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The Tortilla Curtain
- Narrated by: T. C. Boyle
- Length: 11 hrs and 47 mins
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From the moment a freak accident brings Candido and Delany into intimate contact, these four and their opposing worlds gradually intersect in what becomes a tragicomedy of error and misunderstanding.
Winner of the Prix Medicis Etranger and now a major motion picture.
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From the vivid opening vista, high in craggy mountains, to the final haunting glimpse of a moonlit canyon, Nevada Barr's first mystery, Track of the Cat, instantly caught the attention of readers and reviewers. Its popularity gained it both an Agatha and an Anthony Award.
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Guadalupe Mountain Mystery
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What would it be like, to get absolute power? Would you wear a cape and fight crime? Rule the planet? Or perhaps you would be like Rob Lewis, and watch your world collapse around you. Does absolute power corrupt absolutely? Rob is going to find out.
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At one point the main character rapes at 13 year old girl
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Turtle Moon transports the listener to Verity, Florida, a place where anything can happen during the month of May, when migrating sea turtles come to town, mistaking the glow of the streetlights for the moon. A young single mother is murdered in her apartment and her baby is gone. Keith, a 12-year-old boy in the same apartment building also disappears. In pursuit of the baby, the boy and the killer, are Keith's divorced mother and a cop who himself was once considered the meanest boy in town.
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American Radical nightmare!
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Botswana, 1976: Isaac Muthethe thinks he is dead. Smuggled across the border from South Africa in a hearse, he awakens covered in dust, staring at blue sky and the face of White Dog. Far from dead, he is, for the first time, in a country without apartheid. A medical student in South Africa, he was forced to flee after witnessing a friend murdered by white members of the South African Defense Force.
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Unexpectedly Stunning Work!
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Lauren Groff’s acclaimed debut novel The Monsters of Templeton was short-listed for the Orange Prize. Her second novel, Arcadia opens in the late 1960s with a group of young idealists forming a commune in western New York State. Into this group is born Bit, who grows into a quiet, distant man. Over the course of 50 years, Bit witnesses the utopia crumble and the world change in unimaginable ways.
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Luscious prose, intimate and realistic
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Rabbit, Run
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Rabbit, Run is the book that established John Updike as one of the major American novelists of his - or any other - generation. Its hero is Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, a onetime high-school basketball star who on an impulse deserts his wife and son. He is 26 years old, a man-child caught in a struggle between instinct and thought, self and society, sexual gratification and family duty - even, in a sense, human hard-heartedness, and divine Grace. Though his flight from home traces a zigzag of evasion, he holds to the faith that he is on the right path.
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A Thinking Man's Novel
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The Lost Country
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Billy Edgewater is a harbinger of doom. Estranged from his family, discharged from the navy and touched by a rising desperation, he sets out hitchhiking home to East Tennessee, where his father is slowly dying. On the road, separately, are Sudy and Bradshaw, brother and sister, and a one-armed con man named Roosterfish. All, in one way or another, have their pasts and futures embroiled with D. L. Harkness, a predator in all the ways there are.
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The author is a professor of English
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What listeners say about The Tortilla Curtain
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
- Julie
- 09-13-06
What a talented author & narrator!
I have now read or listened to several TC Boyle novels and have enjoyed each of them very much. He has a great range of subjects and styles. In The Tortilla Curtain he takes on a heavier theme (than, say, in Drop City -- also highly recommended), and it was an eye-opening look at the plight of Mexicans who are trying to improve their lot in life. I enjoyed all of the subtle and not-so-subtle ironies when comparing the lives of the characters. This would make a good discussion book for a book club.
Most of all, though, I was inpsired to write this review after seeing some of the criticism of TC Boyle as a narrator for one of his other books. In The Tortilla Curtain, his narration was excellent -- one of the best I have heard!
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26 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Bill Penn
- 06-14-06
Thought-provoking, enthralling
This is a parallel tale of Delaney and Candido, a "have" and a "have not" whose lives intersect. Boyle contrasts the lives of both without parody or accusation, and, without being preachy or heavy-handed, Boyle opens our eyes to the plight of illigal immigrants. I really enjoyed listening to the author read his work.
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15 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Molly-o
- 05-11-09
Disappointing
I was looking forward to reading this book because there aren't very many novels written about the Mexican immigrant experience. I found this book, however, full of stereotypes and written in a way that my senses were offended. The points he wanted to make were lost in the poor writing and insight into how to make characters come alive on the page. I stopped listening to it 3/4 of the way through.
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13 people found this helpful
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Overall
- G.
- 07-24-07
TC Boyle, Hmmm
Everyone I know loves TC, but I dunno. I realize that when he tells a story it's more about the heart of the characters then the plot, but what we end up with is a slow and not altogether believable yarn. The way he creates a stereotypical--cultural viewpoint was so predictable, I felt like I was reading an outline, not a real story...
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10 people found this helpful
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- Mimi
- 10-07-11
Can't stop thinking about it
I listened to this book last spring and it still haunts me. It was just one preposterous thing after another, intertwined with a story that needs to be told in some way, but I don't feel this was it. Having grown in up East Los Angeles and having been around Mexican immigrants all of my life, I have never seen one of them wearing a serape or huaraches, which I felt was a bit trite in this story. Also I took issue with the reader using Spanish words and not pronouncing them correctly (such as "guero").
I appreciate that the author was trying to tell a story from all viewpoints, but in the end, I was left unhappy by this story.
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9 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Irishconfusion
- 08-18-07
Too little too late
I found this book to be quite tedious. The narrator did not appeal to me at all. But even worse, I kept waiting for the two story lines in this book to intersect. They finally do. Unfortunately I had to wait until the very last minute of the book for this to happen. I was disappointed.
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9 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Happy Camper
- 08-09-06
Well Done
Great read by the author narrator, enjoyed listening to the book and would highly recommend it to anyone. Thought provoking, a great view from both sides of the fence. Encourages analysis of our own thoughts and feelings for others, especially those that are less fortunate.
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9 people found this helpful
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- KP
- 04-05-12
The Tortilla Curtain
I loved this book! I think my main reasons for liking it have to do with how much there is to think about and analyze within it. It???s a dark satire like Farenheit 451, Clockwork Orange, or Lord of the Flies in which the author is presenting a negative picture of the way our society deals with illegal immigration. He does this by juxtaposing the stories of an upper-middle class, yuppy couple and then a homeless, suffering illegal immigrant couple. I saw a lot of comments by readers who felt the book was too stereotyped or over exaggerated. However, I think that was intentional and done for the very purpose of creating a satire to make us look at ourselves.
The story is really good, and I felt compelled to keep listening until I finished. I really wanted to hear how it would all end. I love it when I???m swept along in a story like that.
The comparisons and contrasts between the two couples as the story moves along are actually humorous in their stark differences. For example, when Candido, the immigrant, is walking up and down the canyon on his way to and from looking for work, he barely has shoes, is essentially starving, has no hat, no sunscreen, etc etc. Next we see the main, yuppy character, Delaney, hiking in the same canyon with expensive hiking boots, bottled water, sunscreen, gourmet trail mix, etc, etc. The comparison would be comical if it weren???t so sad. This type of comparison goes on throughout the book.
T.C. Boyle makes America take a look at how we deal with ???the other.??? The main ???others??? in the book are the Mexican illegals, There is a lot of imagery about walls and fences to keep them out, however, he seems to compare them to a force of nature, like wild animals, firestorms, or floods, that really can???t be kept out or controlled no matter how hard you try. And trying could just possibly ruin you in the process. Thus Delaney???s fences and walls, in the end, are useless, and we see Delaney himself descend into a kind of madness as he tries harder and harder to make sense of it all and keep the control that he so desperately wants.
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8 people found this helpful
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Overall
- john
- 08-08-10
Entertaining..Yet Stereotypical & Over the Top
This book was the first I have read/listened to of Boyle. I thought it was entertaining and easy to listen to quickly. The problems I had with the book were his representation of illegal immigrants and use of natural disasters. I shall omit talking about the later. Boyle portrays illegal immigrants as slobs, vial, and the only Spanish that Boyle employs to communicate the main characters' thoughts is either degrading or filthy (to match their appearance that Boyle presents). I thought this was too easy; because he portraits illegals just the way I, unfortunately, imagine them (What am I to expect when I call them illegals). I wish he would have given me a different perspective other than that which I am inundated with by the media. This book made me wonder if he has ever met and illegal...
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7 people found this helpful
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Overall
- CBDC
- 07-31-07
Too stylized
The subject is important and the differences in perspectives between residents and illegal immgrants is key, but all main characters are overdone and charactures. There is enough reality for me to wish the author had written the same story, but with more humanity and sensitiviity.
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7 people found this helpful