Blue Skies: A Novel

Warning: Do not read if you have a queasy stomach, especially involving threats to children. Also, people eat insects. Do not read if you require loveable characters. Do not read if you are already suffer from anxiety over climate change.

For the rest of us, dive on in!

I cut my teeth on black humor my sophomore year in college with a Modern Lit class focusing on Black Humor. I loved it. Yet, while reading Blue Skies, I hesitated to turn pages when I knew what was surely coming.

Blue Skies is set in the all too near future, when rising oceans lap up to the steps of oceanfront properties, and temps soar over 100 in Southern California. Nature is biting back. Some people are like the proverbial frogs in the kettle over the fire, oblivious to show more the threat, while others try to do the right thing, albeit decades too late. Oh, yes, this part is all too spot on.

She would have preferred walking along the beach, but at this point it wouldn’t so much be walking as wading…
from Blue Skies by T. C. Boyle

Influencer wannabe Cat buys a Burmese python which she plans to wear as a fashion statement. During high tides, she rows a skiff from the house to dry land. Her husband is often on the road for work, and she kills time at the local bar. She has a hard time coping when she gives birth to twins.

Her brother Cooper still lives in Southern California where he studies declining insect populations, while his girlfriend studies ticks; they are often both out in the field taking samples. This leads to a close encounter between a tick and Copper’s arm and dire complications and a break up. Copper’s new girlfriend studies kissing bugs. They carry the parasite that causes Chagas, which is now showing up in the blood supply: “the parasites didn’t even need the kissing bug to infect their hosts anymore–the Red Cross was doing it for them.”

Their mother is switching from meat to insects. Her fried grasshoppers and mescal worm tacos were a hit at the dinner party, although people thought they were eating shrimp. Only one person was ill the next day. Fire is a continual threat, water shortages and energy blackouts a part of daily life.

Lots of bad stuff happens, because people are stupid and people are oblivious and nature is predictable. But when things seem most hopeless, Copper discovers that nature has a few surprises left.

I received a free egalley from the publisher through Net Galley. My review is fair and unbiased. show less

Only a really good author could make me really like this book about some of the most self-centered, shallow, unlikeable people. The opening chapter has a young woman buying a python so she can wear "like jewelry" around her shoulders. She is engaged to a representative for a rum company. They live on the beach in Florida. Her mother and brother still live in California where it is so hot and never rains. The brother is an insect expert who is very fearful of the future of the earth.

The characters drink a lot of wine, think they are doing their part to help the world (such as by eating insects) but they are actually so removed from any kind of real awareness of the needs of others.

Cat, the young woman, becomes pregnant, she and her show more fiancee marry and have twins. One of the most horrifying scenes in the book involves the snake and one of the twins.

The chapters are short, the writing is excellent, and the story pulled me in. show less

I found [b:Blue Skies|62586053|Blue Skies|T.C. Boyle|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1679715783l/62586053._SY75_.jpg|98330370] shelved in the science fiction section of the library and unequivocally disagree with this classification. There is nothing speculative in it until the very end; the events could take place this year or next. Moreover, there is none of the sci-fi sensibility. Boyle is playing within the stolid subgenre of literature about wealthy white American family problems, complete with heavy drinking and affairs. The innovative and interesting element is the importance accorded to climate change. Thus the wealthy family problems include flooding in Florida, droughts and wildfires in show more California, and insect die-off everywhere. The tone is ambivalent, which seems appropriate to the topic of climate change in the context of wealthy American lifestyles. It flits somewhat maniacally between light-hearted discussion of cooking with crickets and much more serious incidents involving serious illness or death. This could seem satirical, if the events weren't so plausible and indeed factual in many cases. Expensive coastal real estate in Florida is certainly falling into the sea; plush California neighbourhoods are more and more frequently burning down; many bees are suddenly dying.

I therefore found [b:Blue Skies|62586053|Blue Skies|T.C. Boyle|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1679715783l/62586053._SY75_.jpg|98330370] an intriguing new experience in climate change fiction, as it seems to be asking: what if a boring family drama fully acknowledged climate change? That is, to my mind, a different thing from novels like [b:Something New Under the Sun|55905024|Something New Under the Sun|Alexandra Kleeman|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1624229177l/55905024._SY75_.jpg|87121418], [b:The Living Sea of Waking Dreams|54282408|The Living Sea of Waking Dreams|Richard Flanagan|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1593219994l/54282408._SY75_.jpg|81442712], etc which are actually about climate change's wider implications for the future. [b:Blue Skies|62586053|Blue Skies|T.C. Boyle|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1679715783l/62586053._SY75_.jpg|98330370] has nothing much to say about that, although the observations of what climate change is doing now to wealthy American individuals are quite neatly done. To be honest, I didn't find the protagonist family themselves particularly interesting, as they feel like stock characters, but the encroachment of environmental breakdown into their lives was pretty compelling. Notably, the business with pet snakes was bleakly amusing. Although I don't think the narrative has much emotional depth, the constant extreme weather conveys freshness upon what would otherwise be a very tired plot. I couldn't help noticing that it shares with many other climate change novels the struggle for a suitable ending; how to balance hope and catharsis with grim reality? I found [b:Blue Skies|62586053|Blue Skies|T.C. Boyle|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1679715783l/62586053._SY75_.jpg|98330370]'s ending a bit of a cop-out, which seemed oddly fitting given the general tone. Overall it's a fun experiment of the kind Amitav Ghosh called for in [b:The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable|29362082|The Great Derangement Climate Change and the Unthinkable|Amitav Ghosh|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1625688572l/29362082._SY75_.jpg|49607520]. Absolutely not a science fiction novel, though. show less

Deteriorating climate not so much as a backdrop, but as a lingering, intensifying process that starts off as a bunch of anomalies and ends with California resembling Saudi-Arabia, killing a lot of bugs and affecting a lot of people as it goes.
But the focus is telling the stories of the members of one family as this process steps it up a notch, predicting, not accepting, trying to adapt to - or ignore - the changes. In the end, it doesn't even matter, as it is all too late anyway.
Oddly, the book ends on a note of optimism and hopefulness - that seems to come from nowhere, really. I guess it makes sense, since "Blue Skies" is, despite its insights and good research, not an analysis on real climate change, but a work of fiction. Probably show more the hope is meant as purely fictional too.
Very nicely done: Splitting the plot between Miami and California as settings for very different characters as well as weather phenomena. show less

This one meandered a bit more than many of his books, but not much more so than the ones that don't have a driving plot or goal. It's a sermon baked into a slice-of-life type of book and it was easy to see where things would go when babies are introduced into a very large snake's environment. What I didn't understand was why charges were dropped. I expected it to be in order to not have an acquittal or mistrial so they could charge her again with more evidence to bring a conviction, but no further action was taken. Weird. Not weird was Todd's running away. In a book full of basically idiots and assholes, he was the worst.

You can always count on TC Boyle for a thoroughly entertaining apocalypse, and this satiric (and often tragically prophetic) climate change novel is no exception.

Good, but not great. If Carl Hiaasen and Tom Wolfe had a baby in novel form. There is a levity and absurdty to the characters and events that make it easily digestible, and Boyle is able to create a viable look at intensified climate change and how it changes the course and patterns of daily life. It is satisfying, but not memorable.