Boyle is a wonderful writer. The hero here is a bawdy and impassioned environmentalist who has become radical in thought and action. His love of the earth and hate of corrupt logging and other companies that threaten the pristine beauty of his home in California up to Oregon causes him, his wife and daughter to extreme acts of courage and tenacity. Set in 2025 with half the book flashing back to the chronicling of his deeds and misdeeds as a 'tree hugger' in the late 80's(written in 2000) the book is a tragic, bleak picture of the world gone awry to where few animals have survived. His current job, in a world of extreme storms and sweltering heat, is to feed and protect the few remaining big cats, hyenas, even a few anteaters that are left from the L.A. Zoo, hired by a zillionaire music celebrity in a hill compound. The characters and situations ludicrously funny and realized, it is a prescient visualization of our current state of affairs.

TC Boyles books are not an easy read, the characters are often unlikeable or have badly flawed personalities. There is a lot of anger in this book, Ty Tierwater, the central character is an angry man.
But there is black humour too and however unbearable the plot twists were, I kept reading to find out what happened next.

This is the first book I read by T.C. Boyle, the one that got me hooked on his writing.

I am a huge fan of T.C. Boyle. Several years ago a librarian recommends "The Women" to me, which totally blew me away, and since that time I've read a number of his other works (which are quite voluminous; I have a long way to go!). A Friend of the Earth is a bit of a post-apocalyptic glimpse of a future in a world ravaged by environmental degradation set in 2025. Written in 2000, his view of what the world might look like in 2025 might be a bit more bleak than our current situation, but in all he was quite on target. Boyle tends to write about issues of meaning and "heft" such as the environment and immigration, and does it with a deft touch, not coming across as too preachy. His prose is not what I would describe as elegant, but it's lively and authentic feeling. It's ironically the second book this year I've read that were written a number of years ago but were set in the current day, the other being Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower, which was set in 2024 and, like this book, had a bit of a post-apocalyptic feel. Parable had a bit more of a sci-fi feel to it, perhaps knowing that it was originally written to be part of a trilogy in which the protagonist's "religion" (Earthseed) ultimately leads to an effort to abandon earth for life on another planet. "A Friend" doesn't try to go that far but still helps envision a possible future if we continue on our current trajectory of destruction of our home here on Earth.