Drop City

By: T. C. Boyle

Narrated by: Richard Poe

Length: 18 hrs and 34 mins

Publisher's summary

The best-selling, PEN-Faulkner award-winning author of The Tortilla Curtain, T.C. Boyle is hailed as "America's most imaginative contemporary novelist" ( Newsweek). In 1970, a California commune pulls up stakes and moves to the harsh interior of Alaska. The members establish Drop City, a back-to-the-land town, on a foundation of peace and free love. But their idealism cannot prevent tension from rippling through the group. The results are anything but predictable in this honest, surprising evocation of a time period and its enduring beliefs.

©2003 T. Coraghessan Boyle (P)2003 Recorded Books, LLC

Critic reviews

"Boyle understands the multitudinous, sneaky ways innocence insulates itself from ambiguity, but in this novel he leavens that cynical insight with genuine sweetness. While the Day-Glo of the hippie era has long since faded, this novel brings it all back home, and helps us see how much in the American grain it all really was." (Publishers Weekly
"Boyle captures the drop-out-and-get-back-to-the-land spirit of the era, as well as the chill and isolation of the Alaska winter, with a clarity that has earned him a reputation as one of our best writers. Highly recommended." (Library Journal)
"An accomplished, versatile storyteller and discerning social observer, Boyle writes with enthralling momentum and seductive detail." (Booklist)
"Boyle may be the most entertaining writer in America." (Boston Globe)
"One of the most inventive and verbally exuberant writers of his generation." (The New York Times)

Characters to Care about

I loved this book, my second TC Boyle read! Two stories develop simultaneously, each with oddball yet interesting characters doing things on the edge. When they merge about half way through, I was surprised that these seemingly disparate characters not only mesh well together, but actually bring out some of the best (and worst) in each other. As with "The Tortilla Curtain," the ending might leave some readers feeling like they just dropped of the edge of a cliff--there is more to know, more that I want to know about these characters. And the hopeful note it ends on, also like the previous book, kepts me licking my lips for another taste of their lives.

Magnificent, compelling: A masterpiece

TC Boyle has long been the American master of the short story. His novels, however, are oddly long, windy, wordy and boring...except Drop City. The book is thrilling, the narrator a perfect match. The characters are true, the plot a deeply felt adventure among man, woman and the earth. The beginning is a story of the '70's, set near Guerneville, California. A bunch of dropouts land there, living off the "fat of the land," i.e. the money that one of them has inherited from his uncle. They posture, get stoned and stay that way, make lame fun of the society that has produced them, eat organic everything and remain smugly absorbed in their world view, until Sonoma County discovers the filth they live in. When the bulldozers arrive, they repair to Alaska, naively led by Norm, the guy with the bread. The book grows in scope and ambition as they arrive, so ill-equipped to survive yet so proud of themselves that they fairly burst. Richard Poe tells the story with passion and empathy for these lost children, who could simply be "figures of fun," an expression Boyle has used about other characters in his work. In Alaska they find their fate, which in many instances is not pretty. They also find a couple, Sess and Pamela, who are living out the dream with bravery, courage, smarts and determination to spare. There are true villains and several true heroes. At the end, which you sincerely never want to come, you are so deeply moved by the talent of both Boyle and Poe that you immediately return to Audible looking for a sequel, something that Boyle has never done in his entire career, to my knowledge. Tortilla Curtain is his only other successful novel, I feel, and I hope Audible can get these two guys together again for that. For now, I am reverberating with the book's end, thinking about what will happen to Sess, Pamela, Marco and "Star." This work is up there among my four or five favorite audiobooks, and I will come back to it again and again. It gives me hope for the human condition.

Conflicted

Narrator was okay once settled in
Recording could have been better
Speed up seem to make it not as bad
Story keep me listening with interest
Ending for some characters left me conflicted
as to why left in a happy spot to jump to evil deeds
sort to speak
And some where are they?
I think just because you are a crybaby doesn't mean you turn evil.
I don't know, it's like Cain &Able over a chick in some parts
Overall though it kept me in the story
Just the Ending kind of left me conflicted on the characters thinking processes
Just two cents thrown into the pot
Good Luck

Fabulous story, mediocre narrator

T.C. Boyle's "Drop City" is a wonderful novel, and one that benefits from being read aloud. The author's command of the language is both masterful and inventive. It is unfortunate that this mischievous, captivating tale is conveyed through a voice both rasping and nasal. (I ended up downloading the audiobook a second time, at a higher quality recording, in hopes this would be ameliorated). In addition, the narrator employs some decidedly odd pronunciations. Granted, T.C. Boyle has an extensive vocabulary - one of the joys of reading his work, in my opinion - but I don't think it is too much to ask that "banal" and "eschew" be pronounced correctly. In spite of all this, I recommend the audiobook.

awesome ending totally worth it

in the end I loved it. It was not a struggle to finish it once I got to the final third of the book.

Captures the day, the 60’s, and the call of the wild

Boyle weaves two stories together with great clarity.
The descriptions of the hippie commune and the life in the Alaskan wilderness which collide head first will keep you riveted.

Perfect

I hated every moment that I had to pause this audio book! I really admire the author’s ability to weave several distinct perspectives together so seamlessly. The narrator is a perfect match for the story and characters. This one will be going in my “favorites” collection.

interesting listen

I found the book a very interesting listen. It was a true picture of one type of lifestyle in the late 60's and early 70's. However, I found it to be little more than an interesting portrait of the times. It ended abruptly, leaving one to wonder, "What was the point?" There was no real conclusion. The author just stopped writing.

1960s commune life, come to life.

This is the third book by Boyle that I have read and each of them is completely different from the other, but equally as good as the other. He sets his books so well. The time and place is so perfectly drawn that you are fully transported. I was a child in the 1960s and 1970s and the whole hippie lifestyle is fascinating to me. I love that Boyle took me there. For the time I was reading this book my name was Sunshine, I was young and free and unconstrained by responsibility.

the narrator makes this novel even better

this is a great novel, made even better by a superb narrator . Keep those novels coming!