T. C. Boyle poses difficult questions that he knows will involve answers that are entertaining and thought-provoking—but never clear. He’s an ardent researcher and an intuitive writer. He lives in the spectrum between the two and knows better than most that man and nature are a continuum. Where one ends and the other begins depends on who’s asking the question, and that’s where Boyle starts having fun. His new novel, When the Killing’s Done, is a powerful, bleakly humorous adventure that pits Alma Boyd Takesue, a National Park Service biologist, against Dave LaJoy, an animal rights activist.
Alma is fighting to preserve the natural species on the California Channel Islands by killing off the invasive rats and pigs introduced by humans; Dave is determined to preserve the lives of all animals, natural or invasive. They’re both fighting for the same utopia, but they have rather different ideas as to how that perfect society might work. Getting there involves a fair amount of dirty tricks and escalating violence.
But Boyle’s poetic evocation of destructive storms off our coast is a powerful reminder that the earth itself is capable of violence. The hairless apes cowering in flimsy shelters can offer only a pale imitation. Boyle takes us into the minds and the lives of those apes, and the fun comes when we realize we’re looking in the mirror. We’re the ultimate invasive species.
Boyle is just as fun in person; he’s every bit as darkly hilarious and entertaining as his novels. He’s wicked and smart, a force of nature who revels in the humor he finds by embracing opposing points of view. He’ll make you think, make you laugh and then, When the Killing’s Done, make you wonder why what you thought made you laugh.
TC BOYLE reads from ‘When the Killing’s Done’ Monday, March 7 at 7:30pm at Capitola Book Café, 1475 41st Ave., Capitola. Free.
