lonely midnight shift nurse gets involved with a stranger with a coonskin hat who doesn’t like stray cats. Another story takes place in Mexico and centers around a young boy who can feel no pain. A kindly doctor who delivers and treats him first thinks it’s parental abuse… but then finds out he has stumbled upon a scientific miracle… which unfortunately leads to a side show carnival like waste of life. There are stories that debate evolution and creation… and others that depict loneliness and abnormal pets. Fleeting fame and the highs and lows of the music industry is diagnosed with a meticulous unblinking character study.
The longest “short” story by far is “WILD CHILD” which is sixty-five pages long and is based on the true facts of “THE WILD BOY OF AVEYRON”… a young child who was abandoned in the wild with his throat slit and became an animal to survive. My favorite of them all was “LA CONCHITA” which culminates in an exhilarating adrenaline rush as a delivery boy/man who is not at all happy with the world… he delivers everything from screenplays to the valuable package he was transporting today: “THIS WAS THE KIND OF THING I HANDLED MAYBE TWO OR THREE TIMES A MONTH AT MOST-AND IT NEVER FAILED TO GIVE ME A THRILL. IN THE TRUNK, ANCHORED FIRMLY BETWEEN TWO BIG BLOCKS OF STYROFOAM, WAS A HUMAN LIVER PACKED IN A BAG OF ICE SLURRY INSIDE A BUD LIGHT FUN-IN-THE-SUN COOLER, AND IF THAT SOUNDS RIDICULOUS, I’M SORRY.” This delivery takes place in a driving rain storm which makes his normal bursts of unconscionable speed very dangerous… and then there is a giant mud slide. Bodies are buried alive and traffic is at a standstill. At the hospital that is awaiting his delivery… seconds are ticking off the clock of life for the recipient… and a frantic knock on his mud-locked car by an overwrought unknown woman… changes this heretofore soulless driver… into the epitome of the “human-condition”. Your heart will be pounding as your hands can’t stop from turning to the next page.
This is a well written collection that many times leaves you alone with your own thoughts as to how the story really ends… because the real culmination could have gone either way. Unfortunately there are one or two stories that just leave you… but you will be glad you invested your time and money in this book.
June 10, 2022
Based on limited experience, my favorite of T C Boyle's short story collections is The Plague and Other Stories which had stories that I still remember. This, of course, is the issue w/ short story collections...remembering them later. These stories are also very good but seem to linger less.
The title story, Wild Child is the longest in the collection and is based on a true story of Victor of Aveyron. Victor was a feral child who was first captured in 1797 when he was 9 or 10 years old. He soon escaped, only to be captured again when he was twelve. At this point, he was moved around, landing in the care of a young doctor named Itard, who attempted to civilize him. Victor was naked, dirty, stunted in growth. He ate raw vegetables, bugs, frogs. He seemed to be mute and deaf but Itard believed otherwise. Boyle is at his wildest and most magical self when writing about the most bizarre and outrageous of humans, and Victor is no exception. The French were interested in defining humanity. The interest in the "noble savage" - someone existing purely in nature - assumed a person would be "gentle, innocent, a lover of solitude, ignorant of evil and incapable of causing intentional harm." Language had been one thing that makes us human, and despite years of trying, Victor did not learn to speak. Itard believed this was because he effectively lived a deaf/mute existence until he was 12; some believe that we are only capable of learning a first language if between the ages of 2 and puberty! Another interesting theory supported by Victor's story is the idea that we progress or develop based on imitation, and Victor, lacking any human contact lost the ability to imitate!
Other stories: *various spoiler alerts*
"Balto" is about a young girl who has to drive her drunk, cheating father home, resulting in an accident; in court, she has to decide whether to save her dad or speak the truth
"La Conchita" is about a jaded organ delivery driver driving for the money who is called upon to be a hero during a land slide
"Question 62" is about two women who have striking experiences w/ or via various wild cats
"Sin Dolor" is about a boy who doesn't feel pain and the local doctor who tries to save him
"Bulletproof" is set in a small community school that is trying to find consensus on how to teach creationism vs evolution
"Hands On" is about a woman becoming obsessed with her plastic surgeon
"The Lie" is about an exhausted dad of a newborn who lies to his co-workers, telling them his baby died to get some time off work
"The Unlucky Mother of Aquiles Maldonado" is about the mother of a famous baseball player who gets kidnapped
"Admiral" is about a cloned dog
"Ash Monday" is about a fire in CA set on accident by the locals
"Thirteen Hundred Rats" is about a lonely man coping with the death of his wife by getting pets, which rapidly gets out of hand
"Anacapa" is about two old friends who go fishing on a privately chartered boat
"Three Quarters of the Way to Hell" is about tired and washed up singers unexpectedly finding joy in singing Christmas songs
These stories are perfectly shocking; they ring true and make for a great story. They make one (or maybe more) false moves, which push them to the precipice.
The title story, Wild Child is the longest in the collection and is based on a true story of Victor of Aveyron. Victor was a feral child who was first captured in 1797 when he was 9 or 10 years old. He soon escaped, only to be captured again when he was twelve. At this point, he was moved around, landing in the care of a young doctor named Itard, who attempted to civilize him. Victor was naked, dirty, stunted in growth. He ate raw vegetables, bugs, frogs. He seemed to be mute and deaf but Itard believed otherwise. Boyle is at his wildest and most magical self when writing about the most bizarre and outrageous of humans, and Victor is no exception. The French were interested in defining humanity. The interest in the "noble savage" - someone existing purely in nature - assumed a person would be "gentle, innocent, a lover of solitude, ignorant of evil and incapable of causing intentional harm." Language had been one thing that makes us human, and despite years of trying, Victor did not learn to speak. Itard believed this was because he effectively lived a deaf/mute existence until he was 12; some believe that we are only capable of learning a first language if between the ages of 2 and puberty! Another interesting theory supported by Victor's story is the idea that we progress or develop based on imitation, and Victor, lacking any human contact lost the ability to imitate!
Other stories: *various spoiler alerts*
"Balto" is about a young girl who has to drive her drunk, cheating father home, resulting in an accident; in court, she has to decide whether to save her dad or speak the truth
"La Conchita" is about a jaded organ delivery driver driving for the money who is called upon to be a hero during a land slide
"Question 62" is about two women who have striking experiences w/ or via various wild cats
"Sin Dolor" is about a boy who doesn't feel pain and the local doctor who tries to save him
"Bulletproof" is set in a small community school that is trying to find consensus on how to teach creationism vs evolution
"Hands On" is about a woman becoming obsessed with her plastic surgeon
"The Lie" is about an exhausted dad of a newborn who lies to his co-workers, telling them his baby died to get some time off work
"The Unlucky Mother of Aquiles Maldonado" is about the mother of a famous baseball player who gets kidnapped
"Admiral" is about a cloned dog
"Ash Monday" is about a fire in CA set on accident by the locals
"Thirteen Hundred Rats" is about a lonely man coping with the death of his wife by getting pets, which rapidly gets out of hand
"Anacapa" is about two old friends who go fishing on a privately chartered boat
"Three Quarters of the Way to Hell" is about tired and washed up singers unexpectedly finding joy in singing Christmas songs
These stories are perfectly shocking; they ring true and make for a great story. They make one (or maybe more) false moves, which push them to the precipice.
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