A collection of sixteens stories take you into the world of the very creative T. C Boyle. And almost every story is a hit.
Tom Coraghessan Boyle, born 1948 in New York, teaches creative writing at the university of Southern California. And creative is he. Until now he has published twelve novels and by far more short-stories, which have been published for example in Playboy, Esquiere and The New Yorker. For his work Boyle has been awarded with many prizes, like the PEN/Faulkner prize for "World' s End."
"After the plague", is a collection of sixteen short-stories, which give you an impression of his art. The stories are about love, what else? Men, who invite possible brides to a remote region in Alaska, a man who falls deeply into love with a woman, and digs a house with sixteen rooms under the earth's surface, another man who cannot get enough of watching girls via webcam and a man who cannot stop to read a book, even when something terrible happens. And no the protagonists are not always men.
In almost exactly twenty pages Boyle lets you slip into different characters, with plots who get a nice unexpected twist in the end. The stories are sometimes amusing, like "She wasn't soft", about a girl who is an athlet, but her boyfriend is more into alcohol. On the day of her great event, where she tries to beat her big rival, her boyfriend wants to show his true love for her, and invents a plan, but fails completely. Or the story about two sisters, who like their world to be as simple as possible. Everything must be either black or white, so Mexican people are out of the question. Other stories are sad and tragical, like "Killing Babies", about a man who works for his brother in an obstetrical clinic. Everyday he sees the protesters outside the clinc with signs like: "Baby-Killers." Then one day he falls in love with a girl, who comes to the clinic, and he has the need to save her from all the protesting zombies. The story titled "The love of my life", is about two teenagers who are deeply in love, until the day she gets pregnant. Now the baby is a thing that brings her love into peril, they are very desperate and try to get rid of it.
The story "My widow", is somehow different from the other stories. It tells about a woman, but from the perspective of the former husband, One never knows what this might be good for. Maybe Boyle wants to show his creativeness. But there is no need to. "To die, to be murdered, to be robbed...that was the stuff...she couldn't get enough of it. "And one cannot get enough of reading the stories in "After the plague."
