Blue Skies

(Paperback)

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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 Americas great comic writers. _______________ '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

Reviews

A mordant eco-thriller ... Boyle, who lives in California, has drawn zany satire from looming environmental catastrophe in previous works, but theres no denying that enhanced plausibility adds fresh layers of absurdism and melancholy to his latest novel * OBSERVER *
Darkly comic ... Could be a very influential book indeed * independent.co.uk *
An accomplished family drama with a climate-crisis setting * NEW YORK TIMES *
Is climate change funny Yes, in the brilliantly imaginative T. C. Boyles hands, in a terrifying way. Blue Skies is both comic and wrenching A black arrow of unimaginable horror shoots through the novels centre and Boyle leads us to contemplate the inexpressible sadness at the heart of everything and a morsel of the worlds inexpressible beauty -- ANNIE PROULX
Boyle writes with a youthful and sustained energy that parallels the zeal of his dreamers, and that ultimately attenuates their failures -- CHRIS BACHELDER * NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW *
Darkly ironic ... an expert blend of suspense, terror and, occasionally, very black humour * WASHINGTON POST *
Less a novel about what might be done about the climate crisis and more an accomplished family drama with a climate-crisis setting ... Boyle doesnt offer his own clear answer. Maybe he doesnt need to. At this stage of the climate game, it shouldnt take much prodding to convince us that theres plenty of work to do if we dont want our own families to be forced to answer Boyles thought problem * NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW *
Satiric and provocative ... skewering a contemporary environmental standoff modeled on real life events * LITHUB *
Always enjoyable, virtually incapable of dullness or slack sentences His stories reveal truths about modern life while still feeling beautifully invented * NEW YORK TIMES *
You dont feel cheated, reading Boyle while the head knows theres manipulation and artifice, the heart thumps * OBSERVER *
Boyle has a talent for describing events we may never experience with an arresting matter-of-factness. There is a thrill to this, and to not knowing where he will take us next -- CHRIS POWER * GUARDIAN *
Boyle is a writer who chooses a large canvas and fills it to the edges -- BARBARA KINGSOLVER

Author Bio

T. C. Boyle is the New York Times-bestselling author of seventeen previous novels and eleven collections of stories. His work has been translated into twenty-six languages. He is the recipient most recently of the Jonathan Swift Prize, the Mark Twain Voice in American Literature Award and the Henry David Thoreau Award. He is a member of the Academy of Arts and Letters and lives in California. tcboyle.com