BookBrowse Reviews Blue Skies by T.C. Boyle

BookBrowse:

A biting and tragic satire of contemporary Americans clinging to normalcy in the face of climate change.

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While waiting for her fiancé on a sunny Florida afternoon, Cat spots a gorgeous snake in a shop window and can't resist. She leaves with a Burmese Python she intends to wear as "living jewelry"—the perfect gimmick to launch her career as a social media influencer. Almost as soon as she gets him home, the Python escapes. Across the country, in California, Cat's entomologist brother Cooper is helping his girlfriend collect tick specimens while their mother Ottilie sets up her new cricket farm. For both siblings, these seemingly simple actions will have an enormous impact on the course of their lives. As the story unfolds, they struggle to maintain a sense of normalcy while the world continually shifts around them. Both gradual changes and sudden tragedy force them to redefine or give up on their hopes for the future.

Despite the intensity of the events that take place, this is a book for readers more interested in exploring character than plot. Boyle paints a vivid picture of each family member's inner life. From Cat's flirtation with the snake shop owner and worry over her fiancé's fidelity, to Cooper's insecurities and desire for someone different from his current partner, to Ottilie's judgmental attitude and guilt over everything from endangered polar bears to snapping at a friend, he highlights the characters' flaws and hypocrisy, and through them, those of consumerism in modern America. It's fascinating to see the way their thinking contradicts itself, and how, despite their best intentions, they continue to fall into the same patterns. They also have moments of genuine connection, dropping everything to support each other, even if they often fall short.

Though the characters are where the book shines, that is not to say that the plot is lacking. Seemingly small choices compound to break down relationships, threaten careers, and even end lives. Like watching the proverbial train wreck, the reader can't help wanting to see more, even as events worsen. Intertwined with the characters' personal lives is the intensifying of natural disasters. Florida's floods are juxtaposed with California's droughts and fires, with the common theme of ongoing deterioration. Definitions of "normal" shift over the course of the book—at the start, Cat struggles to remember where to park in case part of the driveway floods. By the end, she's taking her daughter to school by boat. The interplay between the personal and the global demonstrates both how so much of the climate crisis is out of the hands of individual people, and just how important our day-to-day choices can be.

Blue Skies is a family drama set against a backdrop of worldwide calamity. It is horrifying at times, at others darkly comedic. There were moments when I wanted to shout at the characters, and others I wished I could give them a hug. This is not a book for those looking for escapism—the characters, their problems and their failings often feel uncomfortably real. The ways in which they handle, or refuse to handle, the challenges they face serve as a warning just as potent on the personal level as the depiction of climate change is on the global.

This review was originally published in The BookBrowse Review in June 2023, and has been updated for the June 2024 edition. Click here to go to this issue.