Without a Hero: Stories

Fifteen darkly satirical stories by the PEN/Faulkner Award-winning author of If the River Was Whiskey feature a couple in search of the last toads on earth, and a real-estate wonder boy on safari. 50,000 first printing. $50,000 ad/promo. BOMC Main. Tour.

Most effective of the 16 technically ingenious and rudely funny, satirical stories in Boyle's fourth collection are the sketches of disaffected individuals who take refuge in hermetic surroundings, self-help programs, political causes and conspicuous consumption to hold at bay the banal world of convention and compromise. In "Big Game," Bernard Puff, impressario of Puff's African Game Ranch in Bakersfield, Calif., peddles a simulacrum of the African bush. His carefully nurtured fantasy world is punctured by the arrival of a cynical young real estate mogul who detects "every crack in the plaster," and whose rapacious hunting leads to a grisly twist of fate when the animals revolt on the veldt. In "Filthy with Things," a pathological couple whose home is sinking under the weight of their "collectibles" enlists the services of an evangelical professional organizer who banishes them to a "nonacquisitive environment" while she takes inventory of their astounding clutter ("three hundred and nine bookends, forty-seven rocking chairs and over two thousand plates, cups and saucers"). Other poignant tales tell of an ephemeral romance between a Russian and an American, the introduction of anti-drug rhetoric in a suburban grade school and the experience of growing up in postwar suburbia, a world Boyle regards with anxiety, nostalgia and a properly grim sense of humor.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Boyle's fourth story collection follows his highly successful novel, The Road to Wellville (1993), which will be released this summer or fall as a movie starring Anthony Hopkins. Each of these 15 stories is sharply done, brightly worded, and edged with black humor. A take-off on Hemingway's ``A Natural History of the Dead'' called ``The 100 Faces of Death, Vol. V'' is a grisly compilation of odd ways to die. The title story may be the best in that it has the book's most memorable character, a Russian immigrant woman who takes advantage of the wimpy California narrator, indulges in shopper's paradise and long-distance calls, but, ultimately, yearns for a lover ``to die for.'' Perhaps the funniest is ``Filthy with Things,'' which tells of a wife and her husband who cannot move about their house because it's so full of collectibles--so much so that a professional organizer, or ``specialist in aggregation disorders,'' must be called in to straighten out the impossibly crammed house, porch, and lawn. ``Big Game'' limns a fake African hunting ground located outside Bakersfield, California, where the stupidly wealthy can shoot zebras and lions. In ``Carnal Knowledge'' the foolish narrator is suckered by a beautiful ecoterrorist into liberating a turkey farm just before Thanksgiving. ``Acts of God'' depicts an aged, fairly recently married and put-upon retiree whose harridan wife gets hit by a well-deserved tropical hurricane. And so they go. As magazine fiction, a sheaf of amusing, smartly crafted tales, but none of these stories has the crushing moment of wisdom that comes from the writer's ribs and sticks for life. Irony is not enough. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

If he wants to, Boyle can summon the angst for your standard realistic novel. In this collection's title story, for example, he tells of a newly divorced fellow who inadvertently becomes the host of a young Russian woman who is awestruck by the bounty of America; our distinctly unheroic narrator won't marry her and thus forces her into prostitution. Boyle draws from this premise an indictment of capitalism as well as two engaging character studies. His mockery is at the center of things elsewhere, however, in stories that are less psychological studies than satirical conceits, such as "Big Game." Set on a hunting preserve near Bakersfield, it's a send-up of Green Hills of Africa, complete with Boyle's deadpan gun lore and a decrepit but still deadly charging elephant. "Hopes Rise" features two frazzled, precious, altogether contemporary characters, or caricatures. The story seems to lament the universal death of frogs and impending ecological disaster but, in the end, comments instead on the separation from nature that urban lifestyles entail. Perhaps Boyle's most arch effort is the slight "Filthy with Things," about people so inundated with possessions they much enter a recovery program. Boyle's fabulist tendencies are much restrained here; not every story is remarkable, but at his best he reminds you of Evelyn Waugh. Of interest, too, because of next fall's movie from Boyle's novel, The Road to Wellville. John Mort

In the title story of Boyle's fourth collection of short fiction, a Southern California swinger hopes to impress a beautiful Russian immigrant with a taste of the good life, only to find himself outclassed by her mastery of consumer culture. In "Filthy with Things," a yuppie couple is forced to seek professional help for an "aggregation disorder" that has turned their suburban home into a warehouse of antiques and collectibles. The narrator of "Beat," another wonderful tale, recalls drinking Mogen David wine and listening to Bing Crosby records with Kerouac and Memere one Christmas in the 1950s. Boyle's unique brand of satire avoids the moral indignation that often characterizes the genre. Here, humans are the hapless dupes of their own possessions. An upcoming film version of Boyle's novel The Road to Wellville ( LJ 3/15/93) should create a demand for this writer's work. Recommended for most fiction collections.
- Edward B. St. John, Loyola Law Sch. Lib., Los Angeles
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.