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Book Summary and Reviews of A Friend of the Earth by T. C. Boyle

A Friend of the Earth by T. C. Boyle

A Friend of the Earth

by T. C. Boyle

  • Published:
  • Sep 2000, 256 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

From the award–winning author of The Tortilla Curtain comes an "entertaining and informative" (Chicago Tribune) novel about global warming and ecological collapse.

It is the year 2025. Global warming is a reality. The biosphere has collapsed, and most mammals—not to mention fish, birds, and frogs—are extinct. Tyrone Tierwater is eking out a bleak living in southern California, managing a pop star's private menagerie that "only a mother could love"—scruffy hyenas, jackals, warthogs, and three down-at-the-mouth lions.

It wasn't always like this for Ty. Once he was a passionate environmentalist, so committed to saving the earth that he became an eco-terrorist and, ultimately, a convicted felon. As a member of the radical group Earth Forever!, he unwittingly endangered both his daughter, Sierra, and his wife, Andrea. Now, just when he's trying to survive in a world torn by obdurate storms and winnowing drought, Andrea comes back into his life.

Blending idealism and satire, A Friend of the Earth addresses the ultimate questions of human love and the survival of the species.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"As disaster tales go, this is a sly, hip one... . Boyle has always liked to play circus barker for life's extremes and what better freak show than the environmental apocalypse itself?" —The Washington Post

"Both entertaining and informative ... hits like a warning shot from twenty-five years into the future." —Chicago Tribune

"A Friend of the Earth is about people and nature coming to terms with each other. In many ways it is a far more convincing argument for sustainable living in nature than any nonfiction environmental tract." —San Francisco Chronicle

This information about A Friend of the Earth was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

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Author Information

T. C. Boyle

T. C. Boyle is a novelist and regular contributor to The New Yorker. His novels include World's End and The Tortilla Curtain, and he has also published numerous collections of short stories. A Distinguished Professor of English Emeritus at the University of Southern California, he lives in Santa Barbara.

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