A Friend of the Earth is another great effort from Boyle, one of my favorite contemporary writers. Boyle has a tremendous gift; the words just flow off the pages. With his trademark dark humor, Boyle spins the tale of Ty Tierwater, who has spent his life defending the earth, to no avail. It’s 2025, and Ty is in California, tending to an animal menagerie, owned and funded by Mac Pulvis, a retired pop star. Global warming and climate change have come true; Ty endures monsoons followed by 130 temperatures while he tries to save some of the last remaining species on the planet. Ty is over 80 and life is plenty challenging, then his ex-wife and her friend April Wind show up with the goal of writing a book on Ty’s daughter, a martyred environmentalist.

The chapters alternate between 2025, told in the first person by Ty, and 1989-90, narrated in the third person. This narrative style keeps things moving; it’s like reading two separate stories at the same time, with the same characters.

Some of Boyle’s stories meander a bit too much and get unnecessarily complex, but not this one. Concise, and brilliant, I highly recommend it.

This could be a fun read for tree huggers and tree spikers alike. In a narrative split between the climate battered world of 2025 and life as a circa 1990 ecosaboteur, environmental doom meets righteously taking on the system. Supporters of Deep Green Resistance, Earth First!, the Earth Liberation Front, or Stop Fossil Fuels are reminded of the climate chaos and mass extinction we’re fighting to head off, and can vicariously (and safely) enjoy the thrill of underground, illegal tactics against a system immune to transformation from within.

But the book falls short of its potential, reflecting real life limitations of early (and all too much contemporary) monkeywrencher culture: misogyny and an absence of strategy. This is understandable, since the book was published in 2000 before activist rape culture and toxic male behavior was being called out, and before serious analysis of how to bring down the industrial economy was readily available. If the reader can accept these historic limitations, she can probably still enjoy the book for what it is.

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I will aim to write a full review of this book for the fantasy-hive in the new year. Boyle's 2001 novel has acquired some contemporary relevance with its twin timelines looking forward to a climate change ravaged 2025 and back over the protagonists late twentieth century career as a climate protester engaged in a variety of direct action and publicity raising events.

With Just Stop Oil and Extinction rebellion engaging in their own traffic blocking disruption and acts of seemingly unrelated artistic vandalism, it is timely to reflect on a work examining the motivations and actions of a latter day rebel. While elegantly written with many moments of dark comedy, Boyle's account of Tyrone Tierwater's career as an environmentalist ultimately does not offer much hope that such action has the power to change the direction of the capitalist monolith.

But as we see a variety of right-wing funded media outlets condemning contemporary protesters for ignorance, irrelevance, or - worst of all - middle class hobby protesting, Boyle's novel does raise the question - what form of protest would be acceptable? And I guess the answer, from much of the media's point of view, is protest that isn't noticeable and doesn't change anything. Fortunately the civil rights movement, the chartists, the votes for women campaigners and dozens of other movements throughout history have not been so obliging to the establishment.

Great story, with several predictions that are increasingly accurate. Dry humor throughout, with only a few genuinely good characters. The environmental group within the story is based on a real group. This book shows the downsides of these environmental groups, but the need for specific people who truly care.

A book written in the early 2000s that jumps timelines between the 90s and 2025. The main character is a eco-activist that did some questionable things that he can now reflect on at his older age.

Overall it was OK. A topical subject, the writing style wasn’t my favorite and I think I understand the point of the story but it didn’t really feel like it was going anywhere as you’re reading it.

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When I lived in Arizona in the late 1980s there was an environmental group called Earth First! that was creating a lot of excitement on campus. Edward Abbey was teaching at the University of Arizona and everyone was reading his book called The Monkey Wrench Gang. Earth First! advocated using some of the tactics that Abbey described in his book. All was fun and good until the FBI busted down Dave Foreman's (the most vocal leader of Earth First!)door in the middle of the night, with black helicopters circling, and hauled him away. The next few days there was many of us trying to remember who we knew that was part of the movement and determine our particular degree of separation as more and more people were arrested. The FBI effectively scared the crap out of anyone involved in the environmental movement in the Southwest.

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Earth First logo

Imagine my pleasant surprise when the group that Ty Tierwater, our hero, was associated with is Earth Forever! Okay, obviously Boyle decided to change the name and move the base of operation to California, but he can't fool me. Ty is the most radical of the Earth Forever! members he sees the political struggle over the Earth as a war and that destructive Monkey Wrenching tactics is the only way to force the large lumber companies to back off. We first meet Ty in 2025 and all the most dire predictions for the Earth have come true. The places that are dry have become more barren and the places that were traditional wet zones have become flood zones. All of his activism accomplished nothing. Tierwater is now 75 years old and taking care of a small menagerie of exotic animals for a pop star. After several stints in jail for illegal activity this is about the only job a famous felon can find. He sums up his life through the workings of his bowels.

"My guts are rumbling: gas, that's what it is. If I lie absolutely still, it'll work through all the anfractuous turns and twists down there and find its inevitable way to the point of release. And what am I thinking? That's methane gas, a natural pollutant, same as you get from landfills, feedlots and termite mounds, and it persists in the atmosphere for ten years, one more fart's worth of global warming. I'm a mess and I know it. Jewish guilt, Catholic guilt, enviroeco-capitalistico guilt. I can't even expel gas in peace. Of course, guilt itself is a luxury. In prison we didn't concern ourselves overmuch about environmental degradation or the rights of nature or anything else, for that matter. They penned us up like animals, and we shat and pissed and jerked off and blew hurricanes out our rectums, and if the world collapsed as a result, all the better, at least we'd be out."

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Dave Foreman

The book flips back and forth between 1989-91 and 2025-26. We see the decisions that Ty makes trying to make a difference and the influence of his actions on the development of his daughter. Despite numerous incarcerations Ty is never rehabilitated. "Every prisoner told himself-I'll never do it again but Tierwater didn't believe it. Not for a minute. He knew now, with every yearning, hating , bitter and terminally bored fiber of his being, why prison didn't reform anybody. Penitentiary. What a joke. The only thing you were penitent for was getting caught. And the more time you did, the more you wanted to strike back at the sons of bitches and make them wince, make them hurt the way you did. That was rehabilitation for you."

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Edward Abbey once tried to pick up my girlfriend at a book signing with ME standing RIGHT THERE. Horny bastard.

I wasn't sure how I felt about Ty Tierwater for most of the book, but as the novel progressed I had developed a grudging respect for him. He really did care, maybe too much to think clearly, but he was truly committed to saving the planet. Even as an old man, we still find him trying to do what he can to preserve a tiny part of the diversity of the planet. By the end of the novel he has found some solitude. "I've entered a new world. Or an old one, a world that exists only in the snapping tangle of neurons in my poor ratcheting brain...For the first time in a long time I feel something approaching optimism, or at least a decline in the gradient of pessimism." By 2026 Ty finds himself ultimately more concerned about finding peace for himself knowing the battle for the planet has been lost, yet hopeful, that a new planet will emerge with new creatures and maybe a better primary caretaker.

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I most recently talked with Boyle at a signing in Wichita. I'm still mad at myself that I forgot to ask him about taking classes under Cheever.

It has been a long time since I've read T. C. Boyle and it won't be as long before I read the next Boyle. He is a smart, crafty writer with brimming intelligence on every page.

A satirical look into the near future of climate change, with a serious look at personal responsibility in the face of inevitable catastrophe. TC Boyle is California's (and the thinking reader's) Carl Hiaasen.

I read this book in 2003 and it stuck with me. All the climate change denial and the incessant rain compelled me to pick it up again. It's still an interesting read, but it hasn't aged as well as I anticipated.

This is my 2nd book by this author and I was not disappointed! This was such a fun journey. I felt like I was right there riding along with the characters. Ty was such unique and rebellious man, very relatable. I was routing for him the whole time. I found the plot to be exciting and the details to be full of wonder. I could visually see the landscape they were describing. I can easily relate to Ty and find myself feeling the same way as I watch the world self destruct and my voice falls to deaf ears. I will always do my part to leave a small carbon print and try my best to reuse and recycle and respect nature. There is no other earth that we can relate to, this is it! I love Gaia and I am here to stay! I hope to someday find my off grid hippy community! I would read more by this author! Recommend to any friends that are "earthy" and try to find to save the environment!

This is the first book by T.C. Boyle that I’ve read, and it was fantastic. The book follows Tyrone Tierwater as both a 1990s radical environmentalist/eco-terrorist, and as the keeper of a menagerie of exotic, nearly extinct animals for a movie star in 2025 – after global warming has destroyed much of the natural world through violent weather and drought. The 1990 sections follow the increasing extremism and anger of Tierwater, which leads to him being jailed, the death of his daughter, and the estrangement of his wife. The 2025 section follows his reuniting with his wife and coping with the effects of worsening weather, and brings resolution with his past. The book is a great representation of the drastic toll taken on participants in radical movements over time.

Ok, given the state of things this felt more prophetic than fictional but I’m trying. It holds up fairly well to time and now I understand why so many readers look for TC Boyle on their shelves. Also, I feel like I know people just as radical as Ty but things are pretty much just as the author projected. What are we doing?

I don't have much to say. The premise obviously appeals to me, but I just never got into the plot or characters. I didn't particularly care about Tierwater, Andrea, or Sierra, though I know I was supposed to. There were also a few plot points that fell flat (no pun intended), like Sierra falling out of the tree or the lion eating Mac. Felt very convenient. And then there was the poisoning the water incident that didn't ever get explained fully. Including it only in passing makes it seem like the author got sick of the book and just wanted to be done with it.

This is my second TC Boyle book, and I didn't much like the first either. So just a different style I guess.