San Miguel

by T Coraghessan Boyle

[Michael @ Knowledge Lost]

T.C. Boyle tells us the story of a family on the San Miguel Island. The desolate island makes for a backdrop for the trials and tribulations of family. Boyle takes us on a vivid join of hard living and stubborn people in a novel of love and hate.

I’ve never actually read a T.C. Boyle novel before but I’ve heard he is a great storyteller, so I was excited to read this novel. This is a book of major family drama, I get the feeling that being stuck on a desolate island off the coast of California isn’t really helping the situation at all. The feeling of isolation is almost like having a cabin fever effect at times and this makes for highly emotional situations.

San Miguel follows the point of views of two different characters, giving us an insight of their inner thoughts and desires. Inspired by historical records, Boyle blends the facts with his own take of the story to bring us a character driven novel of the trials of this family. While at times I found this a highly emotional and somewhat endearing novel, I found myself thinking about novels like Shipping News and remembering just how that was a similar type of novel, only better. It is hard to immerse myself in a novel when I’m too busy comparing it to better novels and I truly think if I was in the right state of mind, this book would have been more enjoyable (perhaps enough to warrant 4 stars).

The characters within this novel are just wonderful; Boyle really knows how to write personalities, desires and inner thoughts, giving them real depth. Marantha and Elizabeth are great protagonists and the isolated location was the perfect backdrop for this story. But I never connected fully with the story, and I think it left too many questions unanswered.

T.C. Boyle is a great storyteller; I will be checking out some more of his work in the future, I’m hoping I can connect with them more than I did with San Miguel. It really didn’t help my enjoyment of this book. So I hope people who decide to give this novel a go, find themselves enjoying the characters and the trials that come there way.

This review originally appeared on my blog; http://literary-exploration.com/2012/12/18/book-review-san-miguel/