To read a Boyle novel is to nearly drown in amazing sentences and vocabulary - saprophytes, maculated, penultimate, precipitous, penumbral, tarantella, torrefying, sacerdotal, tessellated.

“At thirty-one, endowed with the cautiousness and conservatism of maturity, I could arguably consider myself, if not a pillar, then at least a flying buttress of bourgeois society.” p 11

“The table was littered with the remains of the first four courses, with beer bottles and fiascoes of wine.” p 30

“Propped up against the stove, his face a mask of rage - curled lip, Tartar cheekbones, bristling beard - Gesh could have been an advance man for Genghis Kahn.” p 222

I tend to divide Boyle’s novels into two camps - romps, capers and adventures (this one, Talk, Talk and Drop City and Water Music) and historical fiction (Riven Rock, San Miguel, Wellville, The Women, World’s End etc.). Well, three actually - his environmental/political novels like Terranauts, A Friend of the Earth and When the Killing's Done. B.P. is a bit more zany than most. A strange hybrid of Ross Thomas and Carl Hiaasen. There is treachery afoot and the cast are largely bumblers caught in its net. It has its moments of clarity and hilarity and is worth picking up. ( )

I had read a few other things by Boyle, a few short stories and his latest novel After the Plague, but this was a pleasant surprise when I was about to write him off. It's a story of a group of misfits, who think they're going to make the big score by growing a big crop of marijuana in the backwoods of California. ( )

Not T.C. Boyle's best (I'd give that honor to Tortilla Curtain), but a fun read. I have family in the neighborhood of Northern California where the novel is set, so it was fun to read Boyle's take on Mendocino.

I wrote a post about the book for Newsworthy Novels, a blog that matches works of fiction with today's headlines (the entry was about the marijuana legalization debate in the US): http://newsworthynovels.blogspot.com/2013/02/marijuana-in-us-boyles-budding-pros... ( )

I loved this. It reminds me a bit of Pynchon's VIneland, maybe because it has a similar theme: growing pot. ( )

I read this on a rainy night in San Francisco as a pick up book I'd randomly selected because I'd sworn off dead dudes and was reading anything by someone my own age or younger. What a pleasure. Knock, knock, a deal you can't refuse: farming marijuana in Northern California, a sure bet, money, and so hidden the cops will never find you. Sure.

One of the earlies of TCBoyles books, which generally roll along with gorgeous words and language.