A Friend of the Earth Author:T. C. Boyle "Alternate chapters take us back to the past, where we see a younger Ty and Andrea in action as the driving wheels behind the radical environmental group, Earth Forever! We also delve into Ty's relationship with his daughter, Sierra, now famous as a "martyr to the trees". All of this presented with satiric verve-this is a funny book, albeit on t... more »he most depressing possible topic-and yet, as in The Tortilla Curtain, I am aiming at much more than simply satire. Satire, it seems to me, has no heart, and this book, you will find, has heart to spare. The laughter will stick in your throat, and if I have done my job properly, you will think and feel and hurt as I do. The environmentalists offer us no hope. How do we deal with that? I think we laugh to keep from crying."
T.C. Boyle wrote A Friend of the Earth, an enronmentally-focused novel about a man caught up in the "Save the World" campaign with an organization that uses terroristic methods to get their message out. Definitely a satire, but kind of depressing.
If all the claims of the newspaper headlines about mass extinction, global warming, and the holes in the ozone are true, then what will our immediate future look like?
In this novels' version, it is pretty bleak, but comically so.
This is one of my favorite books. The characters are flawed and endearing in all the right places. The precautionary narrative is presented with classic Boyle humor which makes the distasteful portrait of future consequences to our current disregard for the natural world quite palatable.
Environmental futuristic horror story/ love? story
Fans of Orwell or huxley would enjoy maybe... anyone interested in global warming/ eco-causes.... Earth First-ers