The case I cited, so he claimed, had been superseded by a more recent case and the weight thrown back on the parents’ side, who had the absolute right to evict anybody from their own domicile, and in respect to that and his own determination in the case before him, he was finding against me and giving me forty-eight hours to vacate or face forcible eviction at the hands of the county sheriff who – and here he looked me right in the eye – really had better things to do. He set down his glasses, looked first to my parents, then to me, and pronounced his verdict. The narrative switches back and forth from son to mother, and during the son’s turn he explains the court’s ruling:īut the judge was the judge and I was a minute speck on his docket, a blot, a nuisance, nothing. The kid is an entitled millennial, so spoiled, self-absorbed, and lazy that you just want to punch him in the face, while the mother is so completely codependent that you want to slap her for being such an easy mark. Both characters are deeply flawed, a Boyle specialty. This is where the fun starts because he countersues on the basis that it was her fault that he was even born and thus forced to endure the hardships of life.
Disgusted by his lack of contribution, his refusal to recognize his own child, her one and only grandchild, she sees no other option than to have him legally evicted. Take for example, The Shape of a Teardrop, where the narrators are a middle-aged woman and her 31-year-old son who lives at home and has elevated mooching to an art form. Possessing the investigative instincts of a homicide detective, Boyle so believably inhabits the psyches of his characters that you either commiserate with them or come to hate them.
Boyle still maintains his place as America’s grand poobah of literary fiction, particularly displaying his mastery in the short story genre and this most recent collection of 13 tightly crafted slices of life intermixed with occasional forays into his beloved magical realism prove that he is still at the top of his game. Still hammering away at the keyboard at age 74, T.C. Publisher: Ecco and Harper Collins, New York Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Pinterest Email
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