'Plague' is a treat for Boyle fans
Bharti Kirchner
Seattle Times 9/16/01

Fans of T.C. Boyle have often preferred his short fiction to his novels ("The Tortilla Curtain" and "A Friend of the Earth.") Their claim is they could get plenty of suspense from a single Boyle story of 10 pages, not to mention exposure to a wide assortment of contemporary social issues. They use adjectives such as, "comic," "witty," "inventive," "trendy" and even "just plain absurd" to describe his work in this genre.

To the delight of these fans, Boyle is back again with a new collection - his sixth overall. Of these 16 stories, nine have been published in The New Yorker and three in the 0. Henry and the Best American short-story volumes.

The new collection proves that Boyle is nowhere near running out of ideas. As always, he deals with an enormous range of characters and situations. He does this in a manner that shows how easy it is to make seemingly small decisions that drastically alter the course of one's life.

"She Wasn't Soft" concerns a focused triathlete so intent on winning an event that she has no time for her boyfriend, a laid-back type with "no fire of competition in him." The resentment he experiences causes him to act in a way that leads to unintended consequences.

In "Killing Babies," an ex-con just out of rehab finds himself working in his brother's abortion clinic, where he must deal with protesters and his own conflicting feelings about the practice.

"Mexico" is about a lonely man who wins a free trip to that country. He emerges "pale and heavy from the sleek envelope of the airliner and into the fecund embrace of Puerto Escondido." In less than 20 pages, we learn about his drinking episodes, a chance meeting with a woman and their subsequent journey to the beach at night where they experience a disturbing encounter with the local criminal element. And so the stage is neatly set for the physical and mental pain he must bear when she leaves him.

Boyle's lonely, vulnerable characters (often with a fondness for alcohol) can't seem to see beyond the immediate. Not always lovable at the first encounter, they manage to elicit the reader's sympathy by the end. Boyle draws them from all walks of life, but seems to have a special lilting for college students who appear in more than one story. "Achates McNeil" opens with a college student, Achates, who despises his father, a celebrity writer, for deserting him and therefore keeps his own identity a secret. Soon he receives disconcerting news: The famous author has decided to pay a visit to his son's school. This delights nearly everyone, not least the young man's girlfriend. His reaction to this unwanted intrusion offers a classic Boyle portrayal of the dark aspects of human nature.

As always, TC. Boyle readers are rewarded with delightful prose and a swift pace. "The Love of My Life," one of the more poignant tales in the collection, starts with the sentence, "They wore each other like a pair of socks." In it a young student falls desperately in love with a co-ed. " `I love you,' he told her, because he did, because there was no feeling like this, no triumph, no high - it was like being immortal and unconquerable, like floating."

Not all the stories are remarkable. Some are quiet and touching, while others merely shock. But all exemplify Boyle's trademark blend of entertainment and insight.