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A review by moreadsbooks
San Miguel by T.C. Boyle
4.0
God bless you, T.C. Boyle & your wondrous, sweeping, swooping run-on sentences.
“It was anger – and despair, that too – that gave her the strength to strip the bedding and tear the curtains from their hooks, to ball them up and fling them on the floor for Ida, because what was he thinking, how could he ever imagine she’d regain her strength in a freezing hovel like this as if she were some sort of milkmaid in a bucolic romance?”
Or this: “She watched the sun rise out of the mountains down the shoreline to her left, and that was strange too, because all her life she’d known it to emerge from the waters of Long Island Sound, a quivering yellow disk like the separated yolk of an egg, the waves running away to the horizon and shifting from black to gray and finally to the clean undiluted blue of the sky above – if the sun was shining, that is.”
No one can do it like you, T.C., when you're on you're so totally on, and I love you for it. Thanks a lot.
This book revisits the island of San Miguel, a looming character of sorts in the background of Boyle's last novel When The Killing's Done. This is told from the 1880s perspective of Marantha Waters & then her daughter Edith, as they follow Marantha's husband to the island so he can run a sheep ranching operation & also, hopefully, so Marantha will be cured of her consumption.She's not. After her death, teenage Edith is taken out of school & forced back to the island by her stepfather, where he can keep an eye on her. Here's the thing, though, stepfather of Edith - if you treat teenage girls like prisoners because you don't want them cavorting with boys, they will do anything in their power, up to & including cavorting with boys, in order to get out from under your thumb. Then the book shifts to the 1930s and Elise Lester & her husband taking over the sheep ranch & their lives as the "Swiss Family Lester" out in the middle of nowhere with their eventual children.
Elise's part was the hardest to read because it frankly got sort of boring. While Marantha hates the island & is coughing up blood & being dramatic all the time, & Edith hates the island too & is woeful & impassioned as only teenage girls can be (and willing to resort to some pretty painful things to get away), Elise's life is idyllic & happy & routine. Her husband Herbie appears to be bipolar but other than a few mentions of him being "blue" he's a lot more about the happy mania than anything. Sadly though, Elise ends up being the most profound story of all.Sometimes I'm pretty naive & I will ignore foreshadowing, so I admit I was a little shocked when I finally realized what poor Herbie was up to. The novel ends thus: ”She knew that luck gave out. And she knew that there was nothing to keep, nothing to hold on to, that it all came to nothing in the end," & if that doesn't make you want to cry a little & go give someone you love a hug, than I don't know what will.
“It was anger – and despair, that too – that gave her the strength to strip the bedding and tear the curtains from their hooks, to ball them up and fling them on the floor for Ida, because what was he thinking, how could he ever imagine she’d regain her strength in a freezing hovel like this as if she were some sort of milkmaid in a bucolic romance?”
Or this: “She watched the sun rise out of the mountains down the shoreline to her left, and that was strange too, because all her life she’d known it to emerge from the waters of Long Island Sound, a quivering yellow disk like the separated yolk of an egg, the waves running away to the horizon and shifting from black to gray and finally to the clean undiluted blue of the sky above – if the sun was shining, that is.”
No one can do it like you, T.C., when you're on you're so totally on, and I love you for it. Thanks a lot.
This book revisits the island of San Miguel, a looming character of sorts in the background of Boyle's last novel When The Killing's Done. This is told from the 1880s perspective of Marantha Waters & then her daughter Edith, as they follow Marantha's husband to the island so he can run a sheep ranching operation & also, hopefully, so Marantha will be cured of her consumption.
Elise's part was the hardest to read because it frankly got sort of boring. While Marantha hates the island & is coughing up blood & being dramatic all the time, & Edith hates the island too & is woeful & impassioned as only teenage girls can be (and willing to resort to some pretty painful things to get away), Elise's life is idyllic & happy & routine. Her husband Herbie appears to be bipolar but other than a few mentions of him being "blue" he's a lot more about the happy mania than anything. Sadly though, Elise ends up being the most profound story of all.