The Tortilla Curtain [Paperback]

"It was a Sunday in the of middle August, seven in the evening, and the sun fixed in the sky like a Japanese lantern. There was music playing somewhere, a slow moody piano piece, moving from one lingering faintly heard note, to the next, and when Delaney looked up, turning the kebabs, he watched a California Gnatcatcher"

This is the first for me, reading a book by T. Coraghessan Boyle, and I was very impressed by his work.

This book is set in Los Angeles and focuses strongly on two couples from totally different social and economical backgrounds. Kyra and Delaney Mossbacher are the upper class Americans; while Candido and America Rincon are illegal immigrants from South of the border.....Mexico.

The Tortilla Curtain is the border between Mexico and Los Angeles which the immigrants cross illegally to find work as labourers and a better way of life in that state.

The Mexicans endure severe hardships for little money as they enter this country of the 'well to do'. Meanwhile the 'upper crust' are flourishing for all to see, their main problem being to keep the immigrants out. As much as they are rich and better off one begins to feel that the immigrant Mexican has a more contented heart. They seem fulfilled at times with a deep satisfaction, passion and feeling that the 'upper crust' are unable to project. They are poor.....but their spirits are strong and hard to break.

See what life becomes for these two couples from opposite sides of the track....and you will find these characters living in your memories for a long time. This is the type of book that one hates to finish. Get it for Christmas....I got mine. Well written and highly recommended!!

Reviewed by Heather Marshall Negahdar (SUGAR-CANE 29/06/06)

Many people have already mentioned the lack of characterization in this book and the way Boyle uses the people in this story as symbols rather than actual well rounded human beings, as well as his tendency to overwrite, describing a single event with two or more contradictory similes.

However, no has as yet discussed the fact that the depiction of Topanga Canyon in the book is a complete fabrication, leaving me to wonder if the author has ever actually been to Topanga Canyon at all. I have spent a lot of time there over the years and would like to say that there are no gated or ungated subdivisions in the actual Topanga Canyon. The Canyon community consists of individual houses, precariously built into a wild forested valley along Topanga Canyon Boulevard which winds its way for miles and miles through the Topanga mountains, alongside Topanga State Park. It would be impossible to build a housing development in this area because there is not enough flat land to do so. It is sort of like a little hippie village in the mountains. You would never know you are twenty minutes from LA there as everyone goes around in super casual comfortable clothes, unlike the characters in the novel, and rainboots because it is often muddy in all seasons except summer. The people I met in Topanga are by and large later day hippy freethinkers, older surfers, proffesors, musicians, actors, part-time pot growers and the complete opposite of the brand name and status obsessed people of the story. There are people with money there, but you would never think it by the way people act or dress and some of the cars you see around. Topanga is actually probably one of the safest and most tolerant communities in America. I didn't see any mention of Topanga Days, the Topanga Festival or the Topanga parade in the book, which is kind of like a small, better organized Woodstock, all of which are very big deals for a true Topangite or the problems of frequent rocks slides, roads washed out by mud or rain in the winter and the threat of brush fires in summer.

I realize that Boyle's aim in creating the book was to show the wide gap between the standards of living of illegal Mexican immigrants and the wealthy whites in Southern California, however his false depiction of Topanga Canyon detracts from the realism of his book and unfairly tars a wonderful community with a very nasty brush.

This book is stunning and provocative. Its emotional core is able to be both realistic and gut-wrenching, at the same time that it is tragically comic -- a feat T.C. Boyle is famous for. I was moved to tears and I chuckled with derision, but never have I seen familiar headlines interpreted in such a moving and personal way. Boyle does set out to 'lay our cult of hypocracy on the line,' and does that, but he fails in any one particular area: he gives in far too much to the predominant sterotypes. Merely regurgitating sterotypes is useless and makes for flat reading, and it does not help us overcome them. It is, however, a good read, and Boyle's style is one of the freshest alive today. And lest you think that I'm criticising him here, I'm not, for Boyle has the ability to take these sterotypical persons and turn things around, much in the same way that the author Jackson McCrae does in his "Children's Corner,"-another stunning achievement. But Tortilla Curtain also has something that no other book of Boyle's has-insight and justice of the human heart.