Creepy Characters and Control Freaks
Susan Miron
Miami Herald 9/16/01

Known for his razor-sharp wit, his acute sensitivity to his characters' often grotesque plights and twisted psyches and his unabashed inclusion of contemporary, even futuristic, technological, social and moral quandaries, T.C. Boyle deftly tackles an array of oddballs and controversial topics in this dazzling collection of 15 stories, an absolute must-read for anyone who loves great fiction.

The darkly hilarious title story occurs shortly "after the plague," when "the poor dwindling ravaged planet was suddenly big and mysterious again." An Ebola-like virus passed along like the common cold has killed all but a few scattered inhabitants. The narrator, on sabbatical from his job as a social studies teacher near Santa Barbara, was on a six week stint of self-imposed isolation in a mountain cabin when the rest of humanity had "gone on to a quick and brutal extinction." Into his eerily quiet civilization-free world bursts Sarai, a stringy, cross-eyed 38-year-old with a filthy mouth and nasty attitude.

Although "drawn together by the tenacious glue of fear and loneliness ... a ballet of mutual need and loathing," Sarai and the narrator - two of the maybe seven people still alive - have a hellish if hilarious relationship. Boyle's futuristic vision, with its clever accretion of inspired details, is uncannily believable, mordantly humorous like so much of Boyle's writing.

A number of creepy, perverse characters turn up in these disturbing and haunting stories. In Termination Dust, 107 women are flown to Boynton, Alaska, (population 170) for a weekend to be auctioned off for charity. Jordy, a "sweet dreamy English teacher who probably thought Alaska was all Northern Exposure," drives off with Bud, the highest bidder, "a griper and sorehead." Instantly smitten with the teacher, the crazed narrator tracks them down in a misguided attempt to "rescue" his fantasy woman, with awful results.

In Peep Hall, a private 41-year-old divorced man meets and lusts after 19year-old Samantha, who lives down the street with six other young women in a house meant to resemble a college dorm. Video cameras are everywhere in this house run by a cyber-pimp, "especially in the bathroom;" the results are shown on peephall.com. The narrator becomes a fulltime voyeur, hooked on his new perversion of watching and falling for his beguiling young neighbor.

Caitlin and Moira in The Black and White Sisters are inseparable control freaks who wear and surround themselves in "nullifying black" and "dead white." The narrator knew them from elementary school and used to cut their lawn "before they paved it over, that is." He falls for Caitlin, who "had a sort of retro-ghoulish style about her, with her dead black clinging dress and Kabuki skin.... Black fingernails, of course. And toenails." The workers he hires to cut down their trees, shrubs and flowers must abide by the black-and-white dress code as well as skin color. The sisters justify their insane de-greening, their whole way of colorless life, in fact, as an attempt "to simplify our environment."

Violence and betrayal and cruel twists of fate pervade these stories of loners and losers, of terrors and wonders. Boyle's world here is a pitiless one, which no reader will soon, if ever, forget.