To Live and Cry in L.A. Fans of T. Coraghessan Boyle may be a little disappointed at first by his latest book. The Tortilla Curtain hasn't got as much of Boyle's patented bizarreness as, say, "World's End" or "Water Music." This novel is more humane, less flip and more political than earlier tales, but not to fear: Boyle hasn't turned straight. He is still America's most imaginative contemporary novelist, and "Tortilla Curtain" is a strong addition to his collected works. It follows a half year in the lives of two very different couples in Los Angeles. Delaney Mossbacher lives an orderly, peaceful life of liberal humanism with his wife, Kyra Meneker-Mossbacher, and her 6-year-old son, Jordan, in a sterile, expensive subdivision nestled in the canyons outside L.A. Delaney writes a column for the nature monthly Wide Open Spaces that celebrates the fauna and flora surrounding his home. He is deeply touched by the plight of the pupfish, the ocelot, the spotted owl. He eats healthy food (mainly vegetarian) and champions the rights of lesser individuals. He believes that everyone, immi-grants included, should have equal opportunities to fulfill the American Dream. Delaney's wife, Kyra, sells prime real estate, homes that fetch prices well into the millions of dollars. She knows what buyers want and empathizes with their need to feel safe-especially, goodness knows, since the Los Angeles riots. But, in true Boyle style, the Mossbachers' comfortable complacency hits some bumps. Things go wrong, starting with Delaney's car accident with a Mexican pedestrian. A car is stolen, neighbors' homes vandalized, Spanish graffiti painted on the community wall (against the construction of which Delaney has fought a losing battle with his neighbors and his wife), squatters sighted in Delaney's beloved canyon, and worse. Threats to the Mossbachers' liberal equilibrium continue to pop up in the form of wildlife, fires and storms and-all too frequently-Mexican immigrants. Like the other couple. Cdndido Rincon and his young, pregnant wife, America (Boyle is rubbing our noses in it shamelessly), live at present not too far from the Mossbachers-camping in a ravine in the canyon, hiding out from la Migra (the U.S. Immigration Service). They speak no English, but they still dream the American Dream. They have no money, no food, no jobs, no papers-and so far no luck. They spend their days searching desperately for the work that will bring them money for an apartment before the rainy season starts and before their baby is born. They find occasional work, but mostly they are brutalized and victimizednot just by the Anglo world but by their own countrymen, by sheer rotten luck and by the forces of nature itself. The Mossbachers and the Rincons meet in typically overthe-top Boyle style: Delaney at the wheel of his silver Acura, the hapless Cdndido in his way. After the collision, their lives intertwine in ways unexpected and bizarre but entirely believable, as the novel hurtles to its catastrophe. Screenplay potential: There isn't a contemporary American writer who can top T Coraghessan Boyle's vivid prose and ironic style. He has set "Tortilla Curtain" in his adopted home of Los Angeles, so this may have been less of an imaginative stretch for him than some of his previous, more far-flung novels, but his imagination is still his best asset. Boyle writes partly from within the mind of each of his characters (although not so much that the screenplay potential isn't immediately obvious). He never loses his cynicism, even when writing of those with whom he is most sympathetic, the pitiful Rincons. Despite his wry, humorous take on their lives, Boyle also lets us see humanity in the Mossbachers. He slyly makes us want to dismiss them and their neighbors; we chuckle at their idiosyncrasies and feel smugly superior to their insular, selfish, bigoted greediness. We pity them their worry over integration and declining realestate values. But in the end Boyle doesn't allow us to despise them; instead, he makes us face something of ourselves in them. We understand their fear, their desperation to feel safe in their homes. We know in our hearts that they are afraid of the wrong thing, but we don't know how to allay the fears because we're not sure just who-or what-the real enemy is. We are not even completely sure, in the end, whose lives are the more horrific. |