Author: T.C. Boyle.
Publisher: Liveright Publishing Corporation [A Division of W.W. Norton].
Copyright 2023.
Pages: 384.
Price: $25.33 (Hardcover)
A quarter of a century after the release of T.C. Boyle’s environmental masterpiece, the seminal A Friend of the Earth(2000), here he comes again with another wildly entertaining prognostication specifically intended to capture our attention concerning the deep deep trouble that Mother Earth is in. And, predictably, as dire as the circumstances were then, the more cataclysmic they are now. One of Boyle’s heroes, E.O. Wilson, America’s preeminent biologist, has made the point that mankind is eating itself down the food chain, and Blue Skies looks up at that phenomenon from the very bottom where meat is too expensive, fish is too toxic, and agricultural crops are too water demanding causing all to be so expensive that the only obvious solution are the insects and various worms. Yum, yum. And, he’s just getting started.
Hurricanes on the east coast, and drought and wildfires on the West coast make human habitation in the choicest real estate locations an iffy proposition, not that internet influencer Cat (Catherine) Rivers, and her swashbuckling and very handsome boyfriend Todd, a brand ambassador of Bacardi liquor, are too concerned. Both are living testaments to the fact that life is easier for the beautiful, and they use their looks to their fullest advantage. Todd’s out stump jumping around America promoting his product line more than she would like, and boredom and the need to separate herself from the herd of market share mediocrity cause her to purchase a Burmese Python to wear as “living jewellery” on her posts and as a conversation starter (or stopper) in local bars. Cat is used to being the center of attention, and this purchase literally guarantees that she will be, while Todd is so narcissistic as to never assume that he isn’t the center of attention. A match made at the altar of ego. They live in a beach house Todd’s deceased mother has left him on the Atlantic coast outside of Jacksonville, Florida.
Over on the left coast, Cat’s brother Cooper is an environmental warrior only too ready to fall on his own sword, or failing that, ever at the ready to condemn those who did not share in his passion, starting with his mother Ottilie:
Because of her son, because he was an entomologist and because she loved him and because it was the right thing to do, Ottilie decided to add insects to her diet. She resisted at first, but Cooper wore her down. The death of the planet, that was his theme. The Anthropocene, our species a curse, et cetera. The polar bears. The monarchs. The frogs. “The planet’s dying, can’t you see that Mom?” he’d asked – or actually, demanded – the last time he was over for dinner, which was almost two months ago now, plenty of time to consider all the angles(p. 25).
These are the four central characters, although Boyle excludes Todd from this status on his website, and there are more than a few peripheral ones to flesh out the story: Ottilie’s husband Frank, a seasoned medical doctor, which is a convenient way to document how sick people are becoming due to a vast array of environmentally related maladies. Conner’s first girlfriend Mari, a bookish tick researcher, and his better-built second girlfriend Elytra, who was as wild and free-floating as her beloved butterflies. Snake handlers, barmaids, a horney ex-girlfriend, undertakers, law enforcement, obnoxious house guests, termite exterminators. But the two most transformative characters are Cat and Cooper, who like Mother Earth herself, were shortly headed for unspeakable tragedies.
On a field trip with Mari, Cooper gets bitten by a rare tick that is the vector of an even rarer disease; so rare, in fact, no one knows much about it, except that its toxins are lethal and there is no way to stop their spread throughout his body save to amputate his arm just below his right elbow. There is no other answer that can be found fast enough, it has to be done. This is devastating for Cooper, but the collateral damage alsoaffectsOttilie as she deals with the aftermath:
Life went on, of course, it did, no matter how many blows you had to take, and this was as bad as it got, this brought her to her knees. Her son, her only son, was maimed. For life. For all his days, even if he lived into the next century, a father, a grandfather, a great-grandfather, a centenarian, he’d be less than whole, incomplete, crippled, the sort of figure people shun in a crowd or pity or mock or just turn their back on. A week ago he was fine, healthy, perfectly proportioned –handsome as a movie star, actually, her son, her shining son – and now she could barely bear to look at him. She would have given her own arm, both her arms if she could have spared him that. But she couldn’t. They had to take a scalpel and a bone saw to him to save his life and she knew that, Frank explained it to her, over and over, but the minute they wheeled him into the operating room something got inside of her and started gnawing. She couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t think of anything but that raw bandaged stump where his arm used to be (p. 106).
Cooper took it much worse. This species of tick probably wouldn’t have even evolved if the environment it now inhabited hadn’t become so compromised by mankind. Although fitted with working prosthetics, he was embittered, angry, a professional grad student that just couldn’t graduate, and a real downer at family gatherings. But life went on; it had to.
Cat and Todd marry at her parent’s home on the California coast in a locale that is remarkably similar to Boyle’s home in Santa Barbara, California. He is presenting material here that he is intimately familiar with. The exquisitely planned reception becomes an unmitigated disaster as a windstorm blows everything away forcing about 100 attendees indoors. Just when everyone settles into cramped quarters, there is an all too familiar electrical brownout, and the heat becomes oppressive. Hope is kept alive when the power is restored, but the caterer ups and quits refusing to cook with electricity. No matter, everyone is forced to flee when a wildfire comes rolling over the hill headed straight at them. Only Boyle could come up with this s—.
“Oh my God,” his mother said, and the whole room heard her in the stunned silence of the moment. “Is that what I think it is?”
The sirens started up then and his father threw open the back door, whether that was advisable or not, and before anyone could think, they were all out on the patio, the wind hurtling debris at them and the smoke infesting their noses and mouths and throats. People cursed. The wind screamed. And the fire was already on the ridge behind them, turning night into day(p. 132).
Cat is experiencing some success with her internet presence pumping up her number of followers who are apparently mesmerized by the exotic snake hung around her neck, and then by sponsors of baby products after she gives birth to two twin baby girls who are given the festive Generation Z names of Sierra and Tahoe. Todd was against this from the start, not wanting to be burdened with fatherhood or having something as uncool as baby seats, to say nothing of actual burping belching babies in the back seat of his sporty red Tesla. Nobody’s going to nominate him for Father of the Year, that’s for sure. They argue constantly, and he leaves often to drown his sorrows at numerous local bars, or as Cat starts to suspect, between the cleavage of any number of attractive barmaids he is familiar with because of his career aspirations.
Boyle is a master of portending catastrophe, but in this case, anyone that’s paying attention can see this trainwreck coming from a mile away. The author goes on almost ad infinitum about the threat that Burmese Pythons pose. Connor is apocalyptic about his sister harboring this environmental atrocity that is literally wiping out the Florida Everglades – invasive species – just one of the numerous environmental afflictions that we are now faced with, and Boyle presents a vast array of them, not in the dreaded “info dump” fashion, but as interesting asides and tidbits sprinkled through the narrative that masked the true depth of Boyle’s research effort; but it had to have been extensive.
Burmese Pythons can attain lengths in excess of 20 feet and weights above 200 pounds. Owners initially feed them mice, then rats, then rabbits as they just keep growing and growing; the reason for the annihilation of the Everglades, as owners eventually give up and simply set them “free.”In the wild, in their homeland, they are notorious for eating piglets, and when you think about it, piglets and human babies are about the same size and color and make approximately the same noises. After another of their endless fights, Todd storms off, an exhausted Cat sets the baby carriers on the living room rug and drifts off to sleep while forgetting all about her Pythonnamed “Willie II” who she was feeding a rabbit to in a large cardboard box. By now Willie II is eight feet long and not much interested in dead meat when fresh meat is so readily available. Cat wakes up to find that he has bitten and is in the process of strangling Sierra. She hits him, stabs him, rages at him, but the damage is done–Sierra is dead. In her confusion and anguish, the snake slithers off and disappears. Then the societal piling on commences. Todd, the authorities, Child Protective Services, outraged citizens, and especially the media. Cat is arrested and reviled and faces up to ten years in prison, but nothing the outside world can do to her can match what she is doing to herself:
Everybody left the day after the funeral…The flowers were wilting. The sun hung in the sky like a watch on a chain. There was the smell of something rotting in the refrigerator but she couldn’t figure out what it was, At least Todd was home –they gave him a week’s bereavement leave – but even that wasn’t doing a whole lot for her because every time he glanced at her she felt so eaten up with shame and self-loathing she could have dissolved right there on the spot. And there was nothing to do to take her mind off of it, absolutely nothing, She had Tahoe to keep her going, diapers, feeding, up and down, back and forth, but it was like walking on a treadmill. They got takeout, Chinese one night, pizza the next. Todd made the odd meal. They started drinking at lunchtime (p. 251).
This simply illustrates the self-absorption of the father, the naiveness of the mother, and the extreme misfortune of the child. Very few marriages can survive the death of a child, and this one, teetering on the brink, to begin with, would be no exception. They divorce. Todd relinquishes the beach home for her and his daughter, dutifully pays his alimony, and falls into the role of Disneyland Dad; there for the big events, there with the expensive presents, but happy when it’s all over with, happy to leave and go back to his own life.
Six years pass. Cat concentrates on being the best mom that she can possibly be to her remaining daughter. Connor somewhat softens and decides to marry Elytra. Ottilie and Frank deal with the wildfires, the water shortages, and the constant heat. The east coast is flooding while the west coast is burning. Things are bad. For cats, they just get worse, as a termite infestation eventually causes the beach house to tumble into the sea. Changes are in order. She decides to spurn her part-time waitressing job and get serious about a master’s degree and a meaningful job while returning home to California; what’s left of it, anyway. Ample fodder for a sequel, only Boyle is loath to write sequels.
Boyle is up to some of his old tricks here, challenging his dedicated fans to notice the subtle crumbs he drops.
She was thinking she’d like to hear a little music – by way of distraction, of clearing the atmosphere, bringing a little lilt to the proceedings…Or rock…every time Ottilieput on MaclovioPulchris, or even Bowie or Dylan(p. 341).
MaclovioPulchris, while not the central character(s) in A Friend of the Earth, is an instrumental one in order to drive the narrative. A retired pop star who has a menagerie of critically endangered species, he becomes the living (or perhaps dying) embodiment of the adage that, “No good deed goes unpunished.” This is because he is the last human being on earth to be eaten by the world’s last male lion that he’s harboring; the proof is evidenced in the lion being euthanized for his indiscretion. Why does Boyle do this just 27 pages before he brings this 367-page novel to a close? For some tongue-in-cheek fun perhaps, but more likely to draw a comparison between these two works and the disheartening parallel that the message wasn’t absorbed then, and most likely won’t be absorbed now. And, as a quirk of irony, Boyle draws both novels to a hopeful conclusion; which in this case is when Cooper takes his mother on a field trip to see if the monarch butterflies had returned to a traditional locale after the world had experienced an unexplainable mass insect die off.
At first she didn’t see them, or she did, but only the few that were separated from the mass and drifting free against the silken scrim of the branches. But Cooper, grinning,pointed straight ahead and there they were, long garlands of butterflies descending from the treetops, their wings folded, each a link in the chain. A wind stirred the trees – or maybe it was something else, a disturbance in the atmosphere, a ghosting of the new reality – and they began to separate, falling and rising like leaves if leaves could rise again. She tried to count them because that was what she was here for, but there were just too many (p. 367).
Boyle never tags a date in this entire work. My guess is 2030, or slightly thereafter. Why? Because the 10-year environmental tipping point expounded upon with the proposed Green New Deal in 2020 has obviously been reached in this narrative and then exceeded. The prophets amongst us, Boyle of the old school, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of the new school, have been scoffed at and ignored, and humanity is now doomed to pay for its unheeding callousness. Boyle sees this, accepts this, and yet he presents a thin ray of hope. When hope is all you have left, hope is what you cling to. Thus the novel’s coy title: Blue Skies, and Boyle’s selection for the book’s epigram, a show tune by Irving Berlin:
Blue skies
Smiling on me
Nothing but blue skies
Do I see.
