A Friend of the Earth, T.C. Boyle
A Friend of the Earth, T.C. Boyle
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A Friend of the Earth

Author: T.C. Boyle

Narrator: Scott Brick

Unabridged: 12 hr 14 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 08/18/2000

Synopsis

A Friend of the Earth opens in the year 2025, as Tyrone O'Shaughnessy Tidewater ekes out a bleak living in southern California, managing a rock star's private menagerie. Global warming is a reality. The biosphere has collapsed and most of the major mammalian species are extinct. Once Ty was so seriously committed to environmental causes that he became an ecoterrorist and convicted felon. Once he unwittingly endangered both his daughter, Sierra, and his wife, Andrea. Now when he's just trying to survive, Andrea comes back into his life. What happens as the two slip into a reborn involvement makes for a gripping and topical story told in Boyle's uniquely funny and serious voice.

"America's most imaginative contemporary novelist blends idealism and satire in a story that addresses the ultimate question of human love and the survival of the species."—Newsweek

About The Author

T. Coraghessan Boyle is the author of over 25 books of fiction, including, After the Plague, Drop City, and The Inner Circle. Boyle received a PhD degree in nineteenth-century British literature from the University of Iowa, his MFA from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, and his BA in English and history from SUNY Potsdam.Scott Brick, an acclaimed voice artist, screenwriter, and actor, has performed on film, television, and radio. His stage appearances throughout the US include Cyrano, Hamlet, and MacBeth. In the audio industry, Scott has won over 20 Earphones Awards, as well as the 2003 Audie Award in the Best Science Fiction category for Dune: The Butlerian Jihad. After recording nearly 250 books in five years, AudioFile Magazine named Scott “one of the fastest-rising stars in the audiobook galaxy” and proclaimed him one of their Golden Voices. Brick’s range is unparalleled as he reads thrillers to narrative nonfiction, from biographies to science fiction with aplomb.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Jeffrey on May 22, 2019

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 som......more

Goodreads review by Todd on September 18, 2010

There is a story behind why I chose to review A Friend of the Earth. In 2001, I bought the novel and could not get past the first few pages. I tried again and again. No go. So I dropped it in a box to be forgotten but not trashed. Roughly a year later I was rummaging around for a book to read and pu......more

Goodreads review by Nancy on April 24, 2013

I really, really enjoyed this novel and can easily recommend it. You can check out the long version or stay here for a shorter one. A Friend of the Earth is quite different from many environmentally- or eco-based novels I've read. While some of the normal dystopian scenarios are in place, and the au......more

Goodreads review by Geoff on September 09, 2010

All I could manage of this one was 100 pages. I wanted to like it--its premise of near-future ecological collapse feels relevant and laudable--but the prose is so lazily executed that it begins to feel like an insult. The book is full of cheap narrative gambits and inexact metaphors and faux-ominous......more

Goodreads review by L.G. on May 02, 2023

A fitting cover to my mind — Friends of the Earth are roadkill in the face of humankind's greed, ignorance, and apathy. This book is a realistically prescient rollercoaster ride portrayed in relatable satire and idealism. T. C. Boyle at his best. A recommended read.......more

Quotes

“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

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