T.C. Boyle is one of my favorite contemporary writers. While novels are much more in my comfort zone, I appreciate his giving us some shorts that can be used in the classroom as introduction to his witty and thought-provoking style. I also see him regularly on Goodreads and am happy to have the opportunity to interact with him personally there. He has much to say about the current state of life in the US.

A solid collection from a reliable master of the short story. Nothing particularly groundbreaking, but an enjoyable read nonetheless.

I generally don't like short stories, but there are a few authors who write short stories I love--Emma Cline, George Saunders, David Mitchell and T.C. Boyle. This new collection is terrific. A couple standouts "Dog Lab," "Keys to the Kingdom" and the title story.

No fireworks, just interesting characters and stories. If you're looking for a collection, pick it up!

Netgalley provided me with a free e-galley in return for this review.

There is nothing better in this world than a great book of short stories. This collection by Boyle is so perfect. It is masterful. You want the book to double in size so you can read more.

Yet another winner for Boyle. I can't believe how much range he has. I'll be thinking of coverage options that will work in the new year.

A beautiful book. Also using this as a place to show my support for the Harper Collins union. Thank you to Harper for the gifted ARC my honest review.

I Walk Between the Raindrops is an often uncomfortable, real, and gritty collection of short stories.
T.C. Boyle is often not a "happy" reading experience for me. He's too thought-provoking for that. His books never fail to shove me out of my comfort zone. But I keep coming back for more. His topics never fail to be relevant and compelling.

Diverse collection of short stories on present day social concerns, but lacking the wit readers of Boyle's other works would expect. The tone of the stories was more of a cutting commentary on society and just didn't connect with me. Will try this again, and any future works coming from T. C. Boyle.

Published by Ecco on September 13, 2022

Many of the T.C. Boyle stories collected in this volume were published in Esquire, The New Yorker, Playboy, or literary reviews. They vary in style and subject matter but not in quality. The title story didn’t speak to me, but the others include some of the best short fiction I’ve read in recent memory.

My favorites:

The narrator of “The Thirteenth Day” is quarantined on a cruise ship with a passenger from Wuhan who has COVID-19. Fear, privation, domestic discord, and culture war lunacy ensue. The story is so realistic it reads as if Boyle was actually a passenger on the ship.

“Big Mary” is a large woman who beats every man she arm-wrestles. She slowly becomes the lead vocalist for a bar band before jealousy (largely the narrator’s) leads to the kind of drama that breaks up bands.

“The Shape of a Teardrop” - Parents evict their loser son because he refuses to work, knowing his wages will be garnished for child support. The mother insists she loves her son but her brand of tough love suggests her primary loyalty is to herself. This is the kind of story that makes me even more grateful to have been raised in a functional family.

A medical student practices surgery on dogs in a hospital's “Dog Lab.” The story highlights the ethical issues surrounding the use of dogs that would otherwise have been euthanized (a fate that is only delayed by the surgeries). The issues cause a rift between the student and his girlfriend. No spoiler intended, but if you want to know whether a dog lover will appreciate the ending, the answer is yes.

The narrator of “Not Me” is an unhappy high school teacher who, unlike some of his unhappy colleagues, is not sleeping with a student. Sleeping with students is against the rules but sleeping with other teachers turns out to be just as problematic.

“The Apartment” - A man agrees to pay a monthly sum to an old woman for the duration of her life in exchange for ownership of her apartment when she dies. The man and the old woman both are wagering on the duration of her life. “We all make bargains in this life,” the woman later says. “Sometimes we win, sometimes we lose.”

Other stories I enjoyed:

“These Are the Circumstances” - Nick’s wife Laurel persuades him to go on a nature walk/bath ($25 per hour per person) so they can gain the meditative and calming benefit of communing with leaves and dirt. Nick is bored after three minutes of watching twigs float downstream. He misses his phone. Laurel sees beauty where Nick sees danger. They might both be right, but nature later has an adverse impact on Nick’s life. This is a good story for husbands who oppose their wives’ insistence that they get off the couch.

“Key to the Kingdom” - A stranger knocks on a writer’s door and raises the possibility that he’s the writer’s son, triggering memories of a return to the writer’s alma mater after the publication of his first novel and an unexpected sexual encounter. The knowledge is one more in a series of burdens that the writer has never been able to carry.

“SCS 750” - The ability to get a good job or medical treatment or decent seating on the train is dependent on a Social Credit Score that defines trustworthiness. The score is shaped by conformity to rigid rules (not avoiding surveillance cameras, not buying more than one bottle of gin at a time, not watching porn or playing video games all day, not expressing antisocial thoughts). The narrator chooses friends and relationships based on their impact on his score, a clever twist on the common dystopian theme of government-enforced limits on individuality.

“Asleep at the Wheel” takes place in the future of self-driving cars, including Ubers that want to take their passengers on a shopping trip to stores that have purchased advertising from Uber. The story describes two events. One is a mother’s evening with a man her car told her to avoid. The other follows drunken kids who, inspired by Rebel Without a Cause, decide to disable the self-driving capability of stolen cars and drive them off a cliff. Meanwhile, gentle robotic police make the reader wonder whether society might get something right in the future.

I was indifferent to these three:

The title story tells five interlocking mini-stories. The first and last address a man’s feeling of powerlessness when he is harassed by a woman while waiting for his wife in a bar on Valentine’s Day. One follows a man who deals with the aftermath of a mudslide. One is about a suicide prevention worker’s relationship with a woman who threatens suicide. The only interesting segment involves a matchmaking dinner party. The hosts try to bring two obese people together, a plan that alienates a fat man who wonders why the hosts would assume he is attracted to fat women. All the segments are all meant to address the theme of “fathomless, inexpressible, heartbreaking loneliness,” but the dinner party segment is the only one that touched my heart.

“The Hyena” - The residents of a village go mad. Perhaps there was something in the bread.

“What’s Love Got to Do with It?” tells of a conversation an older woman has with a college student during a train ride. The student is an incel who describes with sympathy another incel who went on a killing spree at a sorority house. The incel wants to be seen but doesn’t understand that the woman only sees him for what he is. I don’t see a college virgin opening up to a woman who is likely oler than his mother about his sexual insecurities, but Boyle’s description of those insecurities seems spot on.

RECOMMENDED

Thank you to NetGalley and Ecco for the e-ARC! I Walk Between The Raindrops is the latest short story collection from T.C. Boyle (also known as Thomas Coraghessan Boyle). I had not read any previous works by Boyle before checking this out but have heard from many reviews that he is a master of the short story format. Some reviews I had seen from people who have read more from his works claimed that this was one of his lesser quality works which makes me more inclined to check out his other stories as I enjoyed this a lot. As always with any short story collection, it is extremely rare to come by enjoying every single story, but I was greatly entertained by a lot of these. My favorites had strong satirical and dystopian themes. Asleep at the Wheel tells of a self driving car that is free of charge but at the cost of annoying marketing ads to try and take you to somewhere you would spend money and AI police robots that pester the homeless population. Scs 750 describes a new type of credit score that keeps track of all of your movements including decent human behavior. What’s Love Got To Do With It? shows a woman on a train bothered in conversation by a self proclaimed incel. The Thirteenth Day, a story based on true events of the cruise ship that was stuck aboard at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic crisis. Overall, very well written with good range

𝑵𝒐𝒘- 𝒔𝒖𝒅𝒅𝒆𝒏𝒍𝒚, 𝒘𝒐𝒏𝒅𝒆𝒓𝒇𝒖𝒍𝒍𝒚- 𝒑𝒖𝒓𝒑𝒐𝒔𝒆 𝒉𝒂𝒅 𝒄𝒐𝒎𝒆 𝒃𝒂𝒄𝒌 𝒊𝒏𝒕𝒐 𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒍𝒊𝒇𝒆.

I was hooked by T.C. Boyle’s latest collection of stories, while they aren’t all uplifting and happy, in fact they are often unsettling, the tales have characters behaving, feeling as non-fictional people do . Yes, it can be terrible, but it’s genuine. The quote I used is from the story I enjoyed the most, 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝐴𝑝𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡. In it, a ‘spritely French woman’ of ninety years of age (Madame C.) has an apartment that many would covet, but no, not the man who desires it. The woman, surely, is nearing the end of her life with no one to leave it to and wouldn’t it just be perfect for his family? Their own apartment is “too small to contain his growing daughters”, so he makes a proposal, one that his wife grows to hate. We all know how plans go awry, and in my mind the blessed Madame C. has a mischievous twinkle in her eyes. It also had me thinkin about the idea of what we deserve and what we get. Life doesn’t always follow the expected path, the order we assume it should.

𝑆𝐶𝑆 750 is a nightmare story for me personally, I don’t know about the rest of the world, but it’s not a farfetched idea at all. The horror is a credit system that benefits all the good citizens, and technology based on facial-recognition, I think people know where this is going. There is a government based social credit system in a certain country now that comes to mind. 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑆ℎ𝑎𝑝𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑎 𝑇𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑑𝑟𝑜𝑝 is a hell of a story, about parents, their responsibilities, adulthood, failure to thrive, and the undeniable hypocrisy of the “victim”. It plucked my emotions, darn it! There is a tale about a cruise and Covid19, I honestly try to stay away from any fictional book about the pandemic as I have Covid19 burnout, I imagine many people feel the same, but 𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑇ℎ𝑖𝑟𝑡𝑒𝑒𝑛𝑡ℎ 𝐷𝑎𝑦 was an interesting perspective, also rotten to imagine. I can feel the mounting panic those contained and restricted go through, the hopelessness and fear. This collection has stories that are hallucinatory, futuristic, absurd and tender too (I’m thinking of Dog Lab), oh my little dog loving heart! It was refreshing to read stories that aren’t run-of-the-mill, ugh here I go using idioms, sorry. Walking between the raindrops metaphorically, you aren’t getting wet, you are dodging the hardships if you apply it to life, no? Interesting title, 𝐼 𝑊𝑎𝑙𝑘 𝐵𝑒𝑡𝑤𝑒𝑒𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑅𝑎𝑖𝑛𝑑𝑟𝑜𝑝𝑠, because the characters are trying to avoid obstacles, the dirt of life, but often failing. The book has been described as witty, biting satire, and inventive, it really is. Yes, read it!

Published September 13, 2022

Ecco

Wonderful collection of essays written with purpose. I thoroughly enjoyed the inventiveness and creativity.

I Walk Between the Raindrops: Stories by T. C. Boyle is a very highly recommended collection of thirteen imaginative and irresistible short stories.

The stories range from the reactions of a wealthy couple amidst a variety of experiences, passengers quarantined on a cruise ship, a society controlled by a social credit system, a man kills a rattlesnake in his yard, an author faces his paternity of a young man, a man makes a deal with an elderly woman, a man being evicted by his parents and more.

Boyle writes excellent short stories and I Walk Between the Raindrops is a superb addition to his oeuvre. The writing is impeccable, providing concise descriptions of characters and situations while establishing the plot and setting. The stories cover both realistic situations and surrealistic ones and are set both in the past and the future. They can be simultaneously funny and serious. Some of the stories are idiosyncratic character studies, others veer toward social commentary, and some are futuristic. I thoroughly enjoyed this collection.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of HarperCollins via NetGalley.
The review will be published on Barnes & Noble, Google Books, Edelweiss, and Amazon.

I've been reading everything T.C. Boyle since 1998 Riven Rock. But this is his first short story collection to come my way. And boy, what a treat it is. The variety of moods, topics, characters made this a 'just one more' read first to last. Now I have the pleasure of dipping into the backlist.

You can alwasy count on Mr. Boyle for captivating novels and shorts. This colllection of short stories is no exception.

Thanks to NetGallery, HarperCollins and the author for the ARC.

~~~Sharon
Editor/Beta Reader
The Writer's Reader
https://thewritersreader.wordpress.com

I really loved this short story collection. The author approaches his tales with a dash of cynicism and snark. Very enjoyable.

T. C. Boyle has been writing for decades, and in the 40 years or so that I've been a fan, he's rarely disappointed me. While his novels can at times use a bit of a trim as he zeros in his laser gaze, his short fiction is concise and, especially in this latest collection, contemporary and wise. There is an examination of interior monologues, an account of a couple on an unfortunate cruise at the beginning of the pandemic, a sadly hilarious back and forth between a bewildered and fed-up parent and her exasperating adult son. These stories are more slice of life than point of upheaval moments, and I hope he continues with his curiosity and energy.

I don’t typically enjoy short story collections but I find TC Boyle a must read author. I was not disappointed. Lots of his dark and cynical point of view. Which I like. And, his observations and conclusions are just so dang smart.

These stories are brutal reads. I guess cynicism and apathy and nihilism have their places, but I didn't enjoy or even appreciate the writing here. Some interesting ideas, but just so depressing. I certainly didn't find them "quirky" or "uproarious" as others have.

A man wanting to celebrate Valentine’s Day with his wife is hounded by a possibly deranged lady claiming to have ESP. A woman taking a leisurely cross-country train journey has an unsettling encounter with an apologist for a mass murderer. A man makes a bet with the elderly owner of an apartment he covets but quickly learns to regret it. Cruise passengers at the outbreak of Covid make the best of their extended time on board the ship. A self-absorbed alcoholic writer is confronted by a son he never knew he had with a mother he cannot remember. A fungus infecting baguettes in a small French village causes a hallucinatory panic among the citizens. In a future where people’s lives are ruled by their Social Credit Score, a young man makes some impactful relationship decisions. The exasperated parents of their 31-year old unemployed son go to court to evict him from the family home. A medical student with an animal activist girlfriend has misgivings when asked to operate on a friendly dog.

What is the unifying theme connecting these plot summaries? I honestly have no idea, but they represent many of the thirteen stories contained in the volume I Walk Between the Raindrops by acclaimed author T. C. Boyle. Some of the tales can fairly be categorized as social commentary (‘SCS 750’, ‘Not Me’, Dog Lab’), with others being quirky—twisted, really—character studies (‘These Are the Circumstances’, ‘Big Mary’, ‘The Shape of a Teardrop’), while still others rise to a level that borders on magical realism or science fiction (‘Asleep at the Wheel’, ‘The Hyena’). All told, then, the stories appear to share little with one another save two things: they are all well-crafted narratives featuring Boyle’s signature style that combines strange plotlines with familiar settings that move across time and location, and they are all quite funny and entertaining.

Overall, I really enjoyed this collection of short fiction, as much because of its eclectic nature as despite it. This was the first time I have read Boyle’s work, but after seeing him likened over the years to writers such as Raymond Carver, John Barth, Flannery O’Connor, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez—all favorites of mine—I thought it was time that I did. The book did not disappoint in any way and each of the stories held my interest from beginning to end. That said, I certainly had my favorites; I found myself attracted more to the character-driven tales, such as ‘The Thirteenth Day’ (about the quarantined cruise ship) or ‘The Apartment’ (which involved the housing bet gone wrong) than the ones in which the author let his imagination run a little more to the wild side. Still, there is not a weak selection in the set and this is a book that I can enthusiastically recommend to both seasoned fans of the author and those new to his work.