Boyle, T.C. A Friend of the Earth ISBN 13: 9780141002057

A Friend of the Earth - Softcover

9780141002057: A Friend of the Earth
View all copies of this ISBN edition:
 
 
One of LitHub’s "365 Books to Start Your Climate Change Library"
 
Originally published in 2000, T. C. Boyle’s prescient novel about global warming and ecological collapse


It is the year 2025. Global warming is a reality. The biosphere has collapsed and most mammals—not to mention fish, birds, and frogs—are extinct. Tyrone Tierwater is eking out a bleak living in southern California, managing a pos star's private menagerie that "only a mother could love"—scruffy hyenas, jackals, warthogs, and three down-at-the-mouth lions.

It wasn't always like this for Ty. Once he was a passionate environmentalist, so committed to saving the earth that he became an eco-terrorist and, ultimately, a convicted felon. as a member of the radical group Earth Forever!, he unwittingly endangered both his daughter Sierra and his wife Andrea. Now, just when he's trying to survive in a world torn by obdurate storms and winnowing drought, Andrea comes back into his life. 

T. C. Boyle's eighth novel blends idealism and satire in a story that addresses the ultimate questions of human love and the survival of the species.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

Review:
If, as we are frequently cautioned, ecological collapse is imminent, the future might someday resemble T.C. Boyle's vision of Southern California, circa 2025: strafing wind, extortionate heat, vast species extinction, and a ramshackle, dispirited populace. A more bleak backdrop--part Blade Runner, part Silent Spring--for his eighth novel is difficult to imagine. But the ever-mischievous, ever-inventive Boyle is all too willing to disoblige; and so, in extended homage to early Vonnegut, his Sierra Club nightmare is rendered, well, comically. Toss in streaks of unabashed sentimentality, a scattershot satire, and several signature narrative ambushes, and A Friend of the Earth only further embellishes the already prodigious Boyle reputation.

During the 1980s and '90s, Ty Tierwater had exchanged a sedately acquisitive existence--"the slow-rolling glacier of my old life, my criminal life, the life I led before I became a friend of the earth"--for a fairly ambivalent position on the front lines of an ecoterrorist posse called Earth Forever! The only complication is his dual penchant for empathy and ineptitude, exacerbated by a frustration that swells with accumulating incitements. After his daughter is taken from him, and his second wife, Andrea, becomes more committed to the cause than to their marriage, Ty finds solace in blind destruction. He serves his almost predictable terms in jail; he endures the eventual death--and martyrdom--of his activist daughter, Sierra. At 75, and a quarter of the way into the dismal and decayed 21st century, he unaccountably finds himself tending an eccentric rock star's private mini-zoo of ragged animals and wryly lamenting the collapse of his race. And then Andrea resurfaces--along with his long-fallow faith in love.

Old Testament digression stalks Ty throughout A Friend of the Earth, from a publicity-stunt-cum-Edenic-retreat during his heady Earth Forever! days to a chaotic menagerie roundup amidst flooding rainfall. Boyle's future, however, is less apocalyptic than resigned, more drearily pragmatic than angst-ridden. It's a world Ty ultimately finds untenable: a constricted diversity, ecological or ideological, proves stultifying, a fact he only dimly recognized while awash in his earlier radicalism. "To be a friend of the earth," he avers in retrospect, "you have to be an enemy of the people." Boyle's spirited tale sustains the brashness of Ty's convictions. --Ben Guterson

From the Publisher:
9 1.5-hour cassettes

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.

  • PublisherPenguin Publishing Group
  • Publication date2001
  • ISBN 10 0141002050
  • ISBN 13 9780141002057
  • BindingPaperback
  • Number of pages349
  • Rating

Other Popular Editions of the Same Title

9781526608918: A Friend of the Earth

Featured Edition

ISBN 10:  ISBN 13:  9781526608918
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019
Softcover

  • 9780670891771: A Friend of the Earth

    The Vi..., 2000
    Hardcover

  • 9780747553465: A Friend of the Earth

    Blooms..., 2001
    Softcover

  • 9780747552512: A Friend of the Earth

    Viking..., 2000
    Softcover

  • 9780747547532: A Friend of the Earth

    Blooms..., 2000
    Hardcover

Top Search Results from the AbeBooks Marketplace

Stock Image

Boyle, T.C.
Published by Penguin Publishing Group (2001)
ISBN 10: 0141002050 ISBN 13: 9780141002057
New Paperback Quantity: 1
Seller:
Wizard Books
(Long Beach, CA, U.S.A.)

Book Description Paperback. Condition: new. New. Seller Inventory # Wizard0141002050

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
US$ 6.04
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: US$ 3.50
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Boyle, T.C.
Published by Penguin Books (2000)
ISBN 10: 0141002050 ISBN 13: 9780141002057
New Paperback Quantity: > 20
Seller:
BookOutlet
(Thorold, ON, Canada)

Book Description Paperback. Condition: New. Paperback. Publisher overstock, may contain remainder mark on edge. Seller Inventory # 9780141002057B

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
US$ 7.01
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: US$ 4.25
From Canada to U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Boyle, T.C.
Published by Penguin Publishing Group (2001)
ISBN 10: 0141002050 ISBN 13: 9780141002057
New Paperback Quantity: 1
Seller:
GoldBooks
(Austin, TX, U.S.A.)

Book Description Paperback. Condition: new. New Copy. Customer Service Guaranteed. Seller Inventory # think0141002050

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
US$ 9.00
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: US$ 4.25
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Boyle, T.C.
Published by Penguin Publishing Group (2001)
ISBN 10: 0141002050 ISBN 13: 9780141002057
New paperback Quantity: 14
Seller:
Textbooks_Source
(Columbia, MO, U.S.A.)

Book Description paperback. Condition: New. 60595th. Ships in a BOX from Central Missouri! UPS shipping for most packages, (Priority Mail for AK/HI/APO/PO Boxes). Seller Inventory # 000513021N

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
US$ 13.53
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: US$ 3.99
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Seller Image

Boyle, T. Coraghessan
Published by Penguin Publishing Group (2001)
ISBN 10: 0141002050 ISBN 13: 9780141002057
New Softcover Quantity: 5
Seller:
GreatBookPrices
(Columbia, MD, U.S.A.)

Book Description Condition: New. Seller Inventory # 490367-n

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
US$ 15.48
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: US$ 2.64
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

T.C. Boyle
Published by Penguin Books (2001)
ISBN 10: 0141002050 ISBN 13: 9780141002057
New Paperback Quantity: 1
Seller:
Ergodebooks
(Houston, TX, U.S.A.)

Book Description Paperback. Condition: New. Seller Inventory # DADAX0141002050

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
US$ 18.21
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: FREE
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Seller Image

Boyle, T. C.
Published by Penguin Books 9/1/2001 (2001)
ISBN 10: 0141002050 ISBN 13: 9780141002057
New Paperback or Softback Quantity: 5
Seller:
BargainBookStores
(Grand Rapids, MI, U.S.A.)

Book Description Paperback or Softback. Condition: New. A Friend of the Earth 0.6. Book. Seller Inventory # BBS-9780141002057

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
US$ 20.24
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: FREE
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Boyle, T.C.
Published by Penguin Books (2001)
ISBN 10: 0141002050 ISBN 13: 9780141002057
New Softcover Quantity: 1
Seller:
Front Cover Books
(Denver, CO, U.S.A.)

Book Description Condition: new. Seller Inventory # FrontCover0141002050

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
US$ 16.52
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: US$ 4.30
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

T.C. Boyle
Published by Penguin Books (2001)
ISBN 10: 0141002050 ISBN 13: 9780141002057
New Softcover Quantity: 1
Seller:
Books Puddle
(New York, NY, U.S.A.)

Book Description Condition: New. pp. 368. Seller Inventory # 26660964

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
US$ 17.60
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: US$ 3.99
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds
Stock Image

Boyle, T.C.
Published by Penguin Publishing Group (2001)
ISBN 10: 0141002050 ISBN 13: 9780141002057
New Softcover Quantity: 1
Seller:
Books Unplugged
(Amherst, NY, U.S.A.)

Book Description Condition: New. Buy with confidence! Book is in new, never-used condition. Seller Inventory # bk0141002050xvz189zvxnew

More information about this seller | Contact seller

Buy New
US$ 22.00
Convert currency

Add to Basket

Shipping: FREE
Within U.S.A.
Destination, rates & speeds

There are more copies of this book

View all search results for this book