Tooth and Claw [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

Boyle's imagination is protean, and his prose transporting. The author of 10 potent novels and counting, Boyle is also a virtuoso short story writer, and he has never been more enrapturing than in his seventh collection of shrewd and comic tales. He orchestrates suspenseful, ludicrous, and wrenching predicaments, and his evocation of visceral detail, great gift for supple social commentary, and ability to occupy the psyches of his perplexed male characters are extraordinary. As the title suggests, Boyle focuses on nature, long the central concern in his work, specifically the conflict between civilization and wildness. Even as humankind forces other species into extinction, we remain at the mercy of nature. So how does this struggle for survival play out in Boyle's hectic cosmos? In the title story, a hapless guy wins a serval, a wildcat from Africa, in a bar bet, and it's hard to tell who is more miserable cooped up in a crummy apartment, man or beast. In "Dogology," a woman literally goes to the dogs in Connecticut, while in India a reverend attempts to reclaim two young girls raised by a wolf. In other tales, a couple is stranded in a blizzard, nature wreaks havoc on a planned community in Florida, and the threat of earth-smashing meteors pales in comparison to the dangers teenagers court. Boyle's visions of our perverse attempts to defy and deny nature are darkly humorous and wisely trenchant, brilliantly highlighting our unlikely, yet, so far, effective survival instincts: hubris and obliviousness. Donna Seaman
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'Boyle, a virtuoso craftsman, is one of the reasons readers love short stories inside Tooth and Claw are Boyle's trademark taut writing, immediate intimacy, vivid language' E. Annie Proulx, Washington Post 'One of the most intelligent and well-respected writers of his generation, continually flexing a literary muscle most writers don't even know they have' The Times 'That he makes his characters' predicament not just compelling but often exuberantly amusing is a tribute to his talent and proof of John Cheever's claim that good prose can cure anything, including the common cold' Los Angeles Times 'Whether Boyle is breaking your heart or making you laugh, you just don't care because he is so darned good at it Boyle has the voice to make you smile, make you care and make you hate yourself in the morning for being taken in by such a smooth storyteller' San Francisco Chronicle

This new collection of short stories from T. C. Boyle finds him at his mercurial best. Inventive, wickedly funny, sometimes disturbing, these are stories about drop-outs, deadbeats and kooks. Take the man who shares his apartment with a wildcat won in a drunken bet; the drive-time shock jock hallucinating from sleep deprivation for a publicity stunt; the suburban woman who joins a pack of dogs, eating rabbits and baying at the moon. With a unique deftness of touch and a keen eye for the telling detail, Boyle has mapped the strange underworld of America.

This new collection of short stories from T. C. Boyle finds him at his mercurial best. Inventive, wickedly funny, sometimes disturbing, these are stories about drop-outs, deadbeats and kooks. Take the man who shares his apartment with a wildcat won in a drunken bet; the drive-time shock jock hallucinating from sleep deprivation for a publicity stunt; the suburban woman who joins a pack of dogs, eating rabbits and baying at the moon. With a unique deftness of touch and a keen eye for the telling detail, Boyle has mapped the strange underworld of America.

T. C. Boyle, geb. 1948 in Peekskill, New York im Hudson Valley, war Lehrer an der dortigen High-School und publizierte während dieser Zeit seine ersten Kurzgeschichten. Heute lebt er in Kalifornien und unterrichtet an der University of Southern California in Los Angeles Creative Writing.