Customer Reviews

T.C. Boyle Stories

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I borrowed this book from the library and due to its length had to keep it as long as the library would let me. There are 75 stories and of those there were only 3 that I couldn`t call my favorites. I loved each and every one of all the rest, in fact I enjoyed them SO much that I bought the book and am now reading them again. I think that I shall re-read this book many times. All of the stories are unique and stick with you. It is a beautifully written and constructed book and there were no errors. (a pet peeve of mine in books) I recomend this book to anyone with a sense of humor that slips towards the `non norm` and have recommended it to everyone I know. T.C. Boyle is inventive and new and just plain amazing. It is a book you will want to own. I have no doubt of this.

This is an excellent collection of varied stories. All come at some different direction like dreams and continue in a fast pace. The unexpected will arrive and thrill you, knock you over and make you think of endless possibilities. His descriptions are as good as anyone who has held a pen. Read these stories for the authors play with words and often thrilling movement.

T. C. Boyle is a master of short stories. In this 700 page tome, Boyle covers the gamut of subjects in a funny, witty, and satirical way. His writing style offers an amusing, introspective, and memorable view of American culture. This one is as entertaining as any book I have read.

This book is indispensable, and what's more, it will provide you with hours of thrilling, hilarious and heartbreaking reading. Broken up into three sections: Love, Death, And Everything In-between, "TCB Stories" is a single book that will sustain nearly any taste, because TCB is able to master so many disparate personas and styles in these stories. If you like smart, insanely well-written, exciting and bizarre, you will not be disappointed. But if you're looking for beauty, understatement, and heartbreak, you'll find that here too. Experiments in form? Stunning metaphors? Social commentary? Yes. Also quiet character-driven pieces, monologues, and love stories. Quite frankly, this book's got it all. Bring it with you on a road-trip, or backpacking in Europe and you won't need to pack anything else. You will revisit this book again and again, you will find yourself referencing it in conversations, and most importantly you will LOVE reading it. TCB understands that you don't ever have to sacrifice excitement in order to be serious lit or in order to have deep thematic undertones -- which means that you might not even notice the implications as you're breathlessly rushing through the plot . . . until you put it down and ponder and then it hits you: wow, these are brilliant on just about every level.

T.C. Boyle is one of my favorite short story writers; he has a marvelously skewed view of life and his characters often find themselves in situations that the average human being encounters only in nightmares or drug-enduced reveries. He illuminates the basic truths of life in with an imagination that is unlike any other writer I've read. This collection spans the broad spectrum of his short stories; there is a little bit of everything here, love/hate, death, relationships, life in general. From the whimsical to the deadly serious, these stories will capture the imagination of the reader whose mind is open to them.

Trying to characterize the works of Boyle is difficult in and of themselves. The man is a master of writing in just about any style he tries his hand at. And most of his stories are brilliant, fun reads, which is reportedly what the author himself desires from his own work.

Boyle is best known as a satirist but never let it be said he can't or doesn't venture into other realms as well. Though many of his stories are satires--and very good ones at that--he is also able to construct deadly serious stories like "Drowning", "Rara Avis" and "Greasy Lake" where if there is any humor you're not likely to find it. Other stories, like "Bloodfall" are just plain strange and again, not really funny.

But Boyle's humor really made this volume for me. He gleefully pokes fun at Presidential sex scandals long before any had ever heard of Monica Lewinski ("Ike and Nina"), hypochondriacs ("Modern Romance"), animal rights ("Carnal Knowledge"), the hollowness of national politics ("The New Moon Party"), and even religious ecstasy ("The Miracle of Balinspittle"). And "familiar faces" like Jack Kerouac, Carry Nation, Lassie, and Idi Amin show up to add to the absurdity of their own images being turned on edge. And other writers like Hemmingway and Kafka have their own works given unique retoolings.

Boyle's range is so great, it's probably worth noting the closest he has to a reoccuring character is a chimp named Konrad ("The Descent of Man", "The Ape Lade in Retirment"), and even these two stories are as different from each other as night and day. Boyle's works are certainly worth a look.

...Boyle is roughly 100 years ahead of his time, since the public has not yet caught up.

There is no other author writing English stories who can compare with Boyle for sheer inventiveness and creativity. And his inventiveness has a point, for each story, besides entertaining, makes you think deeply about issues that are important to all of us.

This collection should top the best seller lists and be required reading in high school and college classes. If you read O'Henry in h.s. like I did, or Shirley Jackson, you may think you have read the best. Read Boyle and you will quickly revise that opinion.

Only gave this five stars because I couldn't give six!

This collection of Boyle's fiction is big enough to make a great doorstop, but don't you dare use it that way! His muscular and sometimes head-spinning use of the English language is matched only by his wonderfully strange plot lines (full-body condoms in "Modern Love" or death by bee stings in "King Bee"). Sometimes he will make you sigh in the deep sadness of families torn apart by alcohol ("If the River Was Whiskey"), or laugh out loud with the viciousness of food critics ("Sorry Fugu"). Long after Boyle leaves this world, people will read his work. If you love great writing, buy this book. If you're an aspiring writer, devour this book.

In "Rapture of the Deep," one of the more than 60-plus brilliantly realized stories collected here, Jacques Cousteau confronts a crew starved for the culinary comforts of land. Cousteau seeks to explore the dark and bizarre landscapes, the truly remote regions of the planet, to document the life that desperately struggles in harsh and exacting circumstances.

You can tell where I'm going here, right? T.C. Boyle is our Cousteau, and he takes short little voyages in his literary bathyscape, taking us to meet all sorts of strange, colorful creatures, people living in remote corners of the world. Or, like the blind sea-life who do not need eyesight to understand their universe, his self-centered humanity can't see around their own immediate aims.

In as comprehensive a collection as this, there are bound to be quite a few clunkers. The surprise is how few there are. Boyle's vision of people and their dreams, their impact, their victories and losses, their neighborhoods is about as diverse as the entire planet has to offer. Vignettes, fables, speculative jokes, romances, tragedies, and just plain absurd, the range is amazing.

T.C. Boyle is probably one of the greatest contemporary (and most under-read) American authors that we have. I have read many of Boyle's novels, and though while not being a fan of the short story genre, I thought I would give this massive collection of 70 short stories a try. If anything it has made me a greater fan of this talented author. Boyle excels in the shorter format bringing us tales that are highly imaginative. A warning to the Boyle uninitiated, these stories are very eccentric with a lot of dark humor throughout. Just when you think the author could not come up with a more a possibly more bizarre premise, he tops it in a later story.

Boyle has a wonderful command of language and readers will be amazed by how he can created a total picture with minimal words. For example, in a story I read recently, he wrote "the house... seemed almost to sink under the weight of its mortgage." Boyle consistently creates this kind of amazing imagery throughout these stories. From full-body condoms to a struggling game safari in the California desert to a women who keeps squirrels as pets - it is almost guaranteed that you have never read anything as original or inventive as these Boyle stories. Do yourself a favor and pick up "T.C. Boyle Stories" -- and take your time and savor (I usually read a handful of stories between novels)!