T.C. Boyle is the author of fourteen novels and nine short story collections and is a member of the Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives near Santa Barbara, California.
Praise for San Miguel
“Mesmerizing and elegiac…the star of the book is the island
itself, San Miguel, in all its glorious barrenness…the island is
entirely cut off from civilization for weeks or months at a
time. Boyle skillfully captures that tension-filled quietude
in the pared-down, mundane details of clearing, cooking, caring for
livestock and enduring the tedium of unchanging days…it is a brave
stylistic choice that pays off, allowing the reader a visceral
experience of what life was like at that time.” —Tatjana Soli, The
New York Times Book
Review
“An absorbing work of historical fiction based on the lives of two
real families who resided on San Miguel island in the 19th and 20th
centuries…the intensity of Boyle’s narrative never lets it flag…San
Miguel lures you away by yourself, off to a quiet, lonely place,
and makes you think about how lives play out and then pass across
the natural world.” —Ron Charles, The Washington
Post
“A saga of women, three women brought to the island by men…Boyle
has carved out a beautiful, damp, atmospheric novel, sharp and
exacting…[his] spirited novels are a reckoning with consequence
laced with humor, insight, and pathos.” —Terry Tempest
Williams, The San Francisco
Chronicle
“Although his sentences are vivid and vigorous, and his
observations are, as always, uncannily precise, the reader is aware
not so much of the writer as of the three stalwart women whose rich
stories he tells.” —The
Atlantic
“Throughout his career, Boyle has shown a fascination with remote,
forgotten places as a kind of stage where various shadings of the
American character are revealed…As always, he fills his pages with
wonderfully precise character studies and lush descriptions of the
physical landscape.” —Hector Tobar, The Los Angeles
Times
“While the prose remains as exuberant and biting as ever, Boyle has
stripped away every trace of his landmark irony to stunning
effect…he never suggests that [the Lesters] – or any of these
people – deserved their fate. In the past, Boyle has moved
characters around like puppets to score satirical points. In
San Miguel, he sets them free.” —Jennifer Reese, National Public
Radio
“A book about the fallacy of more, of ownership, of second
starts…Boyle is one of the most stylish, electric writers
around. Here, though, he puts away the razzle-dazzle of his
tool kit to write his way into the heart and mind of a woman with
diminishing horizons.” —John Freeman, The Minneapolis Star
Tribune
“The story of two families who lived on the windiest and wildest of
the Channel Islands…the layering of these isolated lives, the
archeology of human habitation, the different responses to
self-sufficiency make this one of the most satisfying novels in
Boyle’s canon.” —Susan Salter Reynolds, Los Angeles
Magazine
“In T.C. Boyle’s San Miguel, two strong women generations apart are
seduced and mistreated by the same powerful entity – not a man but
a starkly beautiful, barely inhabited island off the California
coast…Boyle portrays the heartbreaking toll San Miguel takes on
these couples in a novel as beguiling as the island itself.” —O The
Oprah Magazine
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