Denied a dog, a baby, and even a faithful fiancĂŠ, Cat suddenly craves a snake: a glistening,
writhing creature that can be worn like âjewelry, living jewelryâ to match her black jeans.
But when the budding social media star promptly loses the young âBurmieâ she buys from
a local pet store, she inadvertently sets in motion a chain of increasingly dire and
outrageous events that comes to threaten her very survival.
âBrilliantly imaginative ⌠in a terrifying wayâ (Annie Proulx), Blue Skies follows in the
tradition of T. C. Boyleâs finest novels, combining high-octane plotting with mordant wit
and shrewd social commentary. Here Boyle, one of the most inventive voices in
contemporary fiction, transports us to water-logged and heat-ravaged coastal America,
where Cat and her hapless, nature-loving familyâincluding her eco-warrior parents, Ottilie
and Frank; her brother, Cooper, an entomologist; and her frat-boy-turned-husband, Toddâ
are struggling to adapt to the ânew normal,â in which once-in-a-lifetime natural disasters
happen once a week and drinking seems to be the only way to cope.
But thereâs more than meets the eye to this compulsive family drama. Lurking beneath the
banal façade of twenty-first-century Californians and Floridians attempting to preserve
normalcy in the face of violent weather perturbations is a caricature of materialist
American society that doubles as a prophetic warning about our planetâs future. From pet
bees and cricket-dependent diets to species die-off and pummeling hurricanes, Blue Skies
deftly explores the often volatile relationships between humans and their habitats, in
which âthe only truism seems to be that things always get worse.â
An eco-thriller with teeth, Boyleâs Blue Skies is at once a tragicomic satire and a prescient
novel that captures the absurdity and âinexpressible sadness at the heart of everything.â