Blue Skies
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3.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
The joyfully freewheeling, funny and profound new novel from 'one of the most inventive, adventurous and accomplished fiction writers in the US today' (Lionel Shriver)
Welcome to America. On the east coast, homes are being swallowed by the ocean; on the west coast, California is engulfed with wildfire.
But for one family, the impending environmental disaster is the least of their worries. Party girl Cat just impulse-purchased a snake; her pious brother Cooper is wrestling with a tic bite; and their mom Ottilie has resorted to cooking with crickets. Everyone is drinking too much – and the bugs seems to be disappearing. It seems as if it's anything but blue skies ahead...
A delightfully dark comedy of manners about family life at the end of the world, Blue Skies is a masterful new adventure from one of the America's great comic writers.
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'Always enjoyable, virtually incapable of dullness or slack sentences … His stories reveal truths about modern life while still feeling beautifully invented' - NEW YORK TIMES
'A virtuoso craftsman' - ANNIE PROULX
'Boyle is a writer who chooses a large canvas and fills it to the edges' - BARBARA KINGSOLVER
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Boyle's spirited latest (after the collection I Walk Between the Raindrops) follows an extended family through a series of ecological disasters. In Beach Haven, Fla., an aspiring influencer named Cat impulse-buys a Burmese python, dreaming of racking up views on social media. Her fiancé, Todd, a Bacardí brand ambassador, is less enthusiastic. Back in Santa Barbara, Calif., Cat's mother, Ottilie, adds insect protein to her diet to appease her entomologist son, Cooper, an outspoken climate fatalist. Soon, disaster strikes: Cooper contracts a nasty infection that changes his life, and Cat and Todd's California wedding is thwarted by wind and wildfires. Later, torrential rains and flooding in coastal Florida prevent Todd from returning from a business trip and a pregnant Cat goes into labor alone; Ottilie, arriving for the birth, is forced to commandeer a rowboat. Meanwhile, a massive global insect die-off has Cooper sifting through bug carcasses in triple digit temperatures in California's Santa Ynez Valley, and as the weather gets worse, no one emerges unscathed. Boyle remains a vibrant stylist, with fondness for his complex characters and a knack for zany details (Ottilie's dinners with her physician husband include fried grasshoppers and mescal-worm tacos). Equal parts entertaining and anxiety inducing, this dazzles.
Customer Reviews
Weathering it out
3.5 stars
The author is a multi-award winning American novelist (19 and counting), short story writer (>500 published), and retired professor of English.
It’s the US of the near future, ravaged by climate change. Sixty-something, ecologically aware, insect-eating Ottilie, her GP husband Frank, and entomologist son Connor live in drought stricken, wildfire ravaged California. Social media influencer daughter Cat lives in frequently flooded beachside Florida with her frat-boy turned Bacardi salesman hubby Todd and a pet Burmese python. The protagonists soldier on through the ecological catastrophe surrounding them, including spectacularly tragic events that might seem bizarre if you’ve never read a Tom Boyle novel before (loss of a limb and an infant death like no other you have read before, insectageddon, termite-nado etc).
The satire involving the determination of increasingly embattled Americans to ignore the increasingly effects of climate change just as they did the warnings of impending disaster lands with as deft a touch as is possible under the circumstances. The plot is limited, the characters left-of-centre (psychologically rather than politically, both in some cases), the pacing generally good, and there are some amusing lines: typical Boyle fare if not his finest work.