I finished The Tortilla Curtain. It took me longer than most "bicycle books" do but then it is a novel that holds up well on its own, not just as a distraction while riding an exercise bike. I hadn’t expected to like this book as much as I did. The only other Boyle novel I had read, World’s End, had not been a favorite despite much acclaim at the time.
Boyle is an excellent, skilled writer and the book is quite enjoyable to read. Yes, it is a book about California, about the extremes of not just California but the American Lifestyle. Yes, in many ways the characters are stereotypes of the poor immigrant and the rich, liberal, shallow, white American. Yes both families experience a series of disasters that are unlikely to occur in such short order in "real life". But Boyle does not get trapped in the assumptions and the stereotypes. Each of the primary characters, Delaney and Candido are given equal weight. Neither one is treated as a stereotype and Boyle makes no effort to say "this is the typical member of his tribe". I would get completely wrapped up in the lives of the characters even though I might find them each quite unlikeable at times.
As I said, these characters are not stereotypes. They are individuals, but there must be many people like them in many degrees and variations. Each character rings true, and I can see the basic traits that I see in other people, and myself in each of them. Each of them reacts in ways that seem completely in keeping with what we have learned of their characters and their lives. While the book highlights the dichotomy of rich and poor in this nation, quite brutally at times, Boyle does not belittle either side. I don’t think the point of the book is to damn or praise anything in American Culture. It is about miscommunication and what happens when people come up against a wall, what assumptions they make and how they react and how our circumstances and background affect the judgments we make about other people.
Yes the book is unrealistic in many ways, but a good novel often has to be unrealistic. Tragedy, Comedy, The Unexpected. These are what highlight the experiences of life and a good novel must draw our attentions to things that we might miss in the normal boring day-to-day flow of life (Anne Tyler excepted perhaps). Delaney may be shallow and self-righteous. Candido may be ignorant and even "hopeless" at times. But their reactions ring true on many levels. But the book is about how people react under extreme circumstances and about how different our expectations and judgments are, about how difficult it really is for people to understand and judge others whose upbringing, language, and circumstances are quite different. "Walking a mile in another person’s shoes" does not come naturally to any of us.
It is a good book. The story is gripping. The characters are very clearly drawn and the reader is drawn into their thoughts. The book is sympathetic even as it is damning. In short it is about our humanity and how we perceive the world around us, strengths and shortcomings and all. The novel doesn’t really seem to judge, but the reader might find herself thinking much. In keeping with the theme of the novel, different readers may bring in different perceptions as well, adding more or less weight. I might damn Delaney more than Candido, because I can relate more to Delaney’s background than to Candido’s. Even though I might despise some of his decisions, I feel angry at him, I feel that he, with his privileges and better education, should have known better. But that is the point. We are all prisoners of our backgrounds and in extreme circumstances it is our backgrounds that determine our biases and how we react, now matter how much we might try to overcome these assumptions at other times in our lives.
Individually we are doomed to misunderstanding. But there is still humanity and there is still a shred of hope.