From Publishers Weekly
If Boyle's progress as a novelist has been uneven his more recent narratives have not managed to achieve the acclaim of 1990's East Is East his talent for crafting amusing and startling short stories has never been in doubt. This compilation (his fifth, not counting a collected volume) culls pieces published in the New Yorker, GQ and other outlets and showcases the signature elements of his fiction: darkly comic scenarios (a surly airline passenger goes berserk and a downtrodden elementary school teacher saves the day), pitiful and realistic characters (an Internet porn addict) and mundane but serious subjects (love, overpopulation, abortion). While there's not much new ground broken here, Boyle more than makes up for the relative lack of innovation by delivering his trademark dazzler endings. In "She Wasn't Soft," a triathlete's idiot boyfriend tries to atone for his wretched behavior by drugging her rival in a race, with potentially disastrous results. And in the title story, an apocalypse leaves only a handful of people on Earth; after a disastrous experience with another survivor, the narrator learns that, even in the worst of situations, love can prevail. Boyle has matured since 1995's Without a Hero: here he relies more on language than farce or shock value, describing the relationship between two lovers who "wore each other like a pair of socks," or, conversely, a college boy who enters a girl's room and feels "like some weird growth sprung up on the unsuspecting flank of her personal space." Boyle's imagination and zeal for storytelling are in top form here, making this collection a smash. Author tour. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
In his sixth collection of short stories, Boyle presents a series of wickedly ironic, sometimes poignant, sometimes darkly humorous tales that speak directly to the human condition and to a variety of contemporary social issuesfrom abortion to Internet voyeur cams, from railway killers to air rage. Among the best are a wonderfully crafted tale about an elderly widowa beautiful old lady clothed in catsand another about an ex-rocker, ex-actor, surf-shop owner who finally loses his cool when faced with three teenage harassers and a smug jewel thief. Then there are the Black and White Sisters who seem determined to eliminate all color in their lives. Somewhat out of context, but no less touching, is the story of an Italian immigrant farmer who in 1905 purchases, sight unseen, 70 acres of California wasteland and loses his love but keeps on digging, never losing his vision of a better future. The final and title story focuses on four survivors of a disease-induced apocalypsea classic tale of can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em that leaves one smiling in spite of the circumstances. All in all this is classic Boyle, a work to be embraced by his enthusiasts and one that belongs in most collections of serious fiction.-David W. Henderson, Eckerd Coll. Lib., St. Petersburg, FL Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
*Starred Review* Boyle is not only a master literary craftsman but also profoundly attuned to the here and now, writing with sharp wit, supple imagination, and acute emotional sensitivity about the peculiarities of our densely populated, technology addled, and precarious world. His eight novels, including A Friend of the Earth (2000), constitute a smart, provocative, and rollicking body of outward-looking work that is more than matched by the power of his superb short stories. Five previous collections were gathered together in the knockout volume, T. C. Boyle Stories (1998), and now a new assemblage arrives that is even more remarkable than its predecessors. Here Boyle burrows deeply into the psyches of disparate characters in crisis, balancing his gift for vigorous description with insights into seemingly inexplicable behavior, moments when a person crashes through the guardrail of reason. In "She Wasn't Soft," the surfer-bum boyfriend of a fanatic amateur athlete, stoked by suppressed resentment, does exactly the wrong thing, as does the young, fresh-out-of-rehab protagonist in "Killing Babies," a steadily escalating, many-faceted story featuring a rabid mob of anti-abortion protesters. A connoisseur of the absurd and the macabre, Boyle is intrigued with new forms of mania. "Friendly Skies" is a creepy rendering of air rage. "Peep Hall" is a sweet brave-new-world love story about an admirer of a young woman who lives in a house rigged with cameras to provide cyber-voyeurs with 24-hour Internet access. Observant, empathic, and fresh, Boyle's stories affirm literature's vital and abiding role in our culture as the lights flicker on and off and dot-coms fizzle and die. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Few authors in America write with such sheer love of story, language, and imagination as T. C. Boyle, and nowhere is that passion more evident than in his inventive, wickedly funny, and widely praised short stories. In After the Plague, his sixth collection of stories, Boyle exhibits his maturing themes, speaking to contemporary social issues in a range of emotional keys. The sixteen stories gathered here, nine of which have appeared in The New Yorker and three in The O'Henry Prize Stories and Best American Short Stories volumes, display Boyle's astonishing range as he rings his changes on everything from air rage ("Friendly Skies") to abortion doctors ("Killing Babies"). There are also stories of quiet passion here, such as "The Love of My Life," which deals with first love and its consequences, and "My Widow," a touching portrait of the writer's own possible future. The collection ends with the brilliant title story, a whimsical and imaginative vision of a disease-ravaged Earth and the few inheritors of a new Eden. Presented with characteristic wit and intelligence, these stories will delight readers in search of the latest news of the chaotic, disturbing, and achingly beautiful world in which we live.

Author Biography: T. Coraghessan Boyle is the author of five short story collections including his collected stories, T. C. Boyle Stories, and eight novels, most recently A Friend of the Earth. His 1987 novel, World's End, was the recipient of the PEN/Faulkner Award, and The Tortilla Curtain won the Prix Médici Étranger in 1997 for best novel published in France by a foreign writer. In 1999, he received thePEN/Malamud Award for excellence in short fiction. His fiction appears regularly in magazines such as The New Yorker, Esquire, Granta, GQ, The Paris Review, and Playboy.

FROM THE CRITICS

.. Los Angeles Times

In an age of war where the foe is indistinct and difficult to identify, Boyle has become the poet and the prophet of our time.

Book Magazine

The short stories in T.C. Boyle's darkly entertaining collection appear to come from the morning newspaper. In "Friendly Skies," a woman is on an airplane when an obnoxious passenger, wielding a hot coffeepot, goes berserk in a fit of air rage. In "The Love of My Life," a pair of high school sweethearts, following the birth of their unwanted baby in a cheap motel room, dispose of the body in a Dumpster. And in "Peep Hall," a middle-aged man discovers that his young neighbor lives with several women in a house meant to resemble a college dorm, from which images are transmitted daily to a Web site. Boyle's strategy is to draw on familiar, albeit peculiar, situations from popular culture￯﾿ﾽwhether instances of Internet voyeurism or abortion-clinic violence￯﾿ﾽso that we can enter a world vicariously and witness, at close range, the outrageous behavior featured on Dateline or 20/20. These stories, however, are more than refashioned journalism. Fueled by irony, intelligence and a gift for dark comedy, Boyle, in lively, eloquent prose, delivers stories that are disturbing and violent yet make us laugh; stories that reflect contemporary culture yet remain artistically accomplished and inventive. At the heart of about half of these works is a man in his thirties or forties who drinks too much and is alone and unfulfilled. A woman becomes the central object of his desire; however, personal demons, fueled by drugs or booze, lead him toward irresponsible and sometimes violent behavior. Not to be outdone, Boyle's female characters are equally destructive, though their impulses are more controlled; they channel their aggression into competition. In one of thecollection's best tales, "Termination Dust," the narrator, Ned, is awaiting the arrival of 107 single women from California who have flown north to meet the men of Alaska, a state that, according to the story, boasts two eligible bachelors for every woman. Quickly falling for Jordy, an English teacher "with eyes the color of glacial melt," he hopes to outbid the others and claim her as his date at a charity auction. Unfortunately, he is outmaneuvered by his nemesis, Bud Withers, who recently lost his feet to frostbite and must now rely on prosthetics: "Every step he took looked like a recovery, as if he'd just been shoved from behind." After Bud whisks Jordy away to his remote cabin, Ned stages a dramatic rescue. What is most engaging about this comic tale is the eerie reversal Boyle introduces near the end, leaving us wondering who we should trust and root for. Although Boyle is perhaps best known for novels like World's End and The Road to Wellville, his accomplishments as a short-fiction writer are arguably greater. Many of his stories (including nine of these sixteen) have appeared in The New Yorker, and his work turns up in the annual O. Henry Prize Stories and Best American Short Stories volumes. The author's burgeoning success may stem from an increased focus on character development. Boyle began his career in the late '70s as a rather cynical humorist￯﾿ﾽin the vein of John Barth and Thomas Pynchon￯﾿ﾽwho wrote conceptual stories that were more clever than deeply felt. The stories in this collection, however, while retaining the humor and fecund imagination of the earlier works, are fuller and longer, and they give us psychologically and emotionally resonant characters. Though a few of these stories feel gimmicky and contrived, the best of them￯﾿ﾽ"Termination Dust," "She Wasn't Soft," "Killing Babies," "The Underground Gardens," "After the Plague"￯﾿ﾽfeature characters who have a tendency to stick around in our minds after their narratives end. Like Don DeLillo, Boyle recognizes the strangeness of contemporary existence: the obsessions, mysteries, fears, self-delusions and frustrations. In "After the Plague," a somewhat whimsical postapocalyptic story (the narrator escaped the fatal Ebola mutation virus because he was isolated in the mountains), Boyle describes an abandoned California populated by a handful of paranoid survivors: "[T]here wasn't a soul in sight. If it weren't for that￯﾿ﾽand a certain creeping untended look to the lawns, shrubs and trees￯﾿ﾽyou wouldn't have noticed anything out of the ordinary." While strange and disturbing, there's something about Boyle's America that is hauntingly familiar. He is that rare writer who can keep us entertained while revealing the barbarity and emptiness that lies beneath the surface of our world. ￯﾿ﾽJames Schiff

Publishers Weekly

If Boyle's progress as a novelist has been uneven his more recent narratives have not managed to achieve the acclaim of 1990's East Is East his talent for crafting amusing and startling short stories has never been in doubt. This compilation (his fifth, not counting a collected volume) culls pieces published in the New Yorker, GQ and other outlets and showcases the signature elements of his fiction: darkly comic scenarios (a surly airline passenger goes berserk and a downtrodden elementary school teacher saves the day), pitiful and realistic characters (an Internet porn addict) and mundane but serious subjects (love, overpopulation, abortion). While there's not much new ground broken here, Boyle more than makes up for the relative lack of innovation by delivering his trademark dazzler endings. In "She Wasn't Soft," a triathlete's idiot boyfriend tries to atone for his wretched behavior by drugging her rival in a race, with potentially disastrous results. And in the title story, an apocalypse leaves only a handful of people on Earth; after a disastrous experience with another survivor, the narrator learns that, even in the worst of situations, love can prevail. Boyle has matured since 1995's Without a Hero: here he relies more on language than farce or shock value, describing the relationship between two lovers who "wore each other like a pair of socks," or, conversely, a college boy who enters a girl's room and feels "like some weird growth sprung up on the unsuspecting flank of her personal space." Boyle's imagination and zeal for storytelling are in top form here, making this collection a smash. Author tour. (Sept. 10) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

In his sixth collection of short stories, Boyle presents a series of wickedly ironic, sometimes poignant, sometimes darkly humorous tales that speak directly to the human condition and to a variety of contemporary social issuesfrom abortion to Internet voyeur cams, from railway killers to air rage. Among the best are a wonderfully crafted tale about an elderly widowa beautiful old lady clothed in catsand another about an ex-rocker, ex-actor, surf-shop owner who finally loses his cool when faced with three teenage harassers and a smug jewel thief. Then there are the Black and White Sisters who seem determined to eliminate all color in their lives. Somewhat out of context, but no less touching, is the story of an Italian immigrant farmer who in 1905 purchases, sight unseen, 70 acres of California wasteland and loses his love but keeps on digging, never losing his vision of a better future. The final and title story focuses on four survivors of a disease-induced apocalypsea classic tale of can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em that leaves one smiling in spite of the circumstances. All in all this is classic Boyle, a work to be embraced by his enthusiasts and one that belongs in most collections of serious fiction. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 5/15/01.]David W. Henderson, Eckerd Coll. Lib., St. Petersburg, FL Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews