When we are asked about an interesting narrator of the present time, it seems as if we were entrusted with the soul of the reader on duty in search of the best literary placebo. And then we may be tempted to quote a Murakami or Houellebecq; always with the hope that our reader does not know one or the other of these novel but already recognized current narrators.
But then we can remember TC Boyle, hardened in a thousand battles since the eighties and despite this without reaching the great echo of other American writers of his generation such as Auster.
And we will probably be right with this puzzling but magnetic writer, in love with magical realism despite his efforts to readjust it to his particular prism. A narrator of our time, a ruthless chronicler who at the same time adorns his varied plots with the exquisiteness of the virtuoso. Because in the end it happens that the best of forms serves to reinforce any background, also in literature.
TC Boyle's Top 3 Recommended Novels
The Terranauts
Cinema and literature of sociological experiments should already have their own genre, From the Truman Show to the dome of Stephen King, a multitude of stories expand on telling us a vision between the utopian and the dystopian, as a bet to discover where the human will turns to group experimentation.
This time it's up to a TC Boyle who moves like a fish in water when it comes to confronting his characters with those unfathomable questions about human reactions to the unknown.
Newly arrived in the Arizona desert in 1994, "Los Terranautas", a group of eight scientists (four men and four women), volunteer, within the framework of a successful reality show broadcast worldwide, to confine themselves under a dome of crystal named "Ecosphere 2", which aims to be a prototype of a possible extraterrestrial colony, and which seeks to demonstrate that they can live isolated from the rest of the world for months and be self-sufficient.
The dome is the work of Jeremiah Reed, an eco-visionary known as "DC" - "God the Creator" -, but soon the question begins to arise whether an exciting scientific discovery has been made or if it is a simple publicity hook under the excuse for the most ambitious ecological experiment in the world. The scientists will be watched by other researchers, the Control Mission, who will monitor their movements from this "new Eden" as they face a series of life-threatening catastrophes that can lead to utter disaster.
TC Boyle surprises us again with a novel full of irony about science, sociology, sex and, above all, survival.
Women
If it weren't for my particular taste for dystopian presentations, this novel would have ranked first. But that's what it's all about, isn't it, establishing different tastes.
There is something in the work of architect Frank Lloyd Wright that reflects the contradictory sense of the human in its increasingly distant integration with the natural environment. Buildings in unimaginable spaces that squeak and at the same time evoke coexistence, closeness and comfort. Hence surely that worldwide fascination for each of its constructions.
From the character to the plot of a bibliographical novel that Boyle ends up rounding off as the final punchline of each Wright building.
His imposing estate in Taliesin, deep in Wisconsin, burned twice and rebuilt twice, is coming under siege by journalists eager to portray the scandalous love life of its owner.
Kitty, Wright's first wife, is convinced that her husband's mistresses are just a mirage. Martha "Mamah" Borthwick is a beauty who will be killed by a servant.
And his second wife, Miriam, has to dispute the throne of the architect's heart with the sensual Olgivanna, a Serbian dancer who shares with him a stormy and turbulent vision of life, and who is a veritable powder keg about to explode.
Water music
In the end, the most puzzling and daring work of any author is usually the first. Afterwards, the quality of the argument or style can be judged (everything can be revised in the future, if things go well, and the work relaunched as a new success), but without a doubt that deflowering is the true pattern, the work by excellence that the author wanted to write and began to do so with his sins of naivety or of any other kind.
That's what Water Music is supposed to mean in Boyle's bibliography. A first novel full of fantastic elements, funny and indecent, that announced to the world the birth of one of the great talents of the current North American narrative.
Set in the late XNUMXth century, this historical fiction chronicles the wacky adventures of Mungo Park, a dreamer who leaves his peaceful native Scotland for the wild and unexplored heart of Black Africa, and Ned Rise, a hustler trying to make his way On the streets of miserable London
Two stories full of anachronisms and hilarious licenses that mix the parallel lives of two characters who will end up joining their destinies in the first expedition of Western man to the sources of the Niger.