| REVIEW: T.C. Boyle, TALK TALK |
My confidence has been restored. Thank you T.C. Boyle. As one who helps others learn to write fiction, I’m intermittently confronted with the idea of entropy. Not entropy as in physics and the laws of thermodynamics, but entropy as in things moving from order to disorder. If entropy happens in the world, does it happen in literature? Is literature devolving? That’s a question to ponder. Especially when one is asking writers to strive for a particular level of excellence. Reaching for that excellence requires great and lengthy effort. It requires getting it wrong past the point of frustration, and then finding the determination to try it yet one more time. It requires determination and commitment, perhaps even a kind of passion. The thing is, if literature is devolving. should we writers continue to bother all that much? Should we strive to make the book and the page and the print disappear, make the character and the experience come alive? Is a lesser effort good enough? Should we spend time learning to write dialogue that is true? Sweat over creating characters who live the situation instead of giving names to phantoms that are nothing more than devices to maneuver a plot? Should we adhere to conventions of technique that require a good deal of time and attention to learn properly? And do readers really care all that much anymore? Are more and more readers content with sloppy prose, out of control points-of-view, contrived plots, invisible characters? And if they are, is that the future of the book? The story? The novel? Are there fewer and fewer serious readers? Is the book that takes the reader on a journey into the consciousness of a character doomed? And if it is, does it make sense to harp at would-be authors about technique? About introspection, dialogue, and point-of view? In a word, yes. Because T.C. Boyle says so. In Talk Talk, Boyle has written a novel that’s part thriller, part mystery, and part suspense. But although it’s instantly engaging and stays that way, Talk Talk is a serious piece of fiction and it’s written impeccably. It’s the story of two people who find themselves involved in something frighteningly unexpected and dangerous, and their grueling experiences make it hard to set this book down. But it’s not the plot alone that makes Talk Talk such a satisfying read, it’s the sure hand of the author creating characters so real and so convincing that if you were eight years old, you’d want to yell out, “No! Don’t do that! Don’t you see what will happen!!” And creating that kind of excruciating tension takes expert technique. Boyle picks us up and drops us inside another consciousness with such skill, we don’t even notice we’ve been transported. That’s not story, that’s writing. So keep honing your craft, all you writers. It’s worth it. In fact, it’s required. And wouldn’t it be fine if all books were judged by the same high standard T.C. Boyle holds himself to? And wouldn’t it be fine if all readers demanded nothing less.
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