A Friend of the Earth

Reviews

“As disaster tales go, this is a sly, hip one. . . . Boyle has always liked to play circus barker for life's extremes and what better freak show than the environmental apocalypse itself?”—The Washington Post

“Fiction about ecological disaster tends to be written in a tragic key. Boyle, by contrast, favors the darkly comic.”—Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction

“Both entertaining and informative . . . hits like a warning shot from twenty-five years into the future.”—Chicago Tribune

“A Friend of the Earth is about people and nature coming to terms with each other. In many ways it is a far more convincing argument for sustainable living in nature than any nonfiction environmental tract.”—San Francisco Chronicle

“Boyle gives us a vivid, grim, hilarious portrait of our world . . . he has a marvelous gift for translating large-scale environmental scenarios into immediate, palpable terms . . . What gives A Friend of the Earth's comically dismal future its bite is how profoundly it is embedded in the present . . . Boyle's energetic prose achieves a fine balance between wacky comedy and serious reflection.”—The San Diego Union-Tribune

“Ripped from tomorrow's headlines, the ecobiography of Tyrone Tierwater—failed monkeywrencher, ex-husband, ex-con, ex-zookeeper of the last Patagonian fox, and still-grieving father of the tree-dwelling Sierra, a twenty-first-century martyr to the redwoods.”—Outside

“The story careens along with the breathless authority of a roller coaster . . . In A Friend of the Earth, Boyle sets himself a new challenge, swinging a leg wide to plant a foot solidly on new ground. Part antic comedy, part ecological intelligencer, part heartfelt plaint, it is a comic novel on grievous themes, a serious exploration of tragic truths. It not only marks Boyle's progress as a literary talent but demonstrates his consistent ability to entertain.”—Los Angeles Times

“Boyle is still one of the most inventive and exhilerating novelists around, showing how you can drive a narrative and still have fun with language.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer

“Boyle’s wonderful writing is simultaneously wild, talky, and charming. If A Friend of the Earth is a provoker of conscience, it is also—and foremost—rich entertainment.”—The Cleveland Plain Dealer Expand reviews