The Tortilla Curtain
by T. Coraghessan Boyle
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Book Reviews of The Tortilla Curtain
Book Review: Realisticly disturbing
Summary: 4 Stars
Title: Tortilla Curtain Author: T.C. BoyleGenre: Realistic Fiction
Setting: Southern California in present time. Near the border of Mexico where many illegal immigrants come to find a new life.
Characters:
Delaney- A middle to upper class liberal, who feels one with nature. Is also a stay at home parent and writer. Is comfortable with his surroundings and becomes angry when his life style is at risk.
Kyra- The wife of Delaney and strongly work involved real estate agent. She lives for her job and will do anything for her next sale.
Candido- An illegal immigrant from Mexico whom is trying to make it in America with his young wife and unborn child. He is hit by many hardships and barely escapes death on a number of occasions.
America-Candido's wife and a scared, naive, and young illegal immigrant. She dreams of living in a real home and raising her child the American way. She is pregnant and miserable and would do anything to be happy.
Plot: Delaney gets mixed up with Candido by hitting him with his car on a highway. Delaney feels badly at first but then begins to feel anger and rage. He becomes scared for his lifestyle and blames Candido for everything that has happened to him. Candido tries to find work and make a life for himself but continually gets hit with hardships until one day he lights the canyon that he lives in on fire. He then ends up living in a shack behind the housing development that Delaney lives in with his family. Later things continue to go wrong for both Delaney and Candido and Delaney decides to hunt down Candido for revenge. He hunts him down with a gun and when he finds him a mud slide carries them away.
Techniques : By using a variety of techniques such as detail, irony, and imagery Boyle creates an unimaginable story that could happen to anyone. The story is so realistic that it is disturbing to your stomach.
Theme: In the pursuit of happiness we can be forced to do unimaginable things. We will never know what we are capable of until the time comes for us to react...
Book Review: An American dream in Los Angeles
Summary: 4 Stars
In the story Tortilla curtain by Coraghessan Boyle two illegal immigrants (Candido Rincon and hi pregnant seventeen year old wife) go through the worst experiences they can go in America. It all starts out when Candido gets hit by Delaney Mossbacher; who lives in a secured community with his wife, Kyra and his 7 year old son. As the story enrolls Candido and his wife face problems in their life style, while Delaney, goes through racism in his so called higher community. This book goes into detail describing the pain and suffering immigrants go through, just to think of a better life; the "American Dream", to live in a house not worrying on whether they will have food the next day or not. Like described when Delaney gets caught by immigration. After a few minutes he decides to run with a couple more teenage boys. While running they turn to face the freeway, facing a rough decision, will they run and risk their lives or go back to Mexico. Unfortunately they run and lose their lifes. Is this really the life they want in The United States? Meanwhile Delaney and his family go through the lost of their dog, face racist issues, and almost get attacked by a Mexican and his Indian friend.
This book really shows how Americans and Mexicans have the same problems even if they have different results.
This author is very good at putting in issues and the thoughts of each of his main characters. A good example of this is of Delaney, when he hits Candido in the beginning of the story. He first thinks of his precious can not who he hit or if he is alright. Also when he starts talking to him and thinks on how much to give Candido. Another example is when Delaney's car gets robbed and he is thinking on what to do, who to ask, and where to look for his so called precious car.
This book was very interesting because I got to see both sides ot the story facing racism. So what I am thinking is, does this really happen in the Los Angeles? California? The United States ? The world? or is this just in an imaginary world that the author made up to make this interesting?
Book Review: Chilling, depressing, excellent
Summary: 5 Stars
I grew up 20 minutes from the Mexican border. I knew people like Candido and America, good, honest, hard-working folks who only wanted a chance to live and prosper, who spent each waking moment dreading the appearance of La Migra. TC Boyle has characterized these people beautifully. They're not angels, and he nailed the bad elements, the punks and chucos, just as thoroughly as he brought his protagonists to life on the page. If people think this book DOESN'T deal with the reality of life in Southern California...and Northern California, and Arizona, and Texas, and New Mexico, and YES, Eastern Washington, anywhere where the "haves" need the services and cheap back-breaking labor of the "have-nots"...then you need to get out more and leave the blinders at home!
TC sets the action early and he is relentless. The Rashoman-style serves him well, although he was brutal in his descriptions of Delaney and Kyra and their neighbors...the quintessential liberal do-gooders in their SUV's and mammoth gated communities eating up the very "wildness" they glorify while sipping Chardonnay and munching smoked sturgeon. People who think if they belong to Sierra Club and drop a few coins in the Salvation Army bucket at Christmas, they've done their part.
This book does an excellent job of throwing a spotlight on the racial discord, which unfortunately grows by leaps and bounds daily, particularly in our post-911 hysteria. What was true in 1995 has only intensified in 2004, growing to include irrational fear towards anyone "different" from the Euro-descended, workaholic, Christian villagers. Listen to the community fathers and mothers fret about homeless tent cities being moved to their 'hoods. It's a wonder we don't have torches descending on the churchyards harboring these supposed "sex perverts" and "thieves"...guilty by way of bad luck.
Read this book. Get a look at the other side of your office cleaning lady's life, the reality of that small dark man with the leaf blower or stacking the shelves in your local Wal-Mart. You owe to yourself.
Book Review: Essential Issue Addressed, But Writing Needs Editing
Summary: 3 Stars
There were many aspects of this novel that were less than refreshing. For one, the writing was so superfluous in description that it became a slight annoyance to me. Boyle doesn't just tell you a point and be done with it; you literally have it shoved in your face time and time again. He spends page after page just getting to a minute point. There is an overabundance of similes and metaphors, and the writing comes across as "showy" occasionally. In addition, there were many unlikely coincidences inserted into the plot, such as the two families coming in contact with each other repeatedly that made the climactic finish a bit predictable.The most irritating part was usage of profanity and vulgarity for seemingly unnecessary purposes and at the most unusual times. Reading particular parts that contained profane and crude descriptions made me wonder mainly because it absolutely served no purpose. Not only that, but it doubtlessly made much of the descriptions incongruous alongside the poetic and illustrative adjectives used in the same sentences. I found myself sighing and rolling my eyes at some of the dialogue and explanations. This could have been easily edited, and it would have made for stronger illustration of a scene or idea.
Despite the irritations, The Tortilla Curtain gains most of its strength from its distinctive message about the confrontation of two vastly different cultures.
This book underscores the whole illegal immigration issue by pitting together a liberal Southern Californian family with an immigrant couple who have to try to scrape by for their basic necessities. The readers get to see the harsh realities from the point of view of Candido and America, a couple who come to California for a taste of a better life. Facing the reality of living like "animals", their story sets the tone for a deep message about a current problem we face. If one steps back and views this book from a point of symbolism, keeping in mind the essential theme, it serves as an allegory and commentary on injustices faced by many cultures in today's America.
Book Review: Shows true hypocrisy, but still very exaggerated.
Summary: 3 Stars
Living in California, I sense the extreme hypocrisy amongst many of the state's residents. This is a state with a large population from out of state yet has a tendency to be isolationist at times. A place that votes largely liberal, yet only a few years ago passed the extremely controversial and conservative Prop. 187. A place that is expensive to live, yet relies on low-paid illegal immigrants to shoulder much of the low end jobs. This is what Boyle brings out in this book; a book about two simple couples living on the outskirts of Los Angeles.
Boyle describes a typical yuppie upper-middle class couple who moved to the outskirts to avoid urban living. The typical "White Flight" family. He describes an incident where the man from this couple runs his car into the an illegal immigrant, his exact counterpart. While the white couple has everything and lives a very posh yet uneventful live, the illegal immigrant and his wife exist on the opposite end of the spectrum, living in extreme poverty and hardship. Boyle does a wonderful job of splicing those two different ways of life together to further show the economic and class divide without explicit political pandering. He also manages to show the transformation of well off individual who is open minded to a man who is borderline racist.
While good, the main problem is that the two extremes are overdone. Without going into details, the hardships on the illegal immigrant couple are so increasingly sad and horrendous that it borders on ridiculous and moves to the realm unbelievable. On the other end of the spectrum, the white couple's "problems" are so vain that reading about them is pure drudgery at times. For example, he goes into much detail, pages and pages, about a wall being built. If he toned down the dullness on one end, and the horrors on the other, the credibility and believability would become vastly apparent.
All in all it's a decent book, but could have been much better.