The Tortilla Curtain
by T. Coraghessan Boyle
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Book Reviews of The Tortilla Curtain
Book Review: Extremes of the economic field in Southern California
Summary: 4 Stars
Tortilla Curtain by T. Coraghessan Boyle is packed with intricate literature. It is cruelly candid and humane. It commiserates with the characters even when it criticizes them. This book provides concerns involving racism, which can straightforwardly be presumed from the title. It also deals with national pride, comparative wealth, and examines honesty and values of the characters. However, these aren't the only issues performed in the book. There's more...you will just have to make a commitment to check out the book from your local library and read.
This book is very complex and sophisticated. T. Coraghessan Boyle has created characters that epitomize the extremes of the economic field in Southern California. I was struck by his description of symbolic imagery and language that correlated to John Steinbeck and Ernest Hemingway's achievements. The author deliberately makes us relate this book with modern topics. His book plays a very important and meaningful role in literature.
Delaney Mossbacher is a journalist in his mid-forties with a propensity to become fervent about several matters concerning his lifestyle in California. Cándido Rincón is an illegal refugee from Mexico who has camped with his spouse at Topanga Canyon. Making expenses on his vehicle and on his house, crime in California, and the destruction of environment annoy Delaney. Cándido frets about whether he will obtain an adequate amount of money to support his wife so that she could give birth in a hospital. One day Delaney inadvertently crashes into Cándido on the highway, leaving the poor immigrant injured and unable to attain work. He accepts twenty dollars from Delaney for the terror that if he goes to the hospital, the INS will deport him back to Mexico. From here on, Boyle focuses on the nucleus of his story. From this accident, the lives of these men and their families shift in compact orbits around each other. Each of the characters watch as everything that they imagined they knew about themselves and the world around them disintegrate.
Please do recall that California was a divided state in the early 1970s. Prosperous white people like Delaney were the leading group to acquire an opportunity to work and live a life where they could treasure anything they accomplished. These people were dependent on the deprived and unfortunate working class like Candido for cheap, abundant labor; for this very reason, they despised the illegal Mexican immigrants.
This particular book is not as tedious as those other novels that are required to read in high school. In fact, I truly found this book to be fascinating. I put off at least half an hour of my guitar time each day to finish reading this book. At times I even missed my bedtime by an hour or so simply because I didn't wish to discontinue reading. I definitely concur that there are innumerable boring and uninteresting books out there that we read because we are assigned to, but not this one. You will certainly desire to spend more time reading this book after you have found interest in it.
Book Review: The Shallowness of the American Dream
Summary: 5 Stars
It is rare, these days, to come across a rational discourse on the perils of the modern American white male. Most books on the subject tend to travel along the lines of 'reclaiming your identity', or 'actualization'. This leads to the unhappy result: The Promise Keepers movement (shudder).This sort of discourse overlooks the fairly obvious; life ain't what it used to be. The world as it now exists is complex, demanding, and illogical. The American male is often left bewildered and impotent by the lack of power he posesses. This can result in scapegoating, racism, and any other number of social ills that the mind is capable of. T. Coraghessen Boyle's wonderful novel THE TORTILLA CURTAIN captures this helplessness perfectly.
Delaney and Kyra Mossbacher are liberal humanists living an idyllic life in Los Angeles. Kyra sells homes, while Delaney authors a column for an enviromental magazine. (Incidentally, Delaney's column is a brilliant conceit: A well-fed and pampered white male rhapsodizes about 'sleeping under the stars'. Its mix of down-home homilies and ridiculous views of nature echoes the terrific but sometimes preachy nature of THE UTNE READER, an alternative viewpoints magazine. It's a great magazine, but its articles have a tendency to lean towards the dangerously nostalgic.)
Everything seems perfect, until Delaney runs over an illegal Mexican immigrant named Candido. This proves to be a defining moment in both of their lives, and Boyle does a terrific job at intertwining their resulting stories; Delaney finds himself increasingly unable to exist within his world, while Candido struggles to provide himself and his young wife with the life that is promised under the heading, 'The American Dream'.
Boyle captures perfectly the inane lifestyle that most white Americans desperately crave; a life with all the trimmings, seemingly simple and in tune with nature, yet completely at the mercy of nature's forces. Boyle leads Delaney and Kyra down this path with a slow, steady hand, as they find their supposedly heart-felt liberalism whittled away by petty annoyances, leading to a startling burst of racism towards illegal immigrants, the all-purpose scapegoats.
Boyle's point is well-taken. The veneer of civility people purport to live under is thin indeed. His contrast of this world with the stark desperation that Candido lives with every day is brilliant. It may be an oft-used theory that those with everything are never satisfied, but Boyle manages to makes it fresh. As Delaney steadily falls apart, and Candido glimpses hope time and time again, Boyle unearths the true face of America: A greedy, self-absprbed child who wants everything, and becomes violent when someone else wants the same things.
The insulated nature of the American culture has always been an easy target, for good reason. But Boyle refuses to make his novel an exercise in parody. Boyle sympathizes, but refuses to compromise. THE TORTILLA CURTAIN is that rarest of novels: an important novel. It should be required reading.
Book Review: The "Gating" of the American heart, mind and soul examined.
Summary: 4 Stars
As is the norm for Boyle, this is a very complex work.The gist of this novel emerges right from the start. Delaney Mossbacher is driving home to his pristine gated community in Southern California and hits a Mexican immigrant walking along the road. His reaction? Concern that he might have seriously damaged his car. Oh, he does "come to his senses" and check on the man he hit. The man is obviously injured. What does Delaney do? Gives him 20 bucks and leaves.
Ok, so Delaney is just a lousy jerk-a bad guy with no conscience, right? Not exactly, at least from Delaney's point of view. A left wing "naturalist" type, Delaney is the perfect parody of the "Socially and Environmentally" conscious Yuppie urban American. He's the sort with "important" cares. That he has hit and injured a human being gives him but passing concern-that his dog can be killed by wild animals in his own yard is an outrage.
This world view is counter posed against that of the accident victim, Candido and his young wife, illegal immigrants living in the ravine behind the Delaney's gated community. Candido and his wife struggle with how to find even one decent meal a day. Kyra, Delaney's wife, struggles with the escalating emptiness and lack of fulfillment she feels from closing 6 figure commission deals on her sales of multimillion dollar homes. And so it goes.
At heart, this is a book about how people are desperate to connect with one another while systematically shutting themselves away from everyone. The Delaney's spend their lives shutting themselves away behind an array of both actual and metaphorical walls. Candido and his wife are shut away by poverty and fear and racism.
Boyle is a craftsman with words, and he definitely knows how to construct a well-designed story. I appreciate his work but I can't really say I like it. On the one hand, his characters too often strike me as too much a caricature-complex and well developed caricatures, to be sure, but not characters one can empathize with. In this case, neither of the Delaney's amount to what I would call a genuine character, they are both come across caricatures developed to represent a wide swath of American stereotypes rather than as real people. This is sad, as their counter points-Candido and his wife, are just the opposite. They may "represent" an immigrant stereotype, yet are developed a real characters. On the other hand, there seems to me to be something oppressive about Boyle's style-I always feel like I have an anvil on my shoulders when I read his books. I suppose some would interpret it as a sense of "suspense", but it feels different to me, more like you are carrying the weight of all the points he wants to make all throughout the reading experience.
Interestingly, I still come back to Boyle. His books weigh on me, but I can't seem to walk away from him. I may not like them, but I do appreciate them, and they seem to have a power to attract. It's all very odd, yet compelling.
I say give him a try and see what your reaction is.
Book Review: Deserves 6 stars!
Summary: 5 Stars
While reading House of Sand and Fog earlier this year, I was reminded of another book to read called The Tortilla Curtain by TC Boyle. Friends of mine who live in Southern California had recommended this book to me for sometime and shortly after I finished the Dubus book, I picked up Tortilla Curtain. Now that I've read both of these books I can't stop thinking about both of them, their stories, the characters or unbeliveable outcomes. And if I were to give House of Sand and Fog a 5 star rating, I would surely give 6 stars to The Tortilla Curtain.Tortilla Curtain is the phrase used to describe the thin borders between Mexico and the United States which immigrants cross over in their attempt to live better lives. In this "blow you away novel," TC Boyle offers his readers a plot and characters who are not only involved in the world of illegal aliens but whose lives will never be the same. And for many of us it is as if this novel's premise was lifted off the pages of our daily newspapers and one for which there is no easy solution.
Candido along with his wife America are illegal aliens living in the canyons and brush areas of Southern California. When the book opens Candido is hit by a car driven by Delaney a writer for an environmental magazine. Although Candido hurries away from the scene for for fear of being caught and questioned his injuries prevent him from working for the next few days. In eloquent words, the author then describes how America seeks work and is both verbally and physically abused which causes Candido great regrets about crossing the border and bringing America to the US.
At the same time nearby in a prosperous planned community, Delaney lives with his wife Kyra, a real estate broker, and her son. The residents of this community are hounded by intruding coyotes in their backyards as well as suspected illegal aliens who rob their homes. Plans are underway to erect a large fence which should keep out all intruders except that Delaney voices his concerns about the fence wondering if the residents aren't locking themselves into their fancy homes. But as the novel continues the people of this community only become more and more incensed and Delaney's words fall on deaf ears Soon enough, though, and after a series of events, Delaney, begins to feel differently about the fence. Even when he knows the truth, he finally becomes out of control concerning any and all who cross the borders illegally. And then one day Candido and Delaney finally meet up again, in what has to be one of the most gripping and stunning conclusions of any book.
We read this book through chapters told in the alternating voices of Candido and Delaney until their two voices are ultimately linked together as one struggles against his better judgement and the other struggles to maintain his dignity.
This is a powerful and masterful book which describes lives spiraling out of control and should have every reader asking themselves what they would do when faced with similar circumstances.
Book Review: Well-written book on a controversial subject
Summary: 4 Stars
The Tortilla Curtain is introduced by a quote from The Grapes of Wrath, an appropriate citation as T.C. Boyle's novel is in many ways a 1990s follow-up to Steinbeck's classic novel. Even structurally, there are similarities between the two books as each alternates points of view in each chapter. But even if this is a follow-up, it is not a rewrite, as this story covers new ground.
A bit of recent California history: in 1994, the state passed Proposition 187, a law designed to deny public services (in particular health care and education) to illegal immigrants. The proponents of this law stated it was a necessary step to keep state resources from getting overly depleted. The opponents decried the law as racist and unconstitutional. Just as there were two sides in the Prop 187 debate, there are two similar sides in The Tortilla Curtain, written shortly after this law was passed.
On one side are Delaney and Kyra Mossbacher, an upper-middle class couple living on the outskirts of the San Fernando Valley. In general, they are politically liberal, but events transpire that make both of them turn to the right on the illegal immigration issue. On the other side are Candido and America Rincon, two such immigrants who are struggling to exist, desperately trying to find work and not even eking out enough of an existence to have shelter or eat regularly. The ways the lives of these four people intersect over the course of several months forms the basis of the novel.
If there is a central character, it is Delaney who we watch slowly changing from tolerance to indifference to hate for the many Mexicans, Salvadorans and other immigrants that seem to be everywhere in his life. Where does Boyle himself seem to come down on this issue? It's hard to say: he obviously has sympathy for both sides, but also is willing to indict both sides. This makes The Tortilla Curtain a book that will both irritate people at either extreme and please those more towards the middle.
Personally, I enjoyed this book although it is admittedly not perfect. In particular, the immigration issue so permeates this story that it is hard to believe the characters think of much else. For the Rincons, barely surviving from day to day, this may be understandable, but for the Mossbachers, it comes off as more implausible that their entire existence would be centered around this issue. On a side note, as one who lives near where the events of the story take place, I did enjoy Boyle's references to real streets and locations (although the gated community of Arroyo Blanco is fictitious).
Overall, this is another good-to-great work by Boyle, slightly flawed but generally well-written, enough to merit it a strong four stars. As stated before, this book will not please everyone, but if you're politically open-minded, you should enjoy this novel.