San Miguel by T. C. Boyle Review

A inhabit their own sun-drenched island in the Pacific and turn there and exercise like a king & nbsp; – this is a wish that can not realize many. San Miguel, about fifty kilometers off the coast of Santa Barbara located and of a clear expansion, the dream could offer a place. However, even the Spanish have it cut down so strongly that the remaining Graslandödnis was available only for sheep farming and military purposes. Today the whole archipelago nature reserve and is nbsp; – No Trespassing

In his most recent novel is (his fourteenth) T.

C.. Boyle eight people in San Miguel, and gives them their island dream. What do they make of it? What is the fate of it?

A purely fictional laboratory experiment in the tradition of Defoe’s “Robinson Crusoe” and Golding’s “Lord of the Flies” is not doing the author, of course. It is based on the diaries of real models for his protagonists. 1888 lived Marantha Waters six months there with her husband Will, who adopted daughter Edith (14) and the maid Ida, and Elise and Herbie Lester lived from 1930 to 1942 on the island, where they brought two girls to the world.

< p> There is neither a luxury nor escapism what Marantha (38) drives to the secluded, deserted island, but need. there she is looking for “virgin pure air” to their consumption, to torment “like a medieval torture”, to put an end. But they gave up everything: family, friends, comfort and culture in Boston and their savings, so welcome as a partner of the flock can operate on San Miguel

Was Marantha naive.? After a rough crossing in frosty New Year’s Day they will take place on objective rather than a “simple shepherd wooden house” before, at best, “as a picture of Constable or Turner,” but a stinking of shit “barracks for the shepherds,” and they do the same, that this primitive, desolate “rat hole” never you can be a home, no matter how hard she works to it. Quite different Will: His mouth speaks of “success and growth and health,” his eyes light up visions: “wool money,” “our own island,” “no, before we would have to answer for us”, “we could use the drawbridge pulling up”. Marantha “had never seen him so happy.” However, they weigh their own misfortune and blends. Although disillusioned and weak from her illness, she tries with Ida support this inhospitable place to a habitable family center to make even “if I totarbeiten me for it must”.

That really is his wife’s life at stake wants Will not admit. After six months of privation rich martial enter the Northeast storms with torrential heavy rain Marantha the rest. “God had abandoned her.” was before they found “the earth’s paradise” and enjoy “to be allowed to live outside privilege here,” she must descend “to that other place in the eternal darkness.”

Would because decades later find the Lester on San Miguel their hoped-island paradise, or at least ungetrübteres happiness?

Elise (38) and Herbie (42) are newlyweds when they settle on the island 1930th Sunny and cheerful already designed their arrival at “pure, unadulterated blue of the sky.” all that breathes the spirit of a promising new beginning, of opportunity and adventure, and Elise is – and their young marriage, exotic place, the prospect of “the real life … in nature … simple, powerful, unadulterated” & nbsp a positive person. She firmly believes to have “just lucky”. “Why bother with deficiencies, if there was much to admire beauty?”

The house is “clean … sparse, almost monastic”, at least livable. Here celebrate Elise and Herbie their luck from the start: “omelet … fines herbes with pepper, salt and some ketchup replaced” a “transparent negligee” draped on the pillow every morning hearty breakfast. The island nature controls wildflowers and a forest in with “fossil trees”. Everywhere roam freely running sheep around on the beach lounging elephant seals. San Miguel & nbsp; – that is still a paradise? “She called him Adam, he called her Eve.” After two years baby Marianne is born again two years later, Betsy.

As shearers come and go, pass the years. Boredom never comes on. Herbie constantly concocts new projects: a water pipe to the bathroom, a fireplace for the living room, a windmill to pump water. Elise taught their children, but from the “world beyond the channel” (Great Depression, Mussolini, Hitler, a new president), they get little with; it is the Lester’s so strange how life on a “different planet”.

But splendid isolation is at these times already no longer a realistic option. America entered the war in 1941 and the idyll of the nuclear family ended. Strangers come to the island and marvel at the apparent idyll of living in peace dropouts, while the rest of the world is torn apart. Soon the headlines of national newspapers report from the “happy family in their kingdom.” The Lesters are stylized as a “myth” to a positive counterpart in the throes of a brutal war.

Everything has its price, and pay for a raised from the outside world drawbridge one must with the loss of reality and Kauzigkeit. World War I veteran Herbie had developed a strange hobby: He collects guns. As he heard the war news on the radio that courageous in East Africa of Emperor Haile Selassie fighters pull the machine guns and tanks of the Italians with spears against and are slaughtered because Herbie wants to make active support. Even before he had written critical or encouraging letters to small and great politician; but now he has the “Lion of Judah” his gun collection of including his personal trainer services. Although the proposal seems to have fallen from another planet, Haile Selassie gives his assistant the “rank of imperial dignitary” and sends him a pair of “gold-embroidered epaulettes”. However, packet and message reach the honorees until years later, when there is no long Ethiopian emperor more & nbsp; – and no “King of San Miguel.” Because on the island of the Japanese to protect against a feared attack were now stationed two Navy soldiers and the authority have taken over. Herbie has become a figure of fun, his paradise destroyed his life without meaning.

Between the two family histories we read Edith Waters’ story. Marantha and Will ship their idiosyncratic and precocious adopted daughter without being asked on the island that has little more to offer her than sheep. After all, there is the same age Jimmie, it has at once to be of service ( “He’s my slave.”). Your father hates you, he has her mother on the wretched island and thus lured to their deaths. But Will is not squeamish Edith opposite. dies when her beloved lamb, he puts her delicately roasted meat to the meal before. He holds the girl like a prisoner, forcing them to take over the household chores ( “learning it.”). At this filthy place they lead, the provisions of Edith, a “life at the level disguise monkeys recently risen only from the trees.” Their counter-world is the stage, and nothing can stop them from standing again in the spotlight, to realize their dream. Finally she manages to escape. Her outburst has a high price.

Although T. C. expires Boyle’s story quiet, the novel fascinated throughout. The author shaping the destinies of two families whose fortunes and misfortunes of their isolation and nature are determined. The paradise that you are looking for on earth is ultimately not make out in one place.

The tight three-piece construction with chapters whose pithy headlines repeat themselves ( “arrival”, “House”, “Departure” and more) emphasizes the parallels and challenges comparisons. While the times and the world change, the San Miguel is a constant. All who arrive here have left behind what civilization has to offer, and now need to make the most of their new elementary living conditions. This works for various reasons not everyone, and failure is reflected in various forms. The similarities and differences between the acting make the plot so attractive: take a man, an equal him wife and two children or young people per family to. While the narrator takes the perspectives of the three women, but are dominated by their husbands

Herbie Lester and Will Waters are war veterans. both suffer a mentally traumatized, the other physically traveling to a piece of shrapnel. Nobody can understand what they have “been through the war.” Hard work is their therapy and gives them a new chance at life. While Herbie fails to Will prevails with pressure not even spares the life of his wife. Edith is the only one who rebels against male supremacy.

With beautiful style of language and its fine literary composition that directs the narrative flow unobtrusive and structured, is ” San Miguel ” < a title = "TC Boyle:" San Miguel "on"

This book I have on the list Zu my 20 Lieblingsbüchern”