The Tortilla Curtain
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3.7 • 208 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
T.C. Boyle’s tragicomic, award-winning novel about assimilation, immigration, and the price of the American dream
“A masterpiece of contemporary social satire.” —The Wall Street Journal
Topanga Canyon is home to two couples on a collision course. Los Angeles liberals Delaney and Kyra Mossbacher lead an ordered sushi-and-recycling existence in a newly gated hilltop community: he a sensitive nature writer, she an obsessive realtor. Mexican immigrants Candido and America Rincon desperately cling to their vision of the American Dream as they fight off starvation in a makeshift camp deep in the ravine. And from the moment a freak accident brings Candido and Delaney into intimate contact, these four and their opposing worlds gradually intersect in what becomes a tragicomedy of error and misunderstanding.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
The American Dream gets brilliantly skewered in T. C. Boyle’s razor-sharp satire about the haves and have-nots. Delaney and Kyra Mossbacher’s affluent Los Angeles neighborhood is gated—to keep out people like Cándido and América Rincón, a married couple living in poverty on the edge of society. But when Delaney accidentally injures Cándido, the privileged and downtrodden couples’ worlds begin to intersect in ways none of them expected…or wanted. With one personal and cultural misunderstanding after another pushing all the characters toward disaster, resentments fester on both sides and the pressure mounts. Boyle takes a fearless look at prejudice and racism, making his novel as timely now as it was when it was originally published in 1995. This wickedly dark satire is daring and subversive, a West Coast version of Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Boyle's latest concerns two couples in Southern California--one a pair of wealthy suburbanites, the other illegal immigrants from Mexico.
Customer Reviews
Good read
I Read this book for a book club, it is a good story, parts of it get lengthy and over descriptive. Very good depiction of the story from an immigrants point of view. I felt the ending left you hanging and wanting more! Just when you think you are having a bad day read this book because you will see it can be worse!
Excellent Writing-Poor Edition
This book was a very good read. I wouldn't exactly say that I enjoyed it as it was a difficult subject. It was very well written and there is a lot to learn and a lot to be reminded of. T.C.Boyle really knows how to keep the reader engaged and how to write a great ending. However, this electronic edition had many problems. There were words in the wrong place, many misspelled words and just plain serious errors. I find it hard to believe that the original paper edition was so poorly edited.
Please Don’t
It’s so over-construed with meaningless details that it’s boring and not worth the time and effort. You can also tell that the novel is written from a cis straight white man’s perspective that it is so painful to trudge though. It was assigned to me for my sociology class and I want to somehow strangle myself with the pages of the book. Don’t get me wrong, I do like that it is trying to write from multiple perspectives (an illegal immigrant perspective and an entitled white man’s perspective), however it is so bogged down with meaningless language that it is simply hard to swallow. The story is okay, but how can I pay attention to the plot when it is so diluted with meaningless details. I don’t usually write book reviews, however I did not want to pass up writing this because I want to warn others that it is not worth it. Maybe by the end of the novel I’ll have a different perspective, but being half way through and having to drag my own mental health in order to read this drivel is a pretty bad sign that it probably will not get better.