Which is more revealing: the mundane action we repeat every day, or our response to an extraordinary event that will never come again? Anyone familiar with the work of T.C. Boyle already knows his answer: crisis all the way. In “Wild Child,’’ his exhilarating new collection of short stories, Boyle captures characters facing a range of critical turning points. Some of these moments are quiet: An unexpected emotional connection is made in a rundown recording studio (“Three Quarters of the Way to Hell”); a college graduate wonders whether she should accept a menial dog-sitting job (“Admiral”). Others are more obviously dramatic: A woman encounters an escaped tiger in her suburban garden (“Question 62”); a Venezuelan baseball player discovers his mother has been kidnapped (“The Unlucky Mother of Aquiles Maldonado”). In Boyle’s world, they all have the potential to become peak experiences.
The lady and the tiger
Characters collide with fateful choices and untamed nature
While the scenarios may be surreal, the characters experiencing them are decidedly down-to-earth. These are real people with real jobs: nursing home attendants, lawyers, and struggling musicians. Some, like Lonnie (“The Lie”), a would-be film editor, are trapped in disasters of their own making. Desperate for a day off, he decides to tell his boss a little white lie and ends up blurting out: “The baby’s dead.” Lonnie knows he’s made a big mistake: “I didn’t feel giddy, didn’t feel liberated or even relieved,” he says. “[A]ll I felt was regret and the cold drop of doom.” This is merely one in a series of awful decisions. A few impulsive phone calls prove to be the beginning of the end of Lonnie’s job, his marriage, and his sense of identity - and he doesn’t even know how it happened.
The book’s title, “Wild Child,’’ is taken from its final and longest story, a reimagining of the historical saga of Victor, the feral boy discovered in the woods in 18th-century France. This tale of the intersection of wilderness and civilization is indeed emblematic of the collection as a whole; nearly every story finds its characters confronted with untamed nature, whether in the form of a feral animal, a meteorological disaster, or simply the chaos of fate.