Customer Reviews

The Tortilla Curtain

5 star:		(108)
4 star:		(77)
3 star:		(44)
2 star:		(31)
1 star:		(40)

 

 

Boyle's The Tortillia Curtain differs from other books of his that I have read in that it tackles a serious set of social issues head on. Among the other reviews posted here for this book I see that some have claimed that the book is 'unrealistic' and makes use of every stereotype imaginable. Well, while one wouldn't want to pretend that all Southern Californians of means are shallow conspicuous consumers, nothing in the portrait Boyle creates here rings untrue. There must be thousands of people who fit this image. That being the case, it is important to make the point that he doesn't present either the Yuppie Californian family or the Mexican immagrant family as a symbol. They are real people. They don't stand for anything else. And while the extreme dichotomy posed between the wealth and well being of the one and the poverty and marginal health of the other do serve the purpose of highlighting the issue of the extreme inequities in the distribution of goods and services in this country, Boyle does not suggest a solution. Rather, he is interested in showing us what happens when these extremes come into contact in unexpected circumstances. What he has given us is a story of people in different circumstances responding as they likely would - as their training and experience have prepared them to. If we want to make an allegory of it, I don't think that is what he intended. I think that all he is saying is that extremes of expectation, in conflict, will generate extremes of behavior.

I enjoyed the book very much. Apart from Boyle's considerable skill with words, his characters were vivid and the plot - though heavy on coincidence (hey, it worked for Dickens) - is interesting and keeps the reader focused till the end.

While reading House of Sand and Fog earlier this year, I was reminded of another book to read called The Tortilla Curtain by TC Boyle. Friends of mine who live in Southern California had recommended this book to me for sometime and shortly after I finished the Dubus book, I picked up Tortilla Curtain. Now that I've read both of these books I can't stop thinking about both of them, their stories, the characters or unbeliveable outcomes. And if I were to give House of Sand and Fog a 5 star rating, I would surely give 6 stars to The Tortilla Curtain.

Tortilla Curtain is the phrase used to describe the thin borders between Mexico and the United States which immigrants cross over in their attempt to live better lives. In this "blow you away novel," TC Boyle offers his readers a plot and characters who are not only involved in the world of illegal aliens but whose lives will never be the same. And for many of us it is as if this novel's premise was lifted off the pages of our daily newspapers and one for which there is no easy solution.

Candido along with his wife America are illegal aliens living in the canyons and brush areas of Southern California. When the book opens Candido is hit by a car driven by Delaney a writer for an environmental magazine. Although Candido hurries away from the scene for for fear of being caught and questioned his injuries prevent him from working for the next few days. In eloquent words, the author then describes how America seeks work and is both verbally and physically abused which causes Candido great regrets about crossing the border and bringing America to the US.

At the same time nearby in a prosperous planned community, Delaney lives with his wife Kyra, a real estate broker, and her son. The residents of this community are hounded by intruding coyotes in their backyards as well as suspected illegal aliens who rob their homes. Plans are underway to erect a large fence which should keep out all intruders except that Delaney voices his concerns about the fence wondering if the residents aren't locking themselves into their fancy homes. But as the novel continues the people of this community only become more and more incensed and Delaney's words fall on deaf ears Soon enough, though, and after a series of events, Delaney, begins to feel differently about the fence. Even when he knows the truth, he finally becomes out of control concerning any and all who cross the borders illegally. And then one day Candido and Delaney finally meet up again, in what has to be one of the most gripping and stunning conclusions of any book.

We read this book through chapters told in the alternating voices of Candido and Delaney until their two voices are ultimately linked together as one struggles against his better judgement and the other struggles to maintain his dignity.

This is a powerful and masterful book which describes lives spiraling out of control and should have every reader asking themselves what they would do when faced with similar circumstances.

As is the norm for Boyle, this is a very complex work.

The gist of this novel emerges right from the start. Delaney Mossbacher is driving home to his pristine gated community in Southern California and hits a Mexican immigrant walking along the road. His reaction? Concern that he might have seriously damaged his car. Oh, he does "come to his senses" and check on the man he hit. The man is obviously injured. What does Delaney do? Gives him 20 bucks and leaves.

Ok, so Delaney is just a lousy jerk-a bad guy with no conscience, right? Not exactly, at least from Delaney's point of view. A left wing "naturalist" type, Delaney is the perfect parody of the "Socially and Environmentally" conscious Yuppie urban American. He's the sort with "important" cares. That he has hit and injured a human being gives him but passing concern-that his dog can be killed by wild animals in his own yard is an outrage.

This world view is counter posed against that of the accident victim, Candido and his young wife, illegal immigrants living in the ravine behind the Delaney's gated community. Candido and his wife struggle with how to find even one decent meal a day. Kyra, Delaney's wife, struggles with the escalating emptiness and lack of fulfillment she feels from closing 6 figure commission deals on her sales of multimillion dollar homes. And so it goes.

At heart, this is a book about how people are desperate to connect with one another while systematically shutting themselves away from everyone. The Delaney's spend their lives shutting themselves away behind an array of both actual and metaphorical walls. Candido and his wife are shut away by poverty and fear and racism.

Boyle is a craftsman with words, and he definitely knows how to construct a well-designed story. I appreciate his work but I can't really say I like it. On the one hand, his characters too often strike me as too much a caricature-complex and well developed caricatures, to be sure, but not characters one can empathize with. In this case, neither of the Delaney's amount to what I would call a genuine character, they are both come across caricatures developed to represent a wide swath of American stereotypes rather than as real people. This is sad, as their counter points-Candido and his wife, are just the opposite. They may "represent" an immigrant stereotype, yet are developed a real characters. On the other hand, there seems to me to be something oppressive about Boyle's style-I always feel like I have an anvil on my shoulders when I read his books. I suppose some would interpret it as a sense of "suspense", but it feels different to me, more like you are carrying the weight of all the points he wants to make all throughout the reading experience.

Interestingly, I still come back to Boyle. His books weigh on me, but I can't seem to walk away from him. I may not like them, but I do appreciate them, and they seem to have a power to attract. It's all very odd, yet compelling.

I say give him a try and see what your reaction is.

Q: So what is this book about?

A: Hmm, that's a pretty good question. There are issues of race involved, and racism, but you probably guessed that from the title. Honesty and values are questioned and examined. And national pride is also a going issue. And comparative wealth. But these aren't really what the book is about. It's more about... well, you'll just have to read it.

Q: That sounds like a cop-out. Didn't you read the book yourself?

A: Of course I did. I just finished reading it last night, around suppertime.

Q: Then why can't you give me a rundown of what the book's about?

A: Because it's a complex and sophisticated book. Author T. Coraghessan Boyle creates characters who represent both literal and supra-literal themes, contrasting the extremes of the economic spectrum in Southern California. His use of symbolic language and imagery is on a par with Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner. He consciously makes us think of modern issues in terms that were defined in other eras by writers like Voltaire, Aristotle, Keats, Jefferson, and Rousseau. This is an important and meaningful work. You really ought to read it.

Q: Sounds like the boring "literature" I had to read in high school that didn't even pretend to communicate with me. Is this going to be as dull as those books were?

A: Not hardly. I found it gripping reading. I put off preparing dinner to have time to read this book. I was late to class behind the time I spent reading this book. I missed my bedtime because I didn't want to stop reading this book. There are a lot of painfully dull books out there that we read because we're told we ought to, but not this one. You'll want to spend time reading this book, even as it challenges your assumptions.

Q: But that's not what this book is really about. Can you give me a thumbnail plot summary?

A: Sure. Delaney Mossbacher is a red-haired writer in his forties with liberal leanings and a tendency to become passionate about issues, living in California, though born on the East Coast-notably, this is a description that also applies to Boyle. Cándido Rincón is an illegal immigrant from Mexico, camped with his wife in a grassy creek valley in the middle of L.A.

Each is afflicted with his own worries, and each invests the same weight in his respective worries, though their respective circumstances mean they have very different worries. Delaney frets about the environment, racial parity, crime, and making payments on his house and car. Cándido worries about getting work to buy food, and whether his wife will be able to give birth in a hospital. Both are afflicted by a common seeming curse: everything either one tries to accomplish ultimately fails.

One day Delaney accidentally hits Cándido on the road, leaving the poor immigrant wounded and unable to find work. If Cándido goes to a hospital, the INS will deport him, so he accepts $20 from Delaney and slinks off to heal. All this happens right on page one and the next few pages-Boyle isn't interested in wasting the reader's time with slow set-up, and heads straight for the meat of his story.

From that one accident, the lives of the two men and their families move in tight orbits around each other, though they never discover it. They can't communicate, because they don't share a common language, and they're doomed forever to misunderstand one another. Each thinks the other to be something he isn't, and as they wade through a morass of non-comprehension, leading to a cataclysmic confrontation, both watch everything they thought they knew about themselves and the world around them crumble under the weight of suspicion, ignorance, and doubt.

You really ought to read the book.

Q: But you make it sound like there's even more going on than just the plot. What all is this book trying to tell us?

A: It's about California. The two characters are emblematic of the spirit and nature of the state. Bear in mind, the California of the Beach Boys hasn't existed since about 1974. California is a divided state. Wealthy white people like Delaney get ahead by working and living with a go-go-go drive that leaves them too occupied to enjoy anything they've accomplished. These people are dependent on the working poor like Cándido for cheap, plentiful labor, but they despise these aliens for the very reason they need them-they work tirelessly, cheaply, plentifully, without paying taxes or being regulated.

Q: Is California really like that?

A: By and large. When I was younger I thought the Beach Boys' California must still exist, especially since I didn't notice the kind of life Boyle describes when I was attending high school in San Diego. However, that was over ten years ago. Having gone back as an adult, I have seen that California is a fragmented state, carved up into characterless subdivisions, ruled by glossy high-tech corporations, and consuming more of the natural world than it returns. The success-oriented California culture leaves no room for slacking off, and eats the few remaining pleasure-seekers and beach-bunnies for lunch. And it's fueled by the bulk labor of the inexhaustible supply of illegal immigrants that cross the border every day. It's all there to be read, you really ought to read the book.

Q: But what is the book ABOUT?

A: Everything I've said and more. It's sophisticated literature and it's lunchtime reading. It's brutally honest and it's humane. It sympathizes with the characters even as it's damning them. There's only one thing I can say about it: you really ought to read the book.

I'm a T.C. Boyle fan, in that I've read several of his books and tend to enjoy them enough to read another. Tortilla Curtain is the latest I've read, and I unfortunately enjoyed it the least. Boyle is a fun and interesting storyteller, and I enjoyed the first 100 pages or so, feeling it was fairly typical T.C. Boyle. After another 50 pages or so I came to realize that the theme (White, prosperous Americans "bad," innocent, poor, Mexican illegals "good") was not going to develop further. The rest of the book began to feel like trudging through a muddy swamp. The insights the book offered early on eventually turned into a large piece of rhetorical lumber with which the reader is incessantly beaten over the head. The fun, quirky, insightful potential that initially draws the reader in evaporates quickly and turns into an amazingly overblown, melodramatic lecture. I can't say I've ever noticed Boyle flirting with this in his other works, and for that I'm glad. Otherwise I would never have continued reading his books. My personal favorite being "East is East."

Somewhere between the rocky foothills and deep canyons outside Los Angeles, California exist two separate worlds: one inhibited by American citizens and the other by illegal aliens from south of the border. T.C. Boyle's TORTILLA CURTAIN examines the colliding edges of these two very different worlds through the portrayal of four main characters. Delaney Mossbacher is a strong advocate of the preservation of the environment and species. He resides in a gated community on the top of a canyon away from the uncertainties of the city. Delaney lives with his wife, a power real-estate agent and her 6-year-old son from a previous marriage. Meanwhile down in the canyon below Candido and America Rincon are barely making ends meet while constantly dodging the police and INS. While Candido searches high and low every day for work that pays meager wages and no benefits, pregnant America remains in the canyon impatiently waiting for the comfortable apartment, new clothes, and ample food promised to her by Candido before they married and left their Mexican village.

Although both couples live in near proximity to each other they live completely different standards of living (hence the use of the title, The Tortilla Curtain.) Throughout the course of this novel there are several chance encounters between the two couples. During these chance encounters each person relies exclusively on stereotypical assumptions of the other. They are frequently reminded of the presence of the other, which only results in deepening anger and misunderstanding levels. As time progresses both Delaney and Mossbacher change their assessment of each other, but in a negative fashion. Delaney modifies his liberal assessments of Mexican immigrants when his own personal world and belief system is disturbed. Meanwhile, Candido feels more entitlement to his illegal presence and acts once he withstands multitude negative actions made against him by gringos. Both wish the other would simply disappear.

There is no doubt that there are enough sociopolitical issues abound in THE TORTILLA CURTAIN to make anyone feel uneasy with current political policies. Though I think Boyle succeeds in highlighting both sides of this dire issue, there are instances where I felt he went over the top to achieve his goal (i.e. Candido's constant failure). While I felt that the plot was a little contrived, Boyle's prose is certainly admirable. This book certainly stays with you long after it is put down.

T.C. Boyle's "Tortilla Curtain" is a modern novel with classic topics: racism, hate, tolerance, differences, the belief in god, materialism and ethnical conflicts. What makes the novel interesting in the first place are the two parallel-elapsing worlds which suddenly cross sometimes: Delany and Kyra Mossbachers posh lives in wealth and health and the very opposite, Candido and America Rincons story in garbage, dust and hunger. This is very ironical, because both couples live only miles or even meters away from each other. Therefore the same natural disasters disturb them and change their lives, and that's one of Tortilla Curtain's main meanings: nature and god treat and threaten all humans or all beings equally. The novel is very thrilling and dazzling until the end and provides irony, melancoly, humor and a taste of hard reality except of the dramatical ending. I liked the novel and I think it might be important to use the book as standard literature in schools of industrial nations - it might change people's minds...

Assuming you haven't read this book and are actually scanning the reviews to figure out whether you should, I've devised a brief set of questions which may help.

1.) Have you ever traveled on your own in a Third World country?
2.) Did you enjoy the film "El Norte?"
3.) Do vast disparities between wealth and poverty disturb you?
4.) Are you politically left-leaning?
5.) Is social commentary in the form of an outrageous tragicomedy something that would interest you?

Each "yes" answer is worth one star.

3 stars = worth a try
4 stars = a strong buy
5 stars = what, are you high? It's five stars!

As for some of the negative reviews I've read in these pages, I must strongly disagree with certain statements. For instance, one reviewer says the characters are "stereotypes." Hardly. I've spent most of my life in So Cal. In twenty minutes I could take you on a tour that would show you nearly everything that appears in "Tortilla Curtain," from the guys hanging around in front of the mega-hardware store, desperately hoping for some day work, to the obnoxious mini-mansions sprouting in the hills, to the plywood shanties where migrants live without running water or electricity, to the cell-phone wielding suburbanites tailgating each other down the freeway at 80 M.P.H. Everything else, you can read in the newspaper several times a week. It's all real, folks.

I grew up 20 minutes from the Mexican border. I knew people like Candido and America, good, honest, hard-working folks who only wanted a chance to live and prosper, who spent each waking moment dreading the appearance of La Migra. TC Boyle has characterized these people beautifully. They're not angels, and he nailed the bad elements, the punks and chucos, just as thoroughly as he brought his protagonists to life on the page. If people think this book DOESN'T deal with the reality of life in Southern California...and Northern California, and Arizona, and Texas, and New Mexico, and YES, Eastern Washington, anywhere where the "haves" need the services and cheap back-breaking labor of the "have-nots"...then you need to get out more and leave the blinders at home!

TC sets the action early and he is relentless. The Rashoman-style serves him well, although he was brutal in his descriptions of Delaney and Kyra and their neighbors...the quintessential liberal do-gooders in their SUV's and mammoth gated communities eating up the very "wildness" they glorify while sipping Chardonnay and munching smoked sturgeon. People who think if they belong to Sierra Club and drop a few coins in the Salvation Army bucket at Christmas, they've done their part.

This book does an excellent job of throwing a spotlight on the racial discord, which unfortunately grows by leaps and bounds daily, particularly in our post-911 hysteria. What was true in 1995 has only intensified in 2004, growing to include irrational fear towards anyone "different" from the Euro-descended, workaholic, Christian villagers. Listen to the community fathers and mothers fret about homeless tent cities being moved to their 'hoods. It's a wonder we don't have torches descending on the churchyards harboring these supposed "sex perverts" and "thieves"...guilty by way of bad luck.

Read this book. Get a look at the other side of your office cleaning lady's life, the reality of that small dark man with the leaf blower or stacking the shelves in your local Wal-Mart. You owe to yourself.

I picked up this book because most of the reviews on here seemed to be positive. I am the daughter of Mexican immigrant parents that moved here some 24 years ago and therefore have a certain affinity for books written about the immigrant struggle. I was born and raised in Los Angeles and am a 22 year old, college educated (University of Miami alum) woman with a degree in English Literature so I have read my share of books.
This novel seemed interesting because I had yet to read a book about the immigrant struggle with the interjected perspective of upper-class, white people. I thought this book would be humorous, tragic and uplifting all at the same time --- boy was I wrong! It started off interestingly enough and was able to capture my attention. As I kept reading, however I found that the white couple were increasingly annoying and the Mexican couple were completely hopeless. The only reason I kept reading was to find out what kind of happy ending the Mexican couple would have but it never came! I didn't expect them to end up living in a 3-bedroom mansion in Beverly Hills, but my lord!! They couldn't catch a break! I know there are a lot of people out there that have tragic lives once they move to the U.S. but this was overdone and the series of events were truly unbelievable. Just when you thought something good was coming for them, something terrible happened. Towards the end it became extremely predictable and dull. Still, I kept reading with the hope that the last few pages would contain some light and of course, I was dead wrong again! Now, I don't read books to become severely depressed about things but I understand that sometimes it is necessary to show the gravity of the situation. However, the sad (VERY VERY sad) events that take place in the Mexican couple's life, teaches nothing. There is no point to it. It makes the anti-immigrant statement that maybe Mexicans should just stay in Mexico because it is inevitably impossible for them to make anything of themselves in the U.S. It makes Mexicans seem stupid for moving to "el Norte" and portrays this poor couple as a nuisance.
I could write a much longer review of this book but I have come to the point where if I kept writing I would want to include specifics and I don't want to spoil the reading experience for anybody who has yet to read this novel. Although I implore you not to do so. It is a waste of time. But if you REALLY want to read a novel that has heart and portrays the immigrant struggle in a way that few novelists have ever been able to acheive, pick up Victor Villasenor's "Rain of Gold". It is THE most touching novel in this genre that I have ever read. Truly beautiful.

This was the first T.C. Boyle book I have read and will probably be the last.