Rate this book

When The Killing's Done (2011)

by T.C. Boyle(Favorite Author)

3.57 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

0670022322 (ISBN13: 9780670022328)

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

Viking Adult

review 1: I really enjoy TC Boyle in general. I had a hard time with rating this book. It's uncomfortable, and it it probably supposed to be. None of the characters are that likeable, the avid animal lover is a jerk and refuses to see gray areas of life. The environmentalist park official is not really likeable either. Actually nobody is, almost nobody in the book is likeable.Perhaps that's the point. The damage our species has done to this particular land is difficult to parse out from the changes that might have occurred by chance due to a strong storm or random event. Do we get to decide that the non-native species that were introduced have less a right to life than the original species?Taking a hard line on this topic is doomed to failure, there is always a good argument against... more your view, it's simply not black and white while the characters Boyle creates are. So uncomfortable to read but likely because it needs to be.
review 2: The late Bobby Charles (nee Robert Guidry) wrote a song called "(I Don't Know Why) But I Do." If you know the song better by Clarence "Frogman" Henry, no big deal. But that song expresses perfectly my regard for TC Boyle. Now in my younger days, if I met Boyle in a bar, I am sure we would end up fighting –and I am pretty sure I’d put the little fucker down. That he teaches at USC is a further fantasy of “who do you think your looking at, Willowboy?” But as irritating as he dresses and looks, he writes a complete book. I like the subject matter of his works. Like Edna Ferber, you never know where he is going to strike next. I mean Mungo Park? Come on, Mungo Park? Yep. Water Music. My friend Greggy D –who is not a rapper but a reaper—thinks his best is World’s End. I like his later works such as The Road to Wellville which explores America’s fascination with fucking up our food and eating habits. He does a good job with the “immigrant problem” with The Tortilla Curtain. I loved Drop City, which to my mind is the best exploration of all of that Tim Leary/commune/almost cut my hair explosion that almost ruined us and alternately almost saved us. His The Inner Circle is a fine exploration of Kinsey and the sex institute at the University of Indiana.Last year, more or less, he took on Frank Lloyd Wright, architecture, and sex and men and women –again. He does sex real good. You don’t feel that –as my wife says about Michael Chabon—he inserts the sex on page 162 in all of his novels. But he does write about things that matter –and in words that must said, and very precise words I must admit. I love his precision. I love his plots. I can see his characters. I may not always like them –in fact, I seldom like his characters, but they are keenly drawn.When the Killing's Done is the thirteenth (!) novel of TC. (I refuse to use his scharwmy middle name.) As in all of his works, he takes a very interesting theme, where does our food come from and why are we the way we are and plops that squarely in the middle of an ecological mess that is the Channel Islands. He sets much of the action in one of the cutest of American towns, Montecito. (This is not Boyle’s first excursion into the environs of Santa Barabara. His Riven Rock is a fascinating exploration of wealth, sex, psychiatry framed around Stanley McCormick, youngest son of Cyrus McCormick. His antithetical character Dave La Joy in When the Killing's Done is one of the most despicable people in fiction. He is the love child of ménage a trios of Joe Christmas, Gordon Gecko and Milo Minderbinder. First, he is a white man who wears dreadlocks –and that in itself is enough to condemn him to the ninth circle of Hell. Second, he sells upscale stereo componest to Santa Barabarians. (Why do I think of the poem “Incident” by Countee Cullen?) Third, he is one of those who love animals but hate mankind. He has not whit of humanity in his skinty soul. And he is 100% sure of his rightness as he fights over the concept of “nature.”We should all be aware that not all of nature is natural. Boyle’s characters kill at will creatures that do not fit their profiles of natureness. Let’s restore the Channel Islands to what they were before man came along. Well, what were they? What is the value of the island rat, the feral pig? The life of the college student who dies trying to free the animals? (Ironically, the water also strips this character naked but in doing so rapes and kills her --not baptizing her into the irony of The Re-introduced.) He makes the Channel Island live as characters and gives each a history, a personality.He handles a myriad of characters who like most of us have too many flaws and not enough heroics. I loved his first major character, Beverly Boyd, who in an Edenic and dystopian state is thrown naked onto the rocks of nearly barren Anacapa Island to start the thrust of the book and its strange convoy of misfitted characters. The least successful to me was the slightly Helen Reddyish granddaughter Alma Boyd Takesue who takes up a bit too much of the action. She is the only character who is truly a caricature, although the caricatures are readily available, just like costumes waiting in the closet for any of the characters to accept. Her boy friend’s cutting and running after her pregnancy is announced is truly freeing to the breath. Well done. (I like how he sneaks in and takes all of his things quietly away while she is gone off saving the environment.)Boyle makes us ask about what is right and wrong about killing animals and displacing them and encouraging them and replacing them and valuing some more than others. He also show us the very human side of the war between the PETA’s and EATAS. For example Dave La Joy tries to introduce raccoons and rattle snakes to the islands as multi last names Alma Boyd Takesue is intent on exterminating the islands’ rats and feral pigs and one species of eagles while introducing another species of eagles. I feel like Pete Puma and these people are Bugs Bunny: "But I don't want no TEA! It gives me a HEADACHE!" Although the final flow of the plotting is forced, but no more so than Shakespeare, I loved the book over-all. And I don’t know why. Boyle is not quite literary art and not quite popular art. He writes good books, which are well crafted and make our lives a lot better for his intricate and maze like thoughts and actions, making us ask some very nasty questions. And thank you for not giving us pat answers. Sweet.What do we learn, for we should learn something:If the red slayer think he slays, Or if the slain think he is slain, They know not well the subtle ways I keep, and pass, and turn again.And…Thank you sir, may I have another. A note about Bobby Charles: I saw him in a rock and roll review when I was a mere shallow lad of fifteen or so. He had composed the anthem “See You Later, Alligator,” popularized by Bill Hailey and the Comets. I didn’t think too much of him since he was white and I was into the “real” music which had to be black for me to enjoy it. He also featured a spit curl just like Bill H. I later realized how good Charles really was in the New Orleans tradition of Fats and Dr. John. Bobby joined Dr. John in a number, "Down South in New Orleans,” for Martin C. Scorsese’s paean to the Band, “The Last Waltz.” But Marty did not film the sequence. Bobby can be seen in the final group number if you look carefully. Clarence Frogman Henry had the big hit with "(I Don't Know Why) But I Do." Clarence is better known for “I Ain’t Got No Home,” which was recorded by the Country Gentlemen and the late John Duffey and Charlie Waller. Everybody –rest in peace. less

Download links for: When the Killing's Done

Advertising