Wetback's Comeback The "Tortilla Curtain" is the name given to the border which Mexicans have to penetrate to get to the promised land of California. When Delaney Mossbacher, "liberal humanist" and Californian environmentalist, accidentally hits Candido, a Mexican "wetback", with his freshly-waxed Japanese car, the consequences lead the two men - yoked by misfortune, ignorance and prejudice - to ruin each other's lives. This, Boyle's sixth novel, examines America's guerilla war between haves and have-nots with a zing unequalled since Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities. For Delaney and Kyra, his second wife ("the undisputed volume leader at Mike Bender Reality, Inc."), the promised land means a vacuum-sealed existence of tofu-kebabs and high-tech hypocrisy at the Arroyo Blanco Estate. For Candido and his pregnant teenage wife, America, it means scratching a feral existence in a land polluted by greed. Satirising the life of the Californian middle classes is all too easy to do, and Boyle sets about it with the relish of a coyote among turkeys. Delaney and Kyra are rivetingly frightful: "Joggers, non-smokers, social drinkers, and if not full-blown vegetarians, people who were conscious of their intake of animal fats." Every nuance of their hellish sincerity is exquisitely rendered, yet interleaved are uncomfortable questions: why should California be providing jobs when it has a 10 per cent unemployment rate? Why should the haves be forced to live with the have-nots? The ironies of a self-interested middle class versus a desperate underclass are rendered with even-handed malice, particularly in Delaney's nature column, worthy of comparison with that of the immortal Boot, and a Mexican-style estate in which a wall is built by illegal immigrants to keep themselves out. It is in describing the life of the Mexicans that Boyle rises above satire. Candido, at first too emblematic, takes on a convincing depth and anger as, beaten, cheated and derided he staggers on, indomitably resourceful and improbabh honest. America gets work scrubbing statuettes with corrosive cleaner, and is later raped by two syphilitic immigrants. Her sufferings are even more heart-rending than Candido's, because she - and her baby - are so innocent. Both the title and the subject echo Steinbeck. Yet where Tortilla Flat revealed the humanity of poor immigrants. even allowing them occasional happiness, Boyle is relentless -landslide piled on top of fire. not one moment of compassion. The ironies of America's extremes are so pointed that they need careful handling in order to avoid jabbing into either journalism or polemic. Though this may be the most depressing novel of 1995, it is a measure of Boyle's gifts that it is also one of the most memorable. |