T.C. Boyle Stories

Book excerpt: A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • The first volume of collected short fiction from the award–winning author of The Tortilla Curtain, featuring sixty-eight “varied, clever, and delightful” (The Chicago Tribune) short stories, including seven never-before-published tales “Each [story hops] with manic energy . . . at his vaulting, imaginative best Boyle suggests the bastard child of Flannery O’Connor and Monty Python.”—The Miami Herald WINNER OF THE PEN/MALAMUD AWARD • FINALIST FOR THE PEN CENTER/USA WEST LITERARY AWARD By turns mythic and realistic, farcical and tragic, ironic and moving, T.C. Boyle’s stories map a wide geography of human emotions. Whether he is writing about eccentrics, charlatans, or exotic seekers after the truth, or about decent vulnerable people trying to forge some kind of connection in an unfriendly world, the effect is always surprising and uniquely his own. Running throughout is Boyle’s razor-sharp sense of humor, and his singular genius for dissecting America’s obsession with image and materialism. Drawn from Descent of Man, Greasy Lake, If the River Was Whiskey, and Without a Hero alongside seven new tales, the sixty-eight stories in this volume are remarkable in their range, richness, and exuberance. T.C. Boyle Stories is a book of small treasures, a definitive gift for Boyle fans and for every reader ready to discover the “ferocious, delicious imagination” (Los Angeles Times Book Review) of a “vibrant sensibility fully engaged with American society” (The New York Times).