Graham Hamilton gives life to this dark story of murder and the complexities of parenting, set amid the small towns and great woods of the Northern California coast. Both understated and full of dark foreboding, Hamilton’s performance echoes the lives—simultaneously humdrum and horrifying—revealed in the plot. His rapid, matter-of-fact delivery adds credibility to the sometimes surreal thinking of Boyle’s more eccentric characters. And without detracting from his authority as narrator, his delivery of dialogue allows the listener to identify distinct personalities. Those fond of Boyle’s recent work will find this a great listen. F.C. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine

12/01/2014
Boyle’s (San Miguel) hypnotic narrative probes the complexities of heroism, violence, power, and resistance. At its heart are ex-Marine and retired school principal “Sten” Stensen and his schizophrenic son, Adam, who arms himself against shadowy “hostiles” and identifies with heroic 19th-century wilderness guide John Colter. On vacation in Costa Rica, Sten kills a gunman attempting to rob his tour group. Back home in Mendocino, Calif., he becomes an instant celebrity for his act of vigilante justice, and he is drawn into a citizen brigade whose mission is to protect nearby forests from the South American drug cartels that despoil the land. Meanwhile, Adam forms a tenuous, lust-fueled bond with anti-government activist Sara Jennings. Driven further into delusion by her brushes with the law and his physical confrontation with his father, Adam flees for his secret camp in the woods; when one of the citizen patrollers challenges him, Adam shoots that man, and soon another. As the manhunt intensifies, Sten realizes his son’s involvement and his own inability to change his son’s fate. Written with both clarity and compassion, each of the novel’s characters inhabits a rich and convincing private world. As they traverse a landscape none of them control, their haunting stories illuminate the violent American battle with otherness. (Mar.)

Boyle has long been one of the most exciting and intelligent storytellers in the United States. His upcoming novel describes a mentally ill young man involved with a group of violent anarchists.

When precisely...does T.C. Boyle sleep? In the 35 years since his first book came out, Boyle has published 14 novels and more than 100 stories. The Harder They Come is the usual T.C. Boyle...circus of serious-minded zaniness.

T.C. Boyle again explores his favorite territory, the American psyche, in , a gripping novel about an aging Vietnam vet and his mentally unstable son, out in April.

This new work of fiction from Boyle presents a fractured threesome: a 70-year-old ex-Marine, his troubled son and the son’s older girlfriend-a right-wing anarchist. A dark novel, The Harder They Come explores violence and the American psyche.

The latest from a prolific and acclaimed novelist, The Harder They Come is a family saga that maps the relationships between the three people at its heart, as their potent mix of violence and paranoia urges them toward tragedy.

★ 12/01/2014
An elderly California couple's vacation cruise is turned upside down when bandits attack their party at a Central American nature preserve. Former high school principal and Vietnam vet Sten Stensen reacts with unexpected fury when an armed thief approaches him, strangling him to death. While viewed as a hero back home, Sten's disturbed by the violence that's visited his life and will deal with more as the mental state of his emotionally troubled adult son, Adam, grows worse. A paranoid survivalist who fashions himself after 19th-century mountain man John Coulter, Adam has taken up with another disquieted soul, Sara, a local farrier and proponent of radical right-wing ideas. A fight with his parents after they sell his late grandmother's cabin, where he has been living, sends him spiraling downward. He retreats to a deep-woods bunker with his weapons where his shooting of a perceived "alien" will set off a massive manhunt. VERDICT Inspired by a true story (and also echoing recent events in Pennsylvania), Boyle tellingly explores the anger, paranoia, and violence lurking in the shadowlands of the American psyche. A powerful and profoundly unsettling tale. [See Prepub Alert, 9/22/14.]—Lawrence Rungren, Andover, MA

Graham Hamilton gives life to this dark story of murder and the complexities of parenting, set amid the small towns and great woods of the Northern California coast. Both understated and full of dark foreboding, Hamilton’s performance echoes the lives—simultaneously humdrum and horrifying—revealed in the plot. His rapid, matter-of-fact delivery adds credibility to the sometimes surreal thinking of Boyle’s more eccentric characters. And without detracting from his authority as narrator, his delivery of dialogue allows the listener to identify distinct personalities. Those fond of Boyle’s recent work will find this a great listen. F.C. © AudioFile 2015, Portland, Maine

2014-12-17
Violence corrodes the ideal of freedom in an ambitious novel that aims to illuminate the dark underbelly of the American dream.In the prolific Boyle's latest (San Miguel, 2012, etc.), the estrangement between a father and son provides the plot's pivot. The father is 70-year-old Sten Stensen, a Vietnam Marine vet and later a high school principal, whose military training comes in handy when he's among a group ambushed during a cruise. Three armed robbers threaten the group, and Sten kills one of them. He initially fears he might face criminal prosecution in Central America but subsequently finds himself hailed as a hero. In his mind, "He'd done what anybody would have done, anybody who wasn't a natural-born victim, anyway." There's a hint of xenophobia in his attitude, a dismissal of a foreign culture where life is cheap and values ambiguous and where expediency has him cooperating with officials who let him know he has done them a favor. Sten has never been a hero to his son, Adam, a troubled youth since his days in his dad's high school, now a self-styled mountain man on the outskirts of Fort Bragg, California. In Adam, Sten sees the chickens coming home to roost, the propensity for violence that they share twisted by drugs and paranoia. Adam has become involved with a right-wing anarchist 15 years his senior, who seems to be in the novel mainly to distinguish her misguided politics from his insanity. And even Adam and Sten function more as types and symbols than individuals, though Boyle remains a master at sustaining narrative momentum as the sense of foreboding darkens and deepens. Boyle's vision and ambition remain compelling, though his characters here seem like plot devices.