Published by Ecco on September 13, 2022
Many of the T.C. Boyle stories collected in this volume were published in Esquire, The New Yorker, Playboy, or literary reviews. They vary in style and subject matter but not in quality. The title story didn’t speak to me, but the others include some of the best short fiction I’ve read in recent memory.
My favorites:
The narrator of “The Thirteenth Day” is quarantined on a cruise ship with a passenger from Wuhan who has COVID-19. Fear, privation, domestic discord, and culture war lunacy ensue. The story is so realistic it reads as if Boyle was actually a passenger on the ship.
“Big Mary” is a large woman who beats every man she arm-wrestles. She slowly becomes the lead vocalist for a bar band before jealousy (largely the narrator’s) leads to the kind of drama that breaks up bands.
“The Shape of a Teardrop” - Parents evict their loser son because he refuses to work, knowing his wages will be garnished for child support. The mother insists she loves her son but her brand of tough love suggests her primary loyalty is to herself. This is the kind of story that makes me even more grateful to have been raised in a functional family.
A medical student practices surgery on dogs in a hospital's “Dog Lab.” The story highlights the ethical issues surrounding the use of dogs that would otherwise have been euthanized (a fate that is only delayed by the surgeries). The issues cause a rift between the student and his girlfriend. No spoiler intended, but if you want to know whether a dog lover will appreciate the ending, the answer is yes.
The narrator of “Not Me” is an unhappy high school teacher who, unlike some of his unhappy colleagues, is not sleeping with a student. Sleeping with students is against the rules but sleeping with other teachers turns out to be just as problematic.
“The Apartment” - A man agrees to pay a monthly sum to an old woman for the duration of her life in exchange for ownership of her apartment when she dies. The man and the old woman both are wagering on the duration of her life. “We all make bargains in this life,” the woman later says. “Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose.”
Other stories I enjoyed:
“These Are the Circumstances” - Nick’s wife Laurel persuades him to go on a nature walk/bath ($25 per hour per person) so they can gain the meditative and calming benefit of communing with leaves and dirt. Nick is bored after three minutes of watching twigs float downstream. He misses his phone. Laurel sees beauty where Nick sees danger. They might both be right, but nature later has an adverse impact on Nick’s life. This is a good story for husbands who oppose their wives’ insistence that they get off the couch.
“Key to the Kingdom” - A stranger knocks on a writer’s door and raises the possibility that he’s the writer’s son, triggering memories of a return to the writer’s alma mater after the publication of his first novel and an unexpected sexual encounter. The knowledge is one more in a series of burdens that the writer has never been able to carry.
“SCS 750” - The ability to get a good job or medical treatment or decent seating on the train is dependent on a Social Credit Score that defines trustworthiness. The score is shaped by conformity to rigid rules (not avoiding surveillance cameras, not buying more than one bottle of gin at a time, not watching porn or playing video games all day, not expressing antisocial thoughts). The narrator chooses friends and relationships based on their impact on his score, a clever twist on the common dystopian theme of government-enforced limits on individuality.
“Asleep at the Wheel” takes place in the future of self-driving cars, including Ubers that want to take their passengers on a shopping trip to stores that have purchased advertising from Uber. The story describes two events. One is a mother’s evening with a man her car told her to avoid. The other follows drunken kids who, inspired by Rebel Without a Cause, decide to disable the self-driving capability of stolen cars and drive them off a cliff. Meanwhile, gentle robotic police make the reader wonder whether society might get something right in the future.
I was indifferent to these three:
The title story tells five interlocking mini-stories. The first and last address a man’s feeling of powerlessness when he is harassed by a woman while waiting for his wife in a bar on Valentine’s Day. One follows a man who deals with the aftermath of a mudslide. One is about a suicide prevention worker’s relationship with a woman who threatens suicide. The only interesting segment involves a matchmaking dinner party. The hosts try to bring two obese people together, a plan that alienates a fat man who wonders why the hosts would assume he is attracted to fat women. All the segments are all meant to address the theme of “fathomless, inexpressible, heartbreaking loneliness,” but the dinner party segment is the only one that touched my heart.
“The Hyena” - The residents of a village go mad. Perhaps there was something in the bread.
“What’s Love Got to Do with It?” tells of a conversation an older woman has with a college student during a train ride. The student is an incel who describes with sympathy another incel who went on a killing spree at a sorority house. The incel wants to be seen but doesn’t understand that the woman only sees him for what he is. I don’t see a college virgin opening up to a woman who is likely oler than his mother about his sexual insecurities, but Boyle’s description of those insecurities seems spot on.
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