Blue Skies: A Novel,New

Boyles satire has lost none of its edge over the course of a nearly halfcentury literary career . . . [Blue Skies is] an expert blend of suspense, terror and, occasionally, very black humor . . . this fiercely honest writer shows us what he sees and invites his readers to draw their own conclusions.' Wendy Smith, Washington PostFrom bestselling novelist T. C. Boyle, a satirical yet ultimately moving sendup of contemporary American life in the glare of climate change.Boyle has long been one of the most exciting and intelligent storytellers in the United States. Ron Charles, Washington Post Denied a dog, a baby, and even a faithful fianc, Cat suddenly craves a snake: a glistening, writhing creature that can be worn like jewelry, living jewelry to match her black jeans. But when the budding social media star promptly loses the young Burmie she buys from a local pet store, she inadvertently sets in motion a chain of increasingly dire and outrageous events that comes to threaten her very survival.Brilliantly imaginative . . . in a terrifying way (Annie Proulx), Blue Skies follows in the tradition of T. C. Boyles finest novels, combining highoctane plotting with mordant wit and shrewd social commentary. Here Boyle, one of the most inventive voices in contemporary fiction, transports us to waterlogged and heatravaged coastal America, where Cat and her hapless, natureloving familyincluding her ecowarrior parents, Ottilie and Frank; her brother, Cooper, an entomologist; and her fratboyturnedhusband, Toddare struggling to adapt to the new normal, in which onceinalifetime natural disasters happen once a week and drinking seems to be the only way to cope.But theres more than meets the eye to this compulsive family drama. Lurking beneath the banal faade of twentyfirstcentury Californians and Floridians attempting to preserve normalcy in the face of violent weather perturbations is a caricature of materialist American society that doubles as a prophetic warning about our planets future. From pet bees and cricketdependent diets to massive species dieoff and pummeling hurricanes, Blue Skies deftly explores the often volatile relationships between humans and their habitats, in which the only truism seems to be that things always get worse.An ecothriller with teeth, Boyles Blue Skies is at once a tragicomic satire and a prescient novel that captures the absurdity and inexpressible sadness at the heart of everything.