Tooth and Claw

by T. C Boyle

Paperback, 2006

Status

Available

Collection

Literary Fiction

Genres

General Fiction

All Topics

Fiction

Publication

Bloomsbury Publishing PLC (2006), Edition: Export and UK open market ed, 304 pages

Description

Since his first collection of stories, Descent of Man, appeared in 1979, T.C. Boyle has become an acknowledged master of the form who has transformed the nature of short fiction in our time. Among the fourteen tales in his seventh collection are the comic yet lyrical title story, in which a young man wins a vicious African cat in a bar bet; "Dogology," about a suburban woman losing her identity to a pack of strays; and "The Kind Assassin," which explores the consequences of a radio shock jock's quest to set a world record for sleeplessness. Muscular, provocative, and blurring the boundaries between humans and nature, the funny and the shocking, Tooth and Claw is Boyle at his best.

User reviews

LibraryThing member seventime

Oddly passive for Boyle--normally his short story collections are full of razors and nails and ragged ends of broken bats--but this one goes against the cover and title. Still good, but TC is mellowing out...

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LibraryThing member Citizenjoyce

Engaging stories (with the audiobook read by the author) about the interplay of humanity with nature. The title story finds a man discovering the wild in a wild cat: following this is a story about a woman's journey alone on horseback through the early US as she discovers the power of water in

nature; there's a funny story about the ultimate master controlled community; lots of stories revolve around men discovering the wild power of alcohol; and the collection ends with what T. C. Boyle says is his most autobiographical story about a young man - what would today be called a slacker- who becomes a teacher merely to avoid being drafted during the Vietnam War and who discovers the wilds of both drugs and floundering high school students.

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LibraryThing member the.walnut.falcon

I thought "When I Woke Up...," "Jubilation," and "Chicxulub" were exceptionally good. The rest were all strong but didn't grab me quite like Boyle sometimes can.

LibraryThing member Jamnjazzz

As with all his short story collection, Boyle creates many compelling worlds, characters and situations. And the beauty of short stories is that, although some may not pan out over the long haul, they are perfect for their own little niche of 15-20 pages.

LibraryThing member edwinbcn

The stories collected in this volume under the title Tooth and claw, and other stories did not interest me at all. I have read other work by T. C. Boyle with pleasure, and therefore really tried to like this collection of his fiction. I read some, mainly negative reviews, and went back to stories

that were praised, or considered relatively good by other readers, but even those stories had no meaning for me. There was not any way, except for the first story, to create a clear meaning for individual stories, and I could not establish an overarching theme.

Nothing seems to be wrong with the writing; it is just that the stories seem to hold no interest.

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LibraryThing member cookierooks

I almost always enjoy TC Boyle's short stories. this was no exception.

LibraryThing member booklove2

This was next up on the T.C. Boyle short story collection lineup when I want to dip into a couple stories when I'm being indecisive on what to read. At least I dip into the next collection in the chronological lineup. So some of these stories I have read quite a while ago now. It's another

collection that is less experimental than his earlier stories. Now they are leaning more animalistic or ecological. So this is Boyle's sixth story collection and probably my least favorite of the six so far, but they are still very very good stories. There is just a high bar at this point. Less dark than 'After the Plague' but some of the stories here kind of left things hanging when the main plot point seemed to start, which might be why I consider some of these not as good. If my main complaint with stories is "not long enough" then I guess that is a good complaint to have about writing. Still, spectacular sentences in these solid stories.

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