This audio performance captures the intensity that is typical of Boyle's work. Lynde Houck, Joy Osmanski, and Charlie Thurston take turns at the helm of this riveting production, each taking the role of a "terranaut"—a scientist selected to take part in an alternative community prototype called E2—as Earth itself feels the pain of climate change. Each narrator manages a fully developed character whose role in the experiment is tightly bound up with the other bold and ambitious scientists as well as the complex workplace politics and public scrutiny. The voices of the three central characters are filled with all the emotions one expects in this kind of insular environment. The overall performance, combined with Boyle's imagination and detail, results in a mesmerizing listen. L.B.F. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine

08/01/2016
In his 16th novel, Boyle (The Harder They Come) weaves a sprawling tale of achievement, yearning, pride, and human weakness. On March 6, 1994, eight “Terranauts” from different scientific backgrounds enter E2, a sealed three-acre world within a world outside Tillman, Ariz., to embark on the grand hundred-year vision of billionaire futurist Jeremiah Reed (known portentously as “God the Creator”), “one of the first to recognize that our species... was well on its way to destroying or at least depleting the global ecosystem and might just need an escape valve.” Narrated by Dawn Chapman, the affable, telegenic darling of the crew; Linda Ryu, the book’s id and a spurned Terranaut whose close friendship with Dawn sours as the project wears on; and Ramsay Roothoorp, the sexually adventurous man-child whose incessant rationalizing, political plays, and mercurial personality provide much of the story’s humor (and twisted psychological insight), the two-year mission exposes the fragility of interpersonal relationships and tests the limits of the human body. In a multilayered work that recalls the tragicomic realism of Saul Bellow and John Updike, Boyle observes his characters with scientific rigor and a good deal of genuine empathy as they struggle to maintain their identities in the most communal of settings. Agent: Georges Borchardt, Georges Borchardt Literary. (Oct.)

Boyle is a genius at capturing social microcosms and excavating emotions simmering beneath the surface of contemporary America...A gripping and revelatory tale.” — BBC Between the Lines

“A sprawling tale of achievement, yearning, pride, and human weakness...a multilayered work that recalls the tragicomic realism of Saul Bellow and John Updike.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“A virtuoso storyteller and a connoisseur of hubris, Boyle mesmerizes and provokes...Boyle is a literary star, and an all-points publicity campaign and author tour will launch this shrewd and irresistible novel of ambition and folly.” — Booklist (starred review)

“This is one of Boyle’s best-and quite possibly one of the best of the year.” — Library Journal (starred review)

“The ultimate locked-room thriller.” — Vulture, Fall's Plottiest Books

“[A] preapocalyptic tale from a master of maximalism.” — Esquire

A virtuoso storyteller and a connoisseur of hubris, Boyle mesmerizes and provokes...Boyle is a literary star, and an all-points publicity campaign and author tour will launch this shrewd and irresistible novel of ambition and folly.

Boyle is a genius at capturing social microcosms and excavating emotions simmering beneath the surface of contemporary America...A gripping and revelatory tale.

[A] preapocalyptic tale from a master of maximalism.

The ultimate locked-room thriller.

05/01/2016
Boyle returns quickly after the New York Times best-selling The Harder They Come with an ecorelevant work set in 1994. Eight scientists called the Terranauts are living in E2, an enclosed, presumably sustainable compound meant to model a possible off-Earth colony. Its motto, "Nothing in, nothing out," sums up both the mission and its risks; E2 has to work on its own, and everyone is watching to see whether it will fail. With a 150,000-copy first printing.

This audio performance captures the intensity that is typical of Boyle's work. Lynde Houck, Joy Osmanski, and Charlie Thurston take turns at the helm of this riveting production, each taking the role of a "terranaut"—a scientist selected to take part in an alternative community prototype called E2—as Earth itself feels the pain of climate change. Each narrator manages a fully developed character whose role in the experiment is tightly bound up with the other bold and ambitious scientists as well as the complex workplace politics and public scrutiny. The voices of the three central characters are filled with all the emotions one expects in this kind of insular environment. The overall performance, combined with Boyle's imagination and detail, results in a mesmerizing listen. L.B.F. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine

2016-07-19
Soap opera, satire, and religious allegory find an uneasy balance within this earthbound version of a space colony.There’s a lot of back story in the latest from the prolific, eclectic Boyle (The Harder They Come, 2015, etc.). As a scientific experiment in the “ecology of closed systems,” with lessons learned for when “we’d have to seed life elsewhere—on Mars, to begin with,” four men and four women are chosen by Mission Control (from 16 finalists) to live in a sealed compound in the Arizona desert for two years. They are designated “Mission Two” after an unfortunate accident aborted “Mission One.” Ultimately, the grand design calls for 50 such two-year missions, a full century of data collection. Three different first-person narrators provide alternating perspectives in separate chapters that advance the plot. Dawn and Ramsay have both been chosen, like the rest, because of media attractiveness to bring public support to an enterprise that relies on it, while Linda, a Korean-American also-ran who remains behind as a monitor on those under glass, feels like her looks and ethnicity have unfairly deprived her. Ramsay maintains that “there are winners and losers in life” and that Linda “was one of the losers.” Dawn and Linda have bonded throughout the training and selection process, but Linda now finds herself transitioning “from best friend to frenemy.” Though the plot also involves a God and a Judas in Mission Control, and eventually an Eve as well, the focus throughout these 500-plus pages rarely shifts from its central obsession: who among “what our species has come to consider prime breeding stock” will pair with whom? Those on the inside gossip and speculate, as does Mission Control, as does the public at large. “Since we were all unmarried, there was endless speculation in the press about which of us might pair up, one rag even going so far as to post odds,” writes Dawn. Amid the changing allegiances and alliances, sex eventually has consequences, though the reader wearied by two years of this might not much care.