The Tortilla Curtain - T.C. Boyle

T. C. Boyle is one of those writers I've always heard about but never read. The Tortilla Curtain is considered his most popular novel, so I thought I'd start with this one. Boyle's writing style is very straight-forward and easy to follow. The Tortilla Curtain is the story of two couples -- one is white, relatively weathly, and living in a community outside Los Angeles. The other is Mexican, illegally in the country, and trying to find work as day laborers while living out in the brush. The wealthy community, afraid for their safety, agrees to build a security wall around their homes. And so the arguments about illegal immigration and the need for the United States to protect its borders is played out. Both the white and the Mexican characters argue amongst themselves about the best way to survive in the world -- while the story is a bit repetitive, Boyle does an excellent job of portraying the desperation of the immigrants, their struggle for a better life and their constant and real fear of exploitation. On the American side, Boyle shows how scapegoating and illogical fear blinds his characters and leads to unnecessary tragedy. This is the kind of book I wish I'd been assigned to read in college -- some of the brief commentary I've read on the web suggests that Boyle was criticized when the book first came out as being a racist, but my general impression after finishing the novel was that it was very much about acceptance and the need to figure out a solution -- not to the "immigration problem", but to the need for all people to have the opportunity to live a life of basic dignity. This is a book, I think, that could spark some heated, but very necessary, discussions about immigration and the disparity of wealth in our country. Like Cormac McCarthy's The Road, this is one I'm going to keep thinking about for awhile.