T. Coraghessan Boyle

I wasn't expecting to have a multiple POV device, but it worked well for a couple of reasons. First is that Terry is pretty much a blank. He just works and observes humanity through the ailments or conditions they present. He has no color or much in the way of personality and his life is as empty as his apartment. I can't see why he wanted to be a doctor...there is no interiority that explains it and he doesn't seem to like it much. No wonder Bethany (aside from the T&A) hits him like a bolt show more from the blue. She is the only thing that becomes interesting about him. In some ways it's hard to watch him being played, for played is what it must be. Why else hang around with him? The occasional biting quip is nice, but is it enough? He must have a magic dick. While she is a manipulative, duplicitous jerk a lot of the time, there is a bit down deep that realizes that she is basically a jerk and questions the long-term benefits of that. Oh she says she loves him towards the end, but who would believe her? I don't think she does herself, but only convinces herself that she does. Jesse's parts take the unlikeability a step further - his mind and life are basically a cesspool and he's a useless waste of air. That kind of inability to deal at all with emotions that don't prop up his ego or feel good is what's destroying men of the modern age. What is with it with these assholes? If the universe doesn't spit out sunshine and puppies for them all the time, they turn into raging psychos. I was hoping Terry would leave him to die, but alas he doesn't and Jesse will continue on to ruin other lives like poor Daisy. She's the only one I felt any sympathy towards at all and is clearly the most sensible of the bunch. They don't' deserve her. show less

Of course, Talk To Me was sure to be a hoot, coming from T. C. Boyle. A chimp is raised by humans, thinks it is a human, talks with sign language. A young student applies to be a caretaker, and soon it’s a King Kong beast loves woman story. Sam, the chimp, and Aimee, a willing Fay Wray, have a love story for the ages. They live together, sleep together, play together. And Sam will do anything to protect her. (No, there is no sex involved, which is physically impossible we are told.)

The show more professor in charge of the experiment to teach Sam language is also pleased with the pretty, shy Aimee and he makes her his paramour, sneaking in love-making behind Sam’s back.

Sam is charming. He may even appear on the Johnny Carson show. Everyone is happy.

Except the man who actually owns Sam and funds the experiment. The idea of primates talking falls out of favor, funding dries up, and it’s time to put Sam back into a lab cage and make a monkey out of him again. Aimee can’t desert Sam and she offers herself as free labor in the lab, cleaning up ape shit and feeding them monkey kibble.

Aimee steals Sam and they run away together into the high desert. And that works for a while, but it all catches up with them. The story ends with a dramatic confrontation, the evil bad guy getting what’s coming to him. But Aimee must make a horrific decision.

In many ways, this novel is a lark, with a dose of suspense. But it also posits questions about relationships, communication, and animal consciousness.

Aimee had “given herself over to something she couldn’t explain, a deep connection with another soul, whether it be human or not.” Usually, we humans connect with animals like dogs and cats, sometimes horses. As I child, I was certain that I had a deep understanding with my pet dog Pepper. And all my life, I believed that dogs understood that I loved them and they loved me back. And even if our Suki understood lots of what we said, from ‘walk’ and ‘sit’ and ‘turn right’ and even ‘Go get Kaze’ when our blind dog got lost in the back yard, she could only communicate back with deep looks, pacing, and waiting at the door.

What if a creature did learn to communicate in ways we understood? What would it tell us? Sam recognized his photograph and categorized it with ‘humans’ not with ‘chimps,’ who he called Black Bugs when he finally met his own kind. He could lie and plot devious escape plans. But did he regret biting his first caretaker? When he asked forgiveness, or would not forgive, did he understand morality?

Human love failed Aimee. Sam never did. And so, the book is also a tragic love story.

Although I read T. C. Boyle’s early novels when they came out, its been a while since I last read him and I am glad to have read this new book.

I received a free egalley from Ecco through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased. show less

Written twenty years ago, you'd never know it in 2017. The title refers to the vast divide between Mexican migrants and the wealthy canyon dwellers of LA. Factor in coyotes, the animal kind, and you've got a brutal conflict where nobody except the predators win. Two families, the homeless Candido and his pregnant girlfriend America, and the realtor Kyra and her hiking writer husband Delaney, clash in a battle for survival and for turf. For the Mexicans, it's a futile search or work, food, show more shelter. For the wealthy Americans, it's a losing struggle to maintain their liberal ideals. For all, luck runs out as Mother Nature enjoins the battle. This is a brutal but necessary novel with a surprising, non-conclusive ending. show less

In his latest novel, T.C. Boyle explores the disturbing aspects of the American psyche. America was founded on principals of freedom and independence, but this came with rebellion, anger, self-indulgence and even violence. In Boyle’s view, this nature is still alive and well in America and is the source of ideological dogmatism, unhealthy obsession and even frank rage and madness. He adopts a dark and pessimistic tone toward this question, setting the novel in forests and developing show more characters, who suffer from aspects of this American freedom ethos. He gives us the history of the American frontier characterized by extreme individualism and violence in the myth surrounding mountain man, John Colter; modern drug cowboys who despoil conserved public lands for their own benefit; the far-right sovereign citizen movement that values freedom above community responsibility; and survivalism. This toxic mix has the potential for all kinds of mayhem.

None of Boyle’s three narrators are particularly likeable. Adam is a paranoid schizophrenic who is getting no professional help and self-medicating with alcohol and drugs. It is hard to generate much sympathy for his illness because he is so disconnected, selfish and essentially a time bomb that could explode at any moment. He identifies more with John Colter than to his family or to Sara, an older woman, who cares about him. He lives alone in the forest in his deceased grandmother’s house—even walling it off from the environment. He spends his days cultivating a poppy field.

Adam’s father, Sten, is a seventy-year-old Marine veteran who, like his son, is prone to violent and impulsive behavior. Boyle establishes this nicely by showing how Sten deals with petty criminals while on vacation with his wife in Central America. Sten has lost patience with his son and demonstrates little love or caring toward him. Sten’s attitude is clearly “my way or the highway” when it comes to Adam.

Sara is an extremely eccentric creation. Her libertarian politics are recognizable: she values her freedom but is unwilling to accept any social responsibilities, including paying taxes, registering her car, obeying law enforcement or even wearing seatbelts. Her resistance to any form of government impingement on her freedoms is reminiscent of conservatives who feel that the social contract is null and void, but readily participate in programs like Medicare or Social Security. Sara realizes that Adam is both eccentric and potentially dangerous. Also, she is clear eyed about the one-sided nature of her relationship with Adam but is domestic and nurturing to him, much like she is to her dog and the horses she tends to in her work as a freelance farrier. show less