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Wild Child and Other Stories

3.69 of 5 stars 3.69 · rating details · 861 ratings · 149 reviews

A superb new collection from "a writer who can take you anywhere" (The New York Times)

In the title story of this rich new collection, T.C. Boyle has created so vivid and original a retelling of the story of Victor, the feral boy who was captured running naked through the forests of Napoleonic France, that it becomes not just new but definitive: yes, this is how it must...more

Hardcover, 304 pages

Published January 21st 2010 by Viking Adult (first published December 22nd 2009)

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May 13, 2013 Sridhar rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: short-stories, fiction, read2013

Until I read T C Boyle, I don't think I had encountered another fiction writer who takes a sensitive consciousness of nature, ecology, and environment, and blends it intricately with an understanding of people and of humanity. His stories are well written, well told, too (as I heard him read 'The Lie', a story in this book). As a fiction writer, Boyle deftly uses stories to explore human dimensions of environmental issues and activism, by going into the lives of activists as well as the people t...more

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Apr 25, 2011 Cdrueallen rated it 5 of 5 stars

The stories in WILD CHILD confirmed my suspicion that T.C. Boyle is the most interesting fiction writer working in the U.S. today. I won't say North America, as Canada has Atwood and Munro, but Boyle is clearly in their all-star league. He wasn't always one of my favorites. His earlier stories were too white and male for me. But he steadily widened his point of view and improved his always impressive technical abilities until he was able to produce what I consider one of the finest novels of the...more The stories in WILD CHILD confirmed my suspicion that T.C. Boyle is the most interesting fiction writer working in the U.S. today. I won't say North America, as Canada has Atwood and Munro, but Boyle is clearly in their all-star league. He wasn't always one of my favorites. His earlier stories were too white and male for me. But he steadily widened his point of view and improved his always impressive technical abilities until he was able to produce what I consider one of the finest novels of the past twenty years, DROP CITY. In both DROP CITY and WILD CHILD, Boyle demonstrates the ability to ground stories with the resonance of myth in the fabric of convincing reality. There are other American writers who excel at the creation of myth, notably Toni Morrison, but, lacking the grounding in reality that Boyle provides, her dream worlds fail to move me as there isn't enough at stake. My prejudice in favor of fiction that carries with it the convincing bite of a reality external to human minds and culture narrows down the field of writers whose latest can get me to pull out my credit card for a hardback purchase to a handful: Smiley, Lethem, Franzen, Boyle.

Smiley used to be the writer whose latest work I most looked forward to, and GREENLANDERS remains one of my favorite novels, but though she still writes with great skill and knows how to tell a good story, Smiley lost me when she retreated into the narrow world of the richest one percent, full of thoroughbred horses and architecturally significant houses in the hills. Another one of my prejudices: I can't stand fiction that fawns on the wealthy.

Lethem wrote wonderfully about the underclass in FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE and though his next, CHRONIC CITY, was a fascinating novel about a member of the cultural underclass, it seems that success might soon have the same effect on Lethem that it did on Smiley. So far I've liked Lethem's subjects and prose enough to pardon his flirtation with post-modernism, which I don't like for the same reasons I don't like magic realism or too much mythologizing, but I much prefer Boyle's less affected style, and if Lethem's next is a post-modern novel about New York's cultural elite, he'll drop off my list of must-read writers.

I admire Franzen as much for his courage in writing about the ecological collapse of our planet, a topic that bores and annoys many readers, as I do for his wit, but with FREEDOM Franzen too is exhibiting symptoms of the Smiley syndrome, dulling of his satirical edge and increasing his tendency to have everything end up in a warm financially secure place.

You won't find many warm safe fuzzy places in the stories in WILD CHILD. There are bars and restaurants where men, reaching for the pleasures of the moment, slip, fall, and fail. There's a monumental mudslide where one of these failed, always potentially violent men grabs at a shovel and an illusory chance of redemption. There's the house in a middle class suburb where a lonely man falls in love with a rat and ends up dead in a sea of rodents. There's the gated mansion where a black unemployed college girl takes a job dog sitting a quarter million dollar puppy. There's the early 19th century French institution where the wild child of the title is introduced to Enlightenment civilization. There's a trailer park where a woman decides that a feral cat's worth sacrificing for a dubious male lover while across the country her married sister falls in love with an escaped tiger. There's a run-down recording studio in wintery New York where a second-string backup singer finds a moment of heaven. And my favorite, a terrorist camp in the jungles of Venezuela where the middle-aged mother of a Mexican baseball millionaire survives by doing what she always has, which is the daily work of recreating civilization. All of these settings are places for Boyle to explore the conflicts between men and women, rich and poor, man and animal, and to think about the nature of Nature, in stories that are never didactic and always amusing. Financial success hasn't caused Boyle to forget what the world looks like to most of its impoverished inhabitants, and age has only increased his ability to see the world through the eyes of women. In fact it's Boyle's ability to create female characters whose lives aren't subsumed by men that makes him stand out from his talented male (and most of his female) contemporaries.

Boyle can write as beautiful a sentence as any language-obsessed writer, like the one that begins his title story "Wild Child":
"During the first hard rain of autumn, when the leaves lay like currency at the feet of the trees and the branches shone black against a diminished sky, a party of hunters from the village of Lacaune, in the Languedoc region of France, returning cold and damp and without anything tangible to show for their efforts, spotted a human figure in the gloom ahead."
What's great about this sentence, and all of the sentences in this collection, is that they never call so much attention to themselves that they get in the way of the story. Rather they carry you forward into a life you couldn't have imagined on your own while depositing just a trace of extra loveliness on the way, like using the right amount of good scent instead of a whole cheap bottle of flowery verbiage.

In WILD CHILD, Boyle displays all the literary qualities I like: the courage to write about serious social problems; convincing characters of many classes, genders, and nationalities; a sly satirical but not too obvious wit; and smooth beautiful unobtrusive writing. I'm looking forward to many more years of reading his very fine work.
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Nov 14, 2010 Lars Guthrie rated it 4 of 5 stars

In one of those weird confluences of coincidences, I was traveling west on the Pacific Coast Highway with my mother and father and sister towards Santa Barbara (home of T.C. Boyle). At La Conchita, traffic suddenly jammed up, and we just squeezed past a serious accident, a small pickup loaded with white sacks of something soft, now scattered across the highway, its cab flattened nearly below the load bed, an SUV turned toward oncoming cars, horn blaring, onlookers rushing to help, already talkin...more In one of those weird confluences of coincidences, I was traveling west on the Pacific Coast Highway with my mother and father and sister towards Santa Barbara (home of T.C. Boyle). At La Conchita, traffic suddenly jammed up, and we just squeezed past a serious accident, a small pickup loaded with white sacks of something soft, now scattered across the highway, its cab flattened nearly below the load bed, an SUV turned toward oncoming cars, horn blaring, onlookers rushing to help, already talking to 911 on their cells. Scary.

My mother noted that accidents always happen here, cars crossing north into the little hamlet against a lethal flow of eighty-mile-per-hour traffic, but not only that—also the disastrous mudslide that bottled up the highway and killed ten in 2005, the source for T.C. Boyle's ‘La Conchita,’ which we had all read in ‘The New Yorker.’

Later, on a Saturday night, while making a run for groceries, I ended up happily sitting in the parking lot listening to ‘Selected Shorts' because Isiah Sheffer announced he would read the short story most requested by listeners, ‘La Conchita.’

A few days later I was browsing in the library, looking for something quick. There displayed in the new fiction section was Boyle's latest collection of short stories, ‘Wild Child,’ which, of course, includes ‘La Conchita.’

Sometimes things really do call to you—like a short story.

Boyle is a master of the form, and ‘La Conchita’ a shining example of that mastery. The thirteen other pieces in ‘Wild Child,’ while not all at the same level, are testimony to the care and craft Boyle puts into his work.

Just when I think Boyle has overused the sort of voice the narrator of ‘La Conchita’ has—a savvy but somehow clueless guy, blunt and staccato, quintessentially American prole—he surprises me by stretching a bit.

In ‘Three Quarters of the Way to Hell,’ he goes back to Manhattan in an alternate 60s, and a studio session where some washed-up crooners are enlisted to try and cash in on a cheesy novelty Christmas record—‘Little Suzy Snowflake.’ In a matter of several pages, Boyle turns his tale of woebegone has-beens resentfully punching the clock into a paean to the transforming power of song.

Boyle uses more pages in the long title story, his version of the actual events that made up the life of the wild boy of Aveyron in post-revolutionary France. It’s an archetypal narrative because it is universal and unique, bound by the facts and open to fantasy. I’ve seen Truffaut’s ‘L’Enfant Sauvage,’ and read Mordecai Gerstein’s children’s novel, ‘Victor,’ as well as his picture book, ‘The Wild Boy,’ all powerful interpretations, but Boyle brings something new to the story in unusually restrained, unadorned, and elegant prose.

‘La Conchita,’ ‘Three Quarters,’ and ‘Wild Child’ are my favorites of the bunch, but Boyle also veers away from his vernacular shtick in ‘Sin Dolor,’ a kind of parallel warm-up for ‘Wild Child’ about a boy who feels no pain, and a doctor who cares about and for him.

Boyle, it should be said, is maybe only slightly lazy with the average-joe thing. It’s pretty dang authentic, he always tells a good tale, and in some of the stories in 'Wild Child,' he's not bound to it. Every one of these fourteen is worth reading.(less)

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Dec 19, 2011 Brad Hodges rated it 3 of 5 stars

I'm a long time admirer of the short stories of T. Coraghessan Boyle (not so much of his novels). They frequently pop up in periodicals I read, such as The New Yorker and Playboy, and have a mordant sense of humor I respond to. His stories are all what I would consider "high concept," in that they are heavily plotted and center around a vividly expressed idea. His latest collection, Wild Child, contains some of that, but many of these works are more ambitious than his usual "ripped from the head...more I'm a long time admirer of the short stories of T. Coraghessan Boyle (not so much of his novels). They frequently pop up in periodicals I read, such as The New Yorker and Playboy, and have a mordant sense of humor I respond to. His stories are all what I would consider "high concept," in that they are heavily plotted and center around a vividly expressed idea. His latest collection, Wild Child, contains some of that, but many of these works are more ambitious than his usual "ripped from the headlines" looks at the follies of mankind.

As the title might suggest, many of the stories concern the battle between man and nature, with nature always winning. "La Conchita" concerns a man trying to deliver a liver for transplant to a waiting operating room but it is waylaid by a mudslide. "Question 62" is a lovely story paralleling the experiences of two sisters--one who looks up from her gardening to see an escaped tiger, while the other falls into a relationship with a man trying to pass a law allowing the killing of feral cats.

In a similar vein is "Anacapa," about a fishing expedition in the Channel Islands, and "Sin Dolor," about a Mexican boy who cannot feel pain, and ends up exploited by his father. "Ash Monday" concerns the fears of wildfires in California exurbia, and "Thirteen Hundred Rats" is about a man who gets a pet snake, but when it comes time to feed it, ends up with an unnatural empathy for the rat purchased as food.

Off the beaten path for Boyle are "Three Quarters of the Way to Hell," which details the recording of a Christmas novelty song in New York in the 1950s, alternating between a washed-up Italian crooner and a bruised female singer. The title story is a novella about the Wild Child of Aveyron, the subject of Truffaut's film L'Enfant Sauvage, about a feral boy found in the French woods in Napoleonic France and the attempts to civilize him.

My favorite stories are more typical of Boyle. "The Unfortunate Mother of Aquiles Maldonado" is one of those ripped from the headlines stories, clearly inspired by the events involving baseball pitcher Uegeth Urbina, whose mother was kidnapped in Venezuela. "Bulletproof" centers around the debate over the teaching of evolution in schools, and the brilliant "The Lie" is something of a horror story about a man who wants to get out of work so badly that he tells one whopping lie after another. Of course he will be found out, but as we await the inevitable we are sucked into this man's despair, spiraling down the drain with him.

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Feb 08, 2011 Brian rated it 4 of 5 stars

T.C. Boyle seldom misses and makes it look easy. He moves between different styles and genres and in short story form, his economy of prose is masterful. The stories in Wild Child are a bit uneven. My favorite is the noirish La Conchita, about the deliverer of human organs who is trapped by a mudslide on US 101 on the California coast near Santa Barbara. You can smell the overturned earth and feel the tension in the story. The languid Three Quarters of the Way to Hell has a lot of atmosphere wit...more

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Apr 06, 2010 Bookmarks Magazine rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: may-jun-2010

Boyle has created another successful collection of stories, with its unapologetic exaggeration, vivid settings, and gloomy but likable protagonists. Although Boyle operates under a singular theme--ordinary people succumbing to their baser instincts--critics were greatly impressed with his ability to craft 14 distinct story lines. The Los Angeles Times reviewer likened Boyle to his feral character Victor, calling him ""that literary wild child whose flights of narrative fancy refuse to be domesti...more

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Nov 14, 2012 Amy Bond rated it 3 of 5 stars

I really like T.C. Boyle - The Tortilla Curtain was one of my favorites - but Wild Child didn't do it for me. The stories were fine enough on their own, but dragged on. I constantly found myself hurrying through one story, hoping the next one would be better - faster. The endings were always very abrupt too, like Boyle just got tired of writing the stories, wanted to stop and did - by finishing mid-sentence and scribbling 'the end'.

I did enjoy 'The Lie', all about man who lies about his baby dy...more

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Jan 05, 2011 Sherri rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: audio, short-stories

I really liked the audio version-- read by T.C. Boyle himself. Short fiction is the way to go for me with audio because it is broken up into parts so that you don't burnt out on a long novel. The novella Wild Child was one of my favorites in this collection. It makes me want to read or listen to more historical fiction by Boyle. Maybe I'll try The Women or the soon to be released When the Killings Done.

The first story, "Balto" seems like a perfect Junior Honors English research story (young tee...more

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May 15, 2010 Jennifer rated it 4 of 5 stars

Great collection of stories, the last one very Cormac McCarthy-esque about the dark, savage nature of humans both "civilized" and wild. These short stories each read like novels, the characters and narratives develop and envelop you so quickly. The diversity of situations is also impressive: a baseball player whose mother is kidnapped in Caracas; a mudslide in Southern California that affects an organ delivery guy; a man who becomes obsessed with rats (one of two stories I recognized from New Yo...more

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May 18, 2010 Joe rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: short-stories, fiction

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. You don't have to know much about the author's life or background to realize how much aspects of his character and experiences shine through the lives, attitudes, emotions and timber of the characters and plots of these 14 stories. They will leave an effect on you as well. There's a story here for almost every palate.

1. BALTO: What happens when we teach our kids to lie
2. LA CONCHITA: A mud slide life saving drama
3. QUESTION 62: A new sexual intimacy under girds issues about the shooting of feral...more

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Jun 12, 2010 Denise rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Wild Child is T.C. Boyle's latest collection of short stories. The majority of these stories are about the chaos that nature injects in everyday, orderly life and how that chaos changes people. Mudslides, escaped tigers, thousands of rats, and feral boys all rampage across these pages challenging people and changing them. There is a tinge of magical realism in some of the stories, plenty of tragedy, and even a sprinkling of hope.

What struck me most about these stories was how often I wanted more...more

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Jul 27, 2010 Michael rated it 3 of 5 stars

Wild Child is not TC Boyle's best collection of short fiction. Far too often, the stories seemed unsatisfying. I'm not talking about the quality--the writing is superb--rather the feeling of completeness that stories in some of his other collections possessed.

That said, Wild Child possesses some gems, specifically "Balto," a story about a child whose father asks her to lie for him in court. "La Conchita," which is about an organ delivery man forced to play hero during a horrific mudslide is exc...more

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Apr 02, 2010 Snotchocheez rated it 4 of 5 stars

TC Boyle is emerging as one of my favorite authors of all time, and his talent seems to grow as the years go by. "Wild Child" is a great ensemble of short stories, with no discernable theme, with plots all over the place like a Venezuelan pro baseball player in the United States having to go back home to attend to his kidnapped mother, to an alcoholic dude charged with child endangerment after having his daughter drive them home because of being too wasted. All the stories (with the exception, i...more

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Feb 18, 2013 Rebecca rated it 4 of 5 stars

These stories are weird, personal, diverse, and engaging. The last one, "Wild Child," is by far the best, and also the most different from all the others. Most of Boyle's stories in this collection are set in modern California and deal with pretty average American problems, but "Wild Child" is about the so-called "savage" boy in Napoleonic France who was discovered living on his own in the woods. He quickly became an object of scientific inquiry, with more than one scientist banging his head aga...more

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Aug 29, 2009 Lacey N. rated it 5 of 5 stars

Yes, it's absolutely true: T.C. Boyle is a master of the short story. In "Balto," a young girl is asked to lie in court for her alcoholic father, even as she matures into her own, powerful self; in "Sin Dolor," a young boy living in squalor marvels a community--including its detached doctor--by his absence of feeling physical pain; in "Anacapa," the only story not previously anthologized, the narrator discovers what he most needs even as he fades away. The title story, "Wild Child," is more a no...more

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Apr 23, 2013 Abe Something rated it 4 of 5 stars

An Amazon reviewer found themselves disappointed by this collection. They left a comment about how Boyle "should be ashamed of him self for selling a book of 'short stories' that are in actuality nothing more than character sketches sans story."

It's true some of these read more like character sketches than full stories but, in the sketching we find threads that help us to see more of the character, more of their life, more of their story. We don't need much more than what Boyle has provided us...more

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Feb 08, 2010 George rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: nook-ereads, t-c-boyle

ENTERTAINING READING.

Right up there with O’Henry, Mark Twain and Damon Runyon: T. C. Boyle is a master of short-story telling. His latest anthology, of fourteen stories, ‘Wild Child: and Other Stories’ published last month (January, 2010) is very entertaining reading.

Recommendation: For a break from the long novel, you can’t do much better than this.

This is the first all-digital book I’ve bought and read on my newly arrived (02-03-10) Barnes and Noble nook eReader. It was a good choice to break...more

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Aug 02, 2012 Vee41dmb rated it 2 of 5 stars

Not sure what I expected. The stories were OK, as in they kept me reading.
However, nothing really pulled me in. The exception was the Wild Child, which of course was at the end of the book. Wild Child was moving and well written.
I bought this book in the discount books section and thought I'd give it a try, because the name and the subject sounded like something that would grab me and lure me in. It did not. It wasn't horrible, it wasn't great. It was OK.
I don't think I'll be going out of my way...more

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Dec 21, 2012 Jung Kang rated it 4 of 5 stars

No I have not read Drop City, TC Boyle’s big hit thanks to Oprah’s Book Club mention.

But T.C. Boyle is a great storyteller and even more so when you listen to his audiobooks (all read by the author himself. I really appreciate audiobooks read by the author. It just seems so much more intimate that way.)

Snippets of short stories which took a bit for me to get used to because many of them seemed to lack a punchline sort of ending I was waiting for. Often times, I had to ask, ‘So what happened next...more

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Aug 25, 2012 Bastet rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

El egoísmo del ser humano no tiene límites cuando su único anhelo es el reconocimiento y la adulación. Paradójicamente, lo que hacen con el niño asilvestrado es inhumano, por mucho que sus sucesivos tutores (un tintorero, un comisionado, dos abades y un médico) aseguren que lo están humanizando: lo encierran en un armario cuando ellos consideran que se ha comportado mal, a veces sin ningún motivo; lo cuelgan de los tobillos a cinco pisos de altura para que escarmiente; no le dejan aliviarse sexu...more El egoísmo del ser humano no tiene límites cuando su único anhelo es el reconocimiento y la adulación. Paradójicamente, lo que hacen con el niño asilvestrado es inhumano, por mucho que sus sucesivos tutores (un tintorero, un comisionado, dos abades y un médico) aseguren que lo están humanizando: lo encierran en un armario cuando ellos consideran que se ha comportado mal, a veces sin ningún motivo; lo cuelgan de los tobillos a cinco pisos de altura para que escarmiente; no le dejan aliviarse sexualmente; le obligan a aprender cosas inútiles para un niño que se ha criado en un bosque, etc.

La enseñanza de esta novela -de un realismo tan palmario que roza el género del documental- es que hay que dejar que la naturaleza siga su curso, pues cuando el hombre interviene para cambiarla, acaba con ella. Esta frase lo resume perfectamente: "Esa misma tarde [...] el niño salvaje fue entregado a la ciencia y, por ende, a la celebridad". A la celebridad de sus tutores-captores, pues la comunidad científica pronto le dio la espalda y el médico lo abandonó a su suerte mientras él se llevaba toda la gloria.
Me ha dejado atónita esta frase: "A juzgar por la coloración de la piel, bien podría haber sido vasco, español o italiano". Boyle está mal informado sobre España y más le valdría cerciorarse antes de poner sobre el papel inexactitudes como esa.

Está bien traducido y tiene pocos errores ortográficos; sin embargo, le hubiera venido bien una corrección de estilo para evitar los gerundios mal empleados; observar que no se juega un papel, sino que se desempeña; limpiar de mayúsculas innecesarias el texto (Reino de los Espíritus, Rey, Comisionado, Ministro, Instituto, Madame, Monsieur); detectar que una paloma difícilmente puede acurrucarse en el marco de una ventana (sí en el alféizar); saber que en un texto en español lo adecuado es que las libras se traduzcan a kilos; que el uso de "la misma" en lugar del pronombre demostrativo "esta" es incorrecto; que no se puede describir el pelo de alguien como "pajizo y oscuro", y que a la pasta de pescado se le llama paté.(less)

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Aug 29, 2011 A.M. rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommended to A.M. by: Maura

Shelves: short-stories, contemporary, fiction

This is my first taste of TC Boyle's writing and I have to admit to being impressed by his style, his unusual imagery and turns of phrase that capture the imagination.

It's difficult to sum up an anthology containing so many short stories (14, to be precise, each fairly lengthy), but many of these contain vivid, very human and ultimately flawed characters -- there is a sense of disillusion, loneliness, and of the compromises we make with ourselves in order to find some sort of love or companionsh...more

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Oct 25, 2011 Cmacauley rated it 4 of 5 stars

In my opinion, T. Coraghessan Boyle is a genius who will remain popular and well-known for many decades to come. He is exceptionally skillful at both language and characterization and can describe a scene so precisely and with such vivid language that seeing it yourself would be less exciting. He knows how to weave light and shadow, smells and noises, and even motion together with a person's internal psychochemistry to put the reader into the middle of the story. My favorites among his books inc...more

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Sep 20, 2011 Sam Quixote rated it 4 of 5 stars

A new TC Boyle short story book is a literary event and Boyle's latest short story collection is like his other collections - that is, it is nothing short of brilliant. He is the best short story writer alive at the moment and "Wild Child" cements his reputation for crafting well written stories that draw you into the characters' strange worlds and have you wanting more.

The best story here is a short novella called "Wild Child" about a young boy found hiding in the woods in 18th century France,...more A new TC Boyle short story book is a literary event and Boyle's latest short story collection is like his other collections - that is, it is nothing short of brilliant. He is the best short story writer alive at the moment and "Wild Child" cements his reputation for crafting well written stories that draw you into the characters' strange worlds and have you wanting more.

The best story here is a short novella called "Wild Child" about a young boy found hiding in the woods in 18th century France, apparently animal-like due to years of living in the wild. He is taken in and, like the real life case of Caspar Hauser, is taken to the city where he is taught and educated. Unlike Hauser though, the wild child is never tamed. Boyle's characterisation of the child is a perfect rendering of what you would imagine to be a feral child, part human, part animal. You feel the frustrated attempts by doctors to make him speak as well as the surroundings of 18th century Paris and Languedoc. If all the other stories in this book were bad (and they're not) the book would be worth reading for this novella alone.

"The Lie" is about a man who, unable to face work, crafts a lie that his baby has died and thus gains a few more days off. However he's unable to backtrack and then his wife finds out...

"La Conchita" is about an organ courier in California who sees a mudslide happen on the motorway and gets caught up in rescuing trapped people from their cars, imaging an alternate life where one woman's husband dies and he takes his place.

"Bulletproof" is about the battle between secular education and religious views with stickers on biology textbooks that read "Darwin's theory of evolution is just a theory" dividing parents and teachers alike. The narrator, a single man, is torn between loyalty to his secular friend and a Christian woman.

"The Unlucky Mother of Aquiles Maldonado" is about a Venezuelan baseball star whose mother is taken hostage.

"Admiral" is about a rich couple who clone their dead dog and try to recreate conditions as they were years ago.

Those are the stories that stood out for me but none were terrible and all drew me into the story despite being only a dozen pages long. The characters and settings are so vivid that you become instantly interested in the stories. It's the mark of a great writer and a master storyteller who can do that so well. I would heartily recommend this book to any fans of fiction or fans of TC Boyle, who is sure to go down in literary history as the American Chekhov. A must read, fantastic book. (less)

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Apr 30, 2011 Richard Barager rated it 5 of 5 stars

Rather than give a general review of the entire collection, I will instead review a single story from this work--a moving piece called "Sin Dolor" (Without Pain)--the tenor and quality of which is representative of the entire group.

T. C. Boyle is a luminary of American literature, a graduate of the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a Distinguished Professor of English at USC. In 2009 he was inducted into The American Academy of Arts and Letters, considered the highest formal recognition o...more

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Jan 31, 2011 Jesse Field added it

Shelves: short-fiction

It was on the New Yorker Fiction Podcast that I first heard Boyle's voice, reading Tobias' Wolff's story "Bullet in the Brain." Boyle has just the voice to explain how conventional characters behave in desperate situations -- there's a sort of forced lightness, alternately funny and then very much not. (Tobias Wolff actually has a similar voice, which is no coincidence, I think.) So when I saw that Wild Child was available as downloadable audio, with the author himself reading, I just had to giv...more

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Sep 07, 2010 Aaron rated it 4 of 5 stars

The work of T. C. Boyle is often simultaneously very funny and very dark, populated with pretty undesirable characters caught up in circumstances beyond their control (though it could be argued that the catalyst for all these circumstances is usually, and undeniably, their fault). This collection of short stories proves to be pretty much what you would expect from his work.

For me, though, none of the stories in this set stuck out to me as mind-blowing. But all of them are pretty darn good.

Some f...more

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Sep 18, 2010 Kate Alleman rated it 4 of 5 stars

this book was perfect to read during breaktime at work. T.C. Boyle crafted such wonderful characters and picked such interesting moments to write about. I really enjoyed the short story with the same name as the collection, the wild child. I remember learning about this boy in psychology class and it was such a fascinating tale. Boyle infuses much more emotion and heart into the story then what i read in my psychology book. He did an excellent job of fusing history and creative license.

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May 31, 2011 Joel rated it 4 of 5 stars

I've read most of the stories in here and loved all of them. One of them ("The Lie") got me started in reading serious fiction. I came upon it (and a lot of others) in the New Yorker. A lot of these stories were also selected for the Best American Short Stories series or were runners-up. Most have a common theme of Man losing a constant battle with Nature, like his previous collection Tooth and Claw. If you like Boyle's short stories, you will like these as well.

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Dec 28, 2010 Judy rated it 3 of 5 stars

A wonderful collection of 14 short stories. The title story is a retelling of the tale of Victor, a feral boy found in the woods of Napoleonic France, and his introduction to "civilized" society. Excellent. But my personal favorite is the story of the young woman, who because of a lack of money, is forced to babysit for a $250,000 cloned Afghan puppy. While most of the stories are about people in crisis or distress, there is a surprising amount of humor.

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Feb 12, 2010 James Curtin rated it 4 of 5 stars

i have about 10 books that i am currently reading but when a new t.c. boyle comes out i read it immediately. he really has mastered the art of the short story. 'admiral' is about a crazy rich couple who loves their stupid little dog and a woman who has to take care of it. other stories about a rich baseball player's mother kidnapped in venezuela, a widow who buys a snake but falls in love with the rats he should feed to said snake and the title story about a feral child captured during napoleoni...more

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About T.C. Boyle

T. Coraghessan Boyle (also known as T.C. Boyle, born Thomas John Boyle on December 2, 1948) is a U.S. novelist and short story writer. Since the late 1970s, he has published eleven novels and more than 60 short stories. He won the PEN/Faulkner award in 1988 for his third novel, World's End, which recounts 300 years in upstate New York. He is married with three children. Boyle has been a Distinguis...more

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