She Treads Softly: I Walk Between the Raindrops: Stories

Saturday, September 10, 2022

I Walk Between the Raindrops: Stories

I Walk Between the Raindrops: Stories by T. C. Boyle
9/13/22; 288 pages
HarperCollins

I Walk Between the Raindrops: Stories by T. C. Boyle is a very highly recommended collection of thirteen imaginative and irresistible short stories.

The stories range from the reactions of a wealthy couple amidst a variety of experiences, passengers quarantined on a cruise ship, a society controlled by a social credit system, a man kills a rattlesnake in his yard, an author faces his paternity of a young man, a man makes a deal with an elderly woman, a man being evicted by his parents and more.

Boyle writes excellent short stories and I Walk Between the Raindrops is a superb addition to his oeuvre. The writing is impeccable, providing concise descriptions of characters and situations while establishing the plot and setting. The stories cover both realistic situations and surrealistic ones and are set both in the past and the future. They can be simultaneously funny and serious. Some of the stories are idiosyncratic character studies, others veer toward social commentary, and some are futuristic. I thoroughly enjoyed this collection.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of HarperCollins via NetGalley.

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John Updike's six rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wished to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.

2. Give him enough direct quotation--at least one extended passage--of the book's prose so the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.

3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.

4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending.

5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

To these concrete five might be added a vaguer sixth, having to do with maintaining a chemical purity in the reaction between product and appraiser.....Review the book, not the reputation.... Better to praise and share than blame and ban. The communion between reviewer and his public is based upon the presumption of certain possible joys in reading, and all our discriminations should curve toward that end.