T.C. Boyle has by no means been afraid to torment his characters or draw from actual life, and he does each in Blue Skies, placing his solid by way of nearly each climate-related calamity to make the contours of the disaster so distinguished that nobody may miss them.
He begins this bicoastal journey—the motion toggles between Florida and California—with, of all issues, jewellery. But it’s “living jewelry,” a Burmese python bought by influencer Cat to put on round her neck. Boyle, the unparalleled stylist, describes Cat’s thought course of in attractive prose: She thinks snakes are lovely, “as if somebody had dipped a brush in acrylics and traced the lines that radiated in a widening V from their mouths to draw reticulate patterns across their backs and down their sides.”
Plenty of descriptions as unforgettable as that one observe as Boyle introduces a number of characters and problems, from the self-inflicted to the unexpected. Cat’s ambition is to achieve on-line followers and exhibit her Florida beachfront house. She lives there along with her Tesla-driving fiancé, Todd, whose job entails consuming and partying to advertise a rum model. To Cat’s chagrin, it additionally entails loads of time away from house.
Across the nation in California are different members of Cat’s household. Her brother, Cooper, is an entomologist, disparaged as “Bug Boy” by classmates when he was rising up however who now conducts discipline analysis to review ticks and different arachnids. Their mom, Ottilie, is so deeply impacted by Cooper’s warnings about harming the planet that she begins cooking with crickets, making every part from cricket cobbler to cricket-infused cookies and brownies.
The disappearance of Cat’s snake is barely the mildest of calamities to befall this group. Ever the maximalist, Boyle inflicts one catastrophe after one other to indicate the perils of local weather change. If something, there’s an excessive amount of incident. Fewer would have made his level more practical.
But wealth is healthier than poverty, and Boyle doles out ample riches. The tempo by no means lets up, and he blends many different well timed themes into his narrative, from aversion to parenthood to the ruthlessness of the media. Blue Skies will not be top-flight Boyle, however it’s Boyle at his most pressing. “What good was beachfront property if there was no beach?” Ottilie asks. As Boyle warns us, take the planet as a right, and don’t be stunned if, like a snake, its luxuries slither away.
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