Reviews of Blue Skies by T.C. Boyle

Blue Skies

A Novel

by T.C. Boyle

Blue Skies by T.C. Boyle X
Blue Skies by T.C. Boyle
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  • Published:
    May 2023, 384 pages

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Book Summary

From best-selling novelist T. C. Boyle, a satirical yet ultimately moving send-up of contemporary American life in the glare of climate change.

Denied a dog, a baby, and even a faithful fiancé, Cat suddenly craves a snake: a glistening, writhing creature that can be worn like "jewelry, living jewelry" to match her black jeans. But when the budding social media star promptly loses the young "Burmie" she buys from a local pet store, she inadvertently sets in motion a chain of increasingly dire and outrageous events that comes to threaten her very survival.

"Brilliantly imaginative ... in a terrifying way" (Annie Proulx), Blue Skies follows in the tradition of T. C. Boyle's finest novels, combining high-octane plotting with mordant wit and shrewd social commentary. Here Boyle, one of the most inventive voices in contemporary fiction, transports us to water-logged and heat-ravaged coastal America, where Cat and her hapless, nature-loving family—including her eco-warrior parents, Ottilie and Frank; her brother, Cooper, an entomologist; and her frat-boy-turned-husband, Todd—are struggling to adapt to the "new normal," in which once-in-a-lifetime natural disasters happen once a week and drinking seems to be the only way to cope.

But there's more than meets the eye to this compulsive family drama. Lurking beneath the banal façade of twenty-first-century Californians and Floridians attempting to preserve normalcy in the face of violent weather perturbations is a caricature of materialist American society that doubles as a prophetic warning about our planet's future. From pet bees and cricket-dependent diets to massive species die-off and pummeling hurricanes, Blue Skies deftly explores the often volatile relationships between humans and their habitats, in which "the only truism seems to be that things always get worse."

An eco-thriller with teeth, Boyle's Blue Skies is at once a tragicomic satire and a prescient novel that captures the absurdity and "inexpressible sadness at the heart of everything."

Coming soon.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

New York Times Book Review
Boyle writes with a youthful and sustained energy that parallels the zeal of his dreamers, and that ultimately attenuates their failures. There are few writers who seem more American.

Washington Post
Boyle's satire has lost none of its edge over the course of a nearly half-century literary career ... [Blue Skies is] an expert blend of suspense, terror and, occasionally, very black humor ... this fiercely honest writer shows us what he sees and invites his readers to draw their own conclusions.

Booklist (starred review)
Boyle, long a fervent proselytizer for environmental and animal rights, strikes the perfect satirical note to illustrate the nonchalance and obliviousness many otherwise intelligent people display…. Boyle's genius lies in his ability to blend the horrific and the humorous, to slowly ratchet up the tension while crafting a gripping yet eerie narrative that forecasts a disaster of our own making.

Publishers Weekly
Spirited... Boyle remains a vibrant stylist, with fondness for his complex characters and a knack for zany details... Equal parts entertaining and anxiety inducing, this dazzles.

Author Blurb Annie Proulx
Is climate change funny? Yes, in the brilliantly imaginative T. C. Boyle's hands, in a terrifying way. Blue Skies is both comic and wrenching... . A black arrow of unimaginable horror shoots through the novel's center, and Boyle leads us to contemplate the 'inexpressible sadness at the heart of everything'―and a morsel of the world's inexpressible beauty.

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