- Hardcover: 288 pages
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC (22 Oct 2001)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0747553270
- ISBN-13: 978-0747553274
- Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 16 x 3.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 2,029,781 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
After the Plague
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More About the Author
Product Description
Salman Rushdie
'Boyles with life, language, comedy, energy and other forms of weirdness'
Bret Easton Ellis
'The finest craftsman current American fiction has'
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I was not a real short story lover before this collection. I found short stories did not have the vastness, the depth I like in a story, particularly when dealing with horror. But Boyle is special and his short stories are so deep with bleakness, so black with direness that within two or three pages we are glued to the subject and reading the story along faster and faster than it takes to tell or turn the pages. Just this density is essential and fascinating. The characters are definitely elaborate enough in small successive touches that they are alive in front of our eyes. But what makes the short stories remarkable is the end, the punch-line page or detail. There, in about ten lines, he twists the story and makes it become so cruel, so mentally twisted, so brutally revelatory that we stand there breathless in front of this ending and review each story backward and wonder how we could have reached such a morbid or insane ending without the use of any supernatural means. Just the psychology of his characters within the framework of their society. Psychotic is the word, most of the time, and we are all like that because society is like that. We are living in a psychotic world. Even worse. We have to be psychotic to survive in this world. And that psychotic survival instinct leads some people to extreme situations that end up in the media under the title of crime or lunacy or mentally impairedness. A brilliant writer indeed.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines
Format:Paperback
A series of short stories, each perfectly structured to lure you in and keep you reading to a satisfying conclusion. No over complex characters but all realised fully. Elegant easily understood prose. Themes ranging from the title piece's variation on post apocalyptic to a bizare look at obsession and prejudice. This is what good literature should be about. Not at all arty but well crafted.
3 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
T C Boyle is one of the best short story writers currently at work. Here he is at his best; the stories are haunting and quirky, and the prose is compulsively readable but littered with idiosyncrasies. Some of the conceits don't work, but it's a fine supplement to the sixty-odd pieces in the US-issued "T C Boyle Stories" volume that came out a couple of years ago.
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