A Friend of the Earth Author:T.C. Boyle As the book opens, in 2025, our hero, Tyrone O'Shaughnessy Tierwater, baby boomer, ex-radical environmentalist, ex-con, ex-father, widower and divorce, is 75 and battling to stay afloat in the rising Social-Securityless waters of a meteorologically-challenged society. He is working as an animal keeper for a wealthy but faded rock star who maint... more »ains a menagerie of some of the last specimens of formerly wild animals on earth. It is raining. Perpetually. The phone rings, and his ex-wife, Andrea Cotton, comes back into his life after a 23-year absence. He is reluctant to get involved, but intrigued too. He makes an assignation with her for that very night at Shigetoshi Swenson's Catfish and Sushi House, where he regales her with the locally brewed sake (wine is a thing of the distant past) and the only sushi left on this picked-over planet: catfish, tilapia, and the always-in-demand crappy roll. And so begins his new career and his newly kindled romance.« less
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
