After the Plague
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- £6.99
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- £6.99
Publisher Description
'Gulp it down; it beats getting drunk.' - Salman Rushdie on WATER MUSIC
'If Dickens were alive today he would be writing this sort of book.' -
Rosie Boycott, Books of the Year, The Times, on TORTILLA
CURTAIN'establishes Boyle as the equal of Robertson Davies and John
Irving. You only hope the Coen Brothers get the film rights, so that
this most thrillingly visual of American storytellers is given the movie
he deserves' Guardian on RIVEN ROCK 'surreal, daring and compassionate.
Easily one of the best books of this year' Daily Mail on A FRIEND OF
THE EARTH Maverick, unpredictable and accomplished, T.C. Boyle has been
called the 'trickster of American letters'. AFTER THE PLAGUE is his
latest collection of short stories - here are tales that superbly veer
from the psychological to the slapstick, from surrealism to satire, once
again proving him to be one of America's most formidable writers
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
If Boyle's progress as a novelist has been uneven his more recent narratives have not managed to achieve the acclaim of 1990's East Is East his talent for crafting amusing and startling short stories has never been in doubt. This compilation (his fifth, not counting a collected volume) culls pieces published in the New Yorker, GQ and other outlets and showcases the signature elements of his fiction: darkly comic scenarios (a surly airline passenger goes berserk and a downtrodden elementary school teacher saves the day), pitiful and realistic characters (an Internet porn addict) and mundane but serious subjects (love, overpopulation, abortion). While there's not much new ground broken here, Boyle more than makes up for the relative lack of innovation by delivering his trademark dazzler endings. In "She Wasn't Soft," a triathlete's idiot boyfriend tries to atone for his wretched behavior by drugging her rival in a race, with potentially disastrous results. And in the title story, an apocalypse leaves only a handful of people on Earth; after a disastrous experience with another survivor, the narrator learns that, even in the worst of situations, love can prevail. Boyle has matured since 1995's Without a Hero: here he relies more on language than farce or shock value, describing the relationship between two lovers who "wore each other like a pair of socks," or, conversely, a college boy who enters a girl's room and feels "like some weird growth sprung up on the unsuspecting flank of her personal space." Boyle's imagination and zeal for storytelling are in top form here, making this collection a smash. Author tour.
