A collection of sixty-eight short stories written between 1972 and 1997 by the PEN/Faulkner Award-winning author of The Road to Wellville features three previously unpublished tales, including an American tourist's amorous adventures with a female boxer. Tour. Skinny, earringed, satanically goateed, T. Coraghessan Boyle is the trickster figure of American letters. Part court jester, part holy fool, he slips in and out of various narrative disguises as it suits him. Nowhere is this more evident than in his short fiction, in which he bounces from psychological naturalism to giddy slapstick, dreamy surrealism to biting satire--sometimes within the space of a single tale. The sprawling and idiosyncratic T.C. Boyle Stories brings together his four previous volumes of short fiction, Descent of Man (1979), Greasy Lake (1985), If the River Was Whiskey (1989), and Without a Hero (1994), as well as seven previously uncollected stories, two of which have never before seen print. In both range and sheer heft, it's a remarkable collection, the more so since it represents an artist only midway through his career. These stories find Boyle partying like it's 1999. He zeroes in on our age's most uncomfortable obsessions, its late-capitalist fetishes and millenarian fears: nervous Los Angelenos suckered into buying a Montana survivalist's retreat ("On for the Long Haul"); a hygienically obsessed girlfriend who insists on wearing a full-body condom ("Modern Love"); a rich, guilty couple suffocating under the weight of a lifetime's possessions ("Filthy with Things"). Elsewhere, he updates Gogol for late Soviet times ("The Overcoat II"), retells the death of blues god Robert Johnson ("Hellhound on My Trail"), even goes clubbing with that hot '90s property, the author of Mansfield Park ("I Dated Jane Austen"). Boyle's comic range is unparalleled, his timing razor-sharp as he skewers everyone from burglar alarm salesmen to the Beats. Like all tricksters, the author uses our own vanity and hypocrisy against us--but with barbs as witty as those found in T.C. Boyle Stories , not even his victims will mind. --Mary Park This retrospective collection assembles all the short fiction of California postmodernist Boyle, including some early magazine work that has not previously appeared in book form. The tales are arranged thematically instead of chronologically, in three broad categories: "Love," "Death," and "And Everything in Between." Most are lightweight riffs on pop culture icons in the tradition of Max Apple's The Oranging of America (1976). In "I Dated Jane Austen," from 1977, the tee-shirted narrator chauffeurs Miss Austen to a punk club in his Alfa Romeo. "Beat" (1993) imagines Jack Kerouac and his mother sharing a bottle of Mogen David wine and listening to Bing Crosby records on Christmas Eve, 1958. "The Rapture of the Deep" (1995) is the story of Jacques Cousteau's mutinous galley chef. Boyle works in the self-consciously hip, name-dropping style of Jay Leyner and stand-up comedian Dennis Miller. Unfortunately, the thematic grouping used in his anthology emphasizes the formulaic aspects of Boyle's fiction and makes its manic inventiveness seem forced and predictable. Libraries with any of Boyle's earlier story collections can skip this one. -?Edward B. St. John, Loyola Law Sch. Lib., Los Angeles Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. Boyle fans will be delighted by the release of this collection of 68 short stories, spanning a period of more than 20 years and including all stories published in previous collections as well as 4 stories not previously published in book form and 3 stories not previously published at all. For those not yet introduced to Boyle, or readers whose interest has been piqued by the recent success of The Road to Wellville (1993) and Riven Rock , there is plenty of variety in this collection, showcasing the wide range of Boyle's imaginative dexterity. Always entertaining, often provocative, Boyle's work combines verbal athleticism and comedic insight to illuminate the darkest corners of the human psyche. The stories are arranged in three broad sections: "Love," "Death," and "Everything in Between," with much unavoidable overlap among the categories. Of the three previously unpublished stories, "Little Fur People" pits an old woman's caring for sick and injured squirrels against the long arm of the same body that sanctions "no bag limit" killing of the creatures--in season with a valid license, of course; mutinous culinary frustration, as only the French could feel it, erupts among the crew aboard the Calypso in response to Jacques Cousteau's unceasing compulsion to dive deeper in "The Rapture of the Deep"; and the awkward romantic adventures of an American tourist are set in the vacation backdrop of "Mexico." Terrific storytelling and amazing artistry throughout. Grace Fill A fine, fat gathering of 68 stories, including the contents of Boyle's four collections (Without a Her