Stories II (Penguin)
T.C. Boyle’s inventive imagination, his flair for entertaining and moving his readers, and his sheer love of story and language are perhaps nowhere better displayed than in his celebrated short fiction.
In 1998, T.C. Boyle Stories brought together the author’s first four collections of short work. Now, a companion volume, T.C. Boyle Stories II gathers work from his three most recent collections (After the Plague, 2001; Tooth and Claw, 2005; and Wild Child, 2010) along with fourteen new tales previously unpublished in book form. The volume also includes a preface by Boyle, in which he looks back on his larger career as a writer, and focuses on his love of both writing (and reading aloud) a good short story.
By turns mythic and realistic, farcical and tragic, ironic and moving, Boyle’s stories have mapped a wide range of human emotions. The stories in this new volume, written over the last twenty years, reflect Boyle’s maturing themes; as Boyle notes, “I’ve become ever so slightly less whimsical as I move on down the long dark road that inescapably ends in an even darker place.” Along with the satires and tall tales that established his reputation, readers will find stories speaking to contemporary social issues, from air rage to abortion doctors, and character-driven tales of quiet power and passion. Others capture timeless themes, from first love and its consequences to confrontations with mortality, or explore the conflict between civilization and wildness. Mordant wit, emotional power, exquisite prose: it is all here in abundance.
T.C. Boyle is the author of fourteen novels, including Drop City, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and World’s End, winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award. He has also written nine short story collections. He lives near Santa Barbara, California.
Possibly out of print. Email or call to check availability and price.
Possibly out of print. Email or call to check availability and price.