#198 The Little Chill- T.C. Boyle
7 forty year-olds, friends from elementary school meet up
for a birthday gathering. Hal, Rob, Irene, Jill, Harvey, Tootle and Pesky
haven’t seen each other in six years and a lot of water has flown under the
bridge. Each character is given a fun, noir-esque description like this one:
"Jill had a certain fragile beauty about her. She’d gone into
a Carmelite nunnery after the obloquy of high school and the unrequited love
she bore for Harvey, who at the time was hot for Tootle. She lived up the sreet
from Rob and Irene, in her late mother’s house and she’d given up the nun’s
life twelve years earlier to have carnal relations with a Safeway butcher named
Eugene, who left her with a blind spot in one eye, a permanent limp, and
triplets."
I guess we’re supposed to identify with having outgrown our
high school clique but understand that we will always be attached to them at
the same time. That we will always measure ourselves through their eyes and will
always seek their approval. However, this rings somewhat false here. They all
hate each other, bitterly and without a tinge of respect or nostalgic fondness.
I have a hard time believing that these 7 people wanted to get together with
each other…dancing or not.
Note: seeing TC Boyle speak this past year he said that the
usual reaction to a short story collection is that people will hate half of
them and love half of them, just nobody agrees on which half is which. Pretty
funny, and probably accurate.
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