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Narrated by T. C. Boyle
T. C. BoyleUnabridged — 2 hours, 24 minutes
Narrated by T. C. Boyle
T. C. BoyleUnabridged — 2 hours, 24 minutes
This is the title story from the collection Wild Child and was originally published in McSweeney's.
It is at the end of the eighteenth century, in the new French Republic, when the savage is first seen outside the village of Lacaune. The boy quickly becomes a legend among the townsfolk. Is he truly a human child or a wild beast?
“Wild Child” is based on the story of Victor of Aveyron, the feral child brought from the French wilderness to Paris in an attempt to civilize him. It is the story of a boy who, at the tender age of five, had his throat slit in the forest and was left for dead. It follows him from his capture by the villagers of Lacaune to his lessons with Jean-Marc Gaspard Itard, a doctor specializing in teaching the deaf and mute.
The 14 pieces in this collection showcase the skills of a master—of the ironic, the absurd, the tragic—forced by the confines of the form to shed his characteristic indulgences in favor of precision-cut narratives.
—The Washington Post
In the past Mr. Boyle has often told such tall tales in order to make some blackly humorous points about the dark side of the American dream and the surreal nature of history in the late 20th century, as the country lurched from the counterculture '60s and '70s into the greed-is-good '80s and '90s. In this volume, however, you get the sense that he has no larger philosophical point to make, that he is simply bent on entertaining the reader—on delivering some good, old-fashioned, funny-suspenseful-head-shaking stories.
—The New York Times
The title novella in Boyles's ninth collection is as good as anything the prolific author of The Women has written. Basing his story on the historical Victor of Aveyron, the feral child discovered in the wilds of France in 1797 and slowly brought to heel indoors under the patient but understandably frustrated doctor Jean-Marc Gaspard Itard, Boyle interrogates history with an experienced reader's wariness of sentimental revisionism and a great writer's attention to precisely what defines the child's wildness. The 13 other stories are a grab bag of Boyles's signature modes and are, therefore, mixed. There's “Question 62,” a by-the-numbers suburban comedy concerning an escaped tiger; “La Concita,” a dutiful requiem for baby boomer ordinary guyism; and “Sin Dolor,” a bona fide Borgesian legend about a child whose inability to feel pain fails to protect him from more subtle wounds. Stronger material is found in “The Lie,” about a man who lies about his newborn baby's death to get out of work, comprising one of the book's few surprises. What's largely missing is experimentation, intimacy and deviation from a catalogue throughout which Boyle has proven himself doggedly reliable; one wonders when this wild child got housebroken. (Jan.)
The usual darkly comic cautionary tales, but also some bracingly and impressively new works from the prolific author (The Women, 2009, etc.). Many of these 13 short stories echo a bit too closely Boyle's numerous earlier envisionings of human greed and stupidity, and the harsh ways in which nature outwits and punishes us all. In "La Conchita," the delivery of a human liver destined for transplant is compromised by an epic California mudslide. How to vote on a resolution to protect indigenous wildlife ("Question 62") assumes new meaning for a gentle young widow when a mountain lion begins patrolling her neighborhood. A high-school biology teacher learns just how impassioned the debate over evolution vs. creationism has become ("Bulletproof"); a lonely widower acquires an unconventional pet, incurring the interference of "Thirteen Hundred Rats"; and a veteran babysitter indulges the wishes of a childless rich couple who replace their late Afghan hound with a ridiculously expensive cloned canine ("Admiral"). Boyle nods off elsewhere, in the limp tale of a Botoxed beauty's unrequited love for her sleek surgeon ("Hands On"), and in depictions of neighborhood enmity exacerbated by wildfires ("Ash Monday") and drug-addicted vocalists pretending to rediscover their humanity while recording a Christmas novelty tune ("Three Quarters of the Way to Hell"). But he's at his best in an icy portrayal of a contemptible new dad who exploits his baby daughter to enable his shiftlessness ("The Lie"), and in "Sin Dolor," the tale of a boy born unable to feel pain and victimized by both his greedy father and the amoral physician who sees only material for a revolutionary case study. Better still is the titlenovella, a rich reimagining of the story of the Wild Boy of Aveyron, a feral innocent who deserves a better fate than forced integration into "civilization," which inevitably destroys him. With each book Boyle becomes a more adventurous and interesting writer.
Superlative author T.C. Boyle is also an excellent reader of his own work. His voice is purely American West—flat-voweled , pleasantly modulated, with a hint of a baritone growl. He reads without vocal flourish, but with an intensity that captures the listener and won't let go. It's pell-mell without being rushed; urgent but not desperate; entirely articulate. And such stories. The fate of a boy who cannot feel pain; the way in which a California mudslide can save a soul; a girl who may or may not lie for her father. Stories that feel simultaneously quotidian and mythic. My only quibble is that the pauses between stories hardly leave time for a breath (or a reflection). No matter. This is a mesmerizing audiobook experience. A.C.S. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine
| BN ID: | 2940169575989 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Blackstone Audio, Inc. |
| Publication date: | 11/15/2013 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
