San Miguel

Historical fiction is rarely this flawless, but many T. C. Boyle fans may find San Miguel a jarring departure from Boyle's usual rock-and-roll black humor. I've loved the dark and wicked wit of Boyle's works, but everything I love best about Boyle is here. A chilling mastery of narrative distance, the omnipresent battle with nature red in tooth and claw, the harsh death of the Utopian dream, and characterization so all-consuming that I felt I had to tear myself loose from each central female character (Maranatha, Edith, and Elise) in turn.

I've often wondered what fictional magic would occur if Boyle expanded his inimitable short stories into novellas, giving the rich characterization a chance to really take hold. This novel is really a show more triptych of fully realized novellas, all sharing the same setting and one minor character. The reader faces the Boylean dilemma yet again. With everything rigged against us, including nature itself and our own human aspirations and limitations, how do people survive and achieve the good life? If we had reached the good life, would we even realize it? show less

It’s been a while since the last time I read anything by Boyle. There was a period when I read a lot of him, but then I got caught up with new authors and well, you know how it goes. San Miguel had been on my wishlist for while so I just went for it and despite the mixed reviews it’s received, I enjoyed my time with it. I think I’ve said this before of Boyle, that he works better when he doesn’t have to drive a plot. When he can just tell a tale of what happens next with some really interesting characters, living in interesting places, doing interesting things. Even routine things he can make interesting and that’s what he does here. It reminded me strongly of Wallace Stegner’s Angle of Repose because of the setting and show more spirits of the women he wrote about. Some wanted to be where they were and pursuing their hard-scrabble lives on San Miguel. One didn’t and it was the combination of those separate personalities that reminded me of Susan Ward and her duality.

Some reviews comment that the stories are too loosely connected, but I found it wasn’t necessary for me to enjoy them and especially liked when Jimmy started up a story about Edith and her time on the island. It didn’t feel forced since you had to take the Jimmy in Elise’s story as the same one in Edith and Marantha’s. Plus it finished her tale, which had ended so abruptly. A few other characters pop up as well, to thread the stories, but each one focuses on the inhabitants and even more closely on the women. Yes, Captain Waters is a force on the island, and Herbie just skewers you from an emotional perspective, but really these are stories of women and their respective states of convalescence, confinement and contentment. Well done and well told. show less

Three women, three experiences, one island: San Miguel. Told from the perspectives of Marantha "Minnie" Waters, a consumptive in the 1880s; her daughter Edith, who wants to go back to living on the mainland and dreams of being an actress; and a librarian lately married Elise who comes to the island in the 1930s with her husband, San Miguel explores life at its most isolated and, for much of the book, its most bleak.

This book, I gather, is much different from T.C. Boyle's sometimes humorous work and short stories. It's historical fiction that, from what I looked up, sticks pretty close to the record, while exploring the isolation and experiences that three women on one of the California Channel Islands may have felt when they picked up show more everything and moved. Marantha and Edith's sections are incredibly desolate and hard to read. Elise is joyful in comparison, though she too is not without suffering. I would have rather the book was all about her, and it's mainly because of her and the lyrically descriptive writing that I'm rating the book as high as I am. show less

Author T. C. Boyle said of San Miguel in the Wall Street Journal, “It’s something I’ve never done before. A straight historical narrative . . . without irony, without comedy. . . . Just to see if I can do it.” Personally, I don't think it was ever in doubt that he could do it. San Miguel is a historical novel that takes place on San Miguel, one of the Channel Islands off the coast of California. This is historical fiction based on the lives of two real families who resided on San Miguel. As noted "In retelling the story of the Waters and Lester families during their time on San Miguel Island, I have tried to represent the historical record as accurately as possible, and yet this is a work of fiction, not history, and show more dialogue, characters and incidents have necessarily been invented." It is divided into three sections and follows three different women who live there.

In the 1880's, Marantha Waters, who suffers from tuberculosis, arrives at San Miguel for the cleansing air that will make her well. Her new husband, Will has spent the last of her money buying the sheep operation on the island - which will ostensibly benefit her health. Boyle's descriptions of Marantha's coughing, gasping for air, and suffering are very detailed as she fights for her every breath on the desolate wind and sand blasted island. After she dies her daughter, Edith, is essentially turned into a servant by her stepfather and held captive on the island. She dreams of escape. Finally, Boyle introduces us to newlyweds Elise and Herbie Lester, who arrive on the island In 1930. They are decidedly in love and raise two daughters on San Miguel. Elise and Herbie establish a way of life, making peace with the island, although their story is bittersweet in the end.

My first thought after finishing San Miguel is that T. C. Boyle wrote these women characters very realistically. He has a natural insight into their thoughts and feelings. This is especially true with Marantha and Edith, less so with Elsie. I did want to learn more of what became of Edith, as her story on the island was truncated by her escape, although I understand that once she left the island,she was no longer part of this story.

My second thought is that this is an atmospheric novel; there is not wildly active plot. Boyle relies on the mundane activities of everyday life as shaped by the island's isolation and location for the drama. But, the limitations and challenges the island and weather impose on the characters makes the island a character in its own right. The characters have to react to the island.

I thought this was a highly successful venture into historical fiction for a writer who is not known for this genre. Certainly the quality of the writing itself is exemplary.

Very Highly Recommended

Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of the Penguin Group and Netgalley for review purposes. show less

If I had read this book without knowing who wrote it, probably my last guess would've been T.C. Boyle. I re-read "Wellville" recently, and was again struck by how the men characters are treated as weak buffoons. This is the fourth book of his I've read, and it's the first honest historical novel of the four. The others (World's End, East is East, Wellville) all seem to be about showing off how clever the author is and how stupid people can be--and isn't it fun to watch them slip and fall? Ha ha ha.

In "San Miguel," the men are once again making foolish plans and dragging their families along for the ride, but this time the author shows empathy for his characters. This is a book about the American Dream of a place of one's own, and how show more that dream can become a fatal delusion. Like the sodbusters before them, scratching out a living from the plains as the country grew westward, these two families take a chance on their dream. But unlike in his previous novels, Boyle is not up in his ivory tower laughing at the fools down below. Instead, he presents their story as clearly and truthfully as he can, leaving the reading to pass judgement.

This is a difficult book to read, due to the difficult lives of the people who tried to make a life out on the edge of the old frontier. But I'm glad I stuck with it. I look forward to Boyle's next work. I hope he continues in this new vein, writing historical fiction honestly, and with empathy. show less

Inspired by historical records, T.C. Boyle tells the story of the Waters and Lester families during their respective tenures of San Miguel Island. Two brides, fifty years apart, journey to the tiny haven off the Californian coast in support of their husbands enthusiasm for its potential but the tiny windswept island resists the determined efforts of its tenants to tame it.

It is the landscape of San Miguel that takes precedence in this novel, the characters little more than visitors to a place that endures. Boyle captures the claustrophobic feeling of isolation of the rocky outcrop that can only be reached by boat. The author's use of language is rich and evocative, so much so that you imagine you can hear the seals bark and the sheep show more bleat plaintively as the wind howls and the waves crash upon the shore, despite your suburban surrounds.

The narrative of everyday life on the island, especially in a time barely remembered and a place unfamiliar is fascinating, but there is an absence of plot in San Miguel. Drama fails to eventuate, scenes and even characters rarely resolve. It's obvious Marantha will not survive long due to her advanced case of consumption, just as it is clear things are not going to end well for a manic depressive with a gun collection. I felt as though Marantha's and Elise's stories had merit but their scope was forcefully limited. At times Boyle exhibits great insight into the thoughts and emotions of the brides as they struggle with the challenges of island life, and their respective mercurial husbands. Yet I also felt the author was regularly distracted by the island itself, so that the entire novel lacks the cohesion I would have liked.

I haven't read anything else by TC Boyle but I am given to understand San Miguel is a departure from his usual style. Perhaps that explains the flaws in this novel but still I was appreciative of his style (despite the odd pretentious flourish) and hope to read something else of his soon. show less

I was actually so inspired by the historical aspect of this story that I pulled up a google map of the island to look at while I was reading. The combination of the storytelling and the map had me so wrapped up in the lives of the families within the pages that I felt as if I were planning a visit.

San Miguel is mostly about the relationships of various family members. It follows the actions of one person to the next, but I wouldn't say this is a book with deep plot or that it contains any real adventure or serious drama. What this book does do is somehow find a little voice within certain characters to really tell their story as they live their lives. The fact that moving to the island wasn't all beauty and rainbows, is not lost on the show more author, who easily describes the harsh realities of solitary living in such a way that I could vividly picture the experience for myself.

Told in two parts, but through the eyes of three characters, I might have been able to predict much of what was coming as each story developed, but I still devoured every page in eagerness for the next one. I may just have to read more from this author. show less