T.C. Boyle stories II: Volume II :the collected stories of T. Coraghessan Boyle

*Starred Review* The first volume of this always exciting writer's collected short fiction (Stories, 1998) drew refreshed interest in and admiration for his incontestable mastery of the short form. The second volume, containing 58stories written since the previous volume appeared, is poised to garner equal enthusiasm. Readers should not detour around the preface. It is a deft, passionate, colorfully detailed recounting of Boyle's path to professional story writing as he unabashedly shares the various and fortunate influences on him while he sought self-clarification of what his life's pursuit should be. His personal theories of story writing emerge, one of the most provocative being, The professional dictum has always been to write about what you know, but I say write what you don't know and find something out. Evidence of this theory at work can be found in Swept Away, one of the most effective stories. The setting is far remote from most people's personal experience: a dark, desolate island in hostile northern climes. During a particularly wild wind-storm, a romance flares between an islander and an American visitor; particulars of the affair are supported by the intense details of the dangerous environment Bicycles raced down the street with no more than a ghost at the pedals. Was Boyle actually on location ? The reader learns in the preface that these details were largely spawned by Boyle's imagination, but regardless, the story drips with authentic atmosphere. The volume itself poses the question, Can every story by one author be a masterpiece? Boyle's brilliant book submits itself as evidence for that possibility. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The publisher will support this major publishing event with an author tour, lecture venues, and online and social-media promotional campaigns.--Hooper, Brad Copyright 2010 Booklist

This second volume of Boyle's short stories (after Volume 1, 1998) represents his work from the late 1990s to the present and incorporates three story collections-After the Plague (2001), Tooth and Claw (2005), and Wild Child (2010)-and new work not yet published in book form. This is a monumental amount of writing, with the present 900-plus-page volume including 58 stories from the author of 14 highly acclaimed novels. In this case, quantity and quality coexist in good measure, as Boyle's stories are among the best and most memorable of the past three decades. Here, as in Boyle's earlier work, the pieces range from modern-day tall tales such as "Swept Away," which tells of a short-lived romance between an itinerant ornithologist and a shy native from "the northernmost tip of the Isle of Unst" to "torn-from-the-headlines" character-driven pieces featuring, for example, an abortion doctor under siege, a promising young college student in denial about her own pregnancy, and a newly homeless man in his first days of living rough in a Southern California beach town. VERDICT Boyle is a devoted practitioner of the short story with a formidable body of work. This rich title will be of great interest to readers both new and old.-Sue Russell, Bryn Mawr, PA (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Picking up where he left off with his first volume of collected stories in 1998, Boyle (San Miguel, 2012, etc.) serves up an overstuffed gathering of goofy premises and serious turns. Boyle turns Raymond Carver on its side with his relentless insistence that ordinary life is populated by people of glorious weirdness and is, for the most part, far from dreary. The sentiment may be a 1960s holdover, for, in a sharp introduction that (unlike a few stories) goes on too short, he observes that when he started out, he was "a hippie's hippie, so blissed-out and outrageously accoutered that people would stop me on the street and ask if I could sell them acid." Some of these stories have an oddly psychotropic effect, and perhaps origin: Who else would dream up a story about a lovelorn immigrant who digs underground labyrinths on the California frontier? Boyle notes that as he gets that much closer to the void, "the long dark road that inescapably ends in an even darker place," he tends to more nonwhimsical turns, but he still engages full-tilt in explorations of the unbeaten path, arguing against the bulk of his fellow professors, "I say write what you don't know and find something out." Amen. Boyle doesn't usually write short, and some of his stories threaten to deflate before he's quite done with them, but most are gems, marked by beautiful language ("Whiteness loomed, the pale ethereality of nothingness, and blackness too, the black of a dreamless sleep"), nicely imagined moments (a young man reads Crime and Punishment and, just in time to be deterred from existential crime, goes on a picnic), and occasionally dashed dreams--yes, la Carver--as when a once-famed ballplayer returns to Venezuela in disgrace and has to sell his beloved Hummer, "replacing it with a used van of unknown provenance and a color indistinguishable from the dirt of the streets." A fine and welcome summation--till the next volume--by one of the best storytellers at work today.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

*Starred Review* The first volume of this always exciting writer's collected short fiction (Stories, 1998) drew refreshed interest in and admiration for his incontestable mastery of the short form. The second volume, containing 58stories written since the previous volume appeared, is poised to garner equal enthusiasm. Readers should not detour around the preface. It is a deft, passionate, colorfully detailed recounting of Boyle's path to professional story writing as he unabashedly shares the various and fortunate influences on him while he sought self-clarification of what his life's pursuit should be. His personal theories of story writing emerge, one of the most provocative being, "The professional dictum has always been to write about what you know, but I say write what you don't know and find something out." Evidence of this theory at work can be found in "Swept Away," one of the most effective stories. The setting is far remote from most people's personal experience: a dark, desolate island in hostile northern climes. During a particularly wild wind-storm, a romance flares between an islander and an American visitor; particulars of the affair are supported by the intense details of the dangerous environment—"Bicycles raced down the street with no more than a ghost at the pedals." Was Boyle actually "on location"? The reader learns in the preface that these details were largely spawned by Boyle's imagination, but regardless, the story drips with authentic atmosphere. The volume itself poses the question, Can every story by one author be a masterpiece? Boyle's brilliant book submits itself as evidence for that possibility. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The publisher will support this major publishing event with an author tour, lecture venues, and online and social-media promotional campaigns. Copyright 2013 Booklist Reviews.

The author of 14 celebrated novels, Boyle excels in the short form as well, having won the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction. In 1998, T.C. Boyle Stories combined his first four collections; here, we have his three most recent collections and 14 new stories, ranging in Boyle's typically running-wild fashion from giants bred for battle to a reclusive writer upended by the experience of receiving a minor award.

This second volume of Boyle's short stories (after Volume 1, 1998) represents his work from the late 1990s to the present and incorporates three story collections—After the Plague (2001), Tooth and Claw (2005), and Wild Child (2010)—and new work not yet published in book form. This is a monumental amount of writing, with the present 900-plus-page volume including 58 stories from the author of 14 highly acclaimed novels. In this case, quantity and quality coexist in good measure, as Boyle's stories are among the best and most memorable of the past three decades. Here, as in Boyle's earlier work, the pieces range from modern-day tall tales such as "Swept Away," which tells of a short-lived romance between an itinerant ornithologist and a shy native from "the northernmost tip of the Isle of Unst" to "torn-from-the-headlines" character-driven pieces featuring, for example, an abortion doctor under siege, a promising young college student in denial about her own pregnancy, and a newly homeless man in his first days of living rough in a Southern California beach town. VERDICT Boyle is a devoted practitioner of the short story with a formidable body of work. This rich title will be of great interest to readers both new and old.—Sue Russell, Bryn Mawr, PA