Rating: 
Summary: Do yourself a favor and buy this immediately!
Review: ...Boyle is roughly 100 years ahead of his time, since the public has not yet caught up.There is no other author writing English stories who can compare with Boyle for sheer inventiveness and creativity. And his inventiveness has a point, for each story, besides entertaining, makes you think deeply about issues that are important to all of us. This collection should top the best seller lists and be required reading in high school and college classes. If you read O'Henry in h.s. like I did, or Shirley Jackson, you may think you have read the best. Read Boyle and you will quickly revise that opinion. Only gave this five stars because I couldn't give six!
Rating:
Summary: Hard-Boyled and Enduring
Review: I can't remember when I've enjoyed a collection of short stories any more. TC Boyle is an imaginative bottomless pit of intriguing short fiction ideas. At 691 pages, this collection is a comprehensive look into the mind of one of our most talented prose stylists. Boyle is, in fact, at his luinous best in the shorter work. While his novels become at times ponderous, the reader will not find that to be true in the shorts. There are way too many great stories to mention here, but a few highlights for me were "Heart of a Champion," "The Human Fly," The Ape Lady in Retirement," "Mexico," and "Bloodfall." I've taught "Greasy Lake" for years to survey Lit classes who have typically found Boyle, if nothing else, to be provocative. Boyle's presence over the years in the highbrow New York magazines should solidify his place among American writers of his generation. It's nice to see the mass of this work in this well-organized very readable collection.
Rating:
Summary: Hard-Boyled and Enduring
Review: I can't remember when I've enjoyed a collection of short stories any more. TC Boyle is an imaginative bottomless pit of intriguing short fiction ideas. At 691 pages, this collection is a comprehensive look into the mind of one of our most talented prose stylists. Boyle is, in fact, at his luinous best in the shorter work. While his novels become at times ponderous, the reader will not find that to be true in the shorts. There are way too many great stories to mention here, but a few highlights for me were "Heart of a Champion," "The Human Fly," The Ape Lady in Retirement," "Mexico," and "Bloodfall." I've taught "Greasy Lake" for years to survey Lit classes who have typically found Boyle, if nothing else, to be provocative. Boyle's presence over the years in the highbrow New York magazines should solidify his place among American writers of his generation. It's nice to see the mass of this work in this well-organized very readable collection.
Rating: 
Summary: Deeper! We must go deeper!
Review: In "Rapture of the Deep," one of the more than 60-plus brilliantly realized stories collected here, Jacques Cousteau confronts a crew starved for the culinary comforts of land. Cousteau seeks to explore the dark and bizarre landscapes, the truly remote regions of the planet, to document the life that desperately struggles in harsh and exacting circumstances. You can tell where I'm going here, right? T.C. Boyle is our Cousteau, and he takes short little voyages in his literary bathyscape, taking us to meet all sorts of strange, colorful creatures, people living in remote corners of the world. Or, like the blind sea-life who do not need eyesight to understand their universe, his self-centered humanity can't see around their own immediate aims. In as comprehensive a collection as this, there are bound to be quite a few clunkers. The surprise is how few there are. Boyle's vision of people and their dreams, their impact, their victories and losses, their neighborhoods is about as diverse as the entire planet has to offer. Vignettes, fables, speculative jokes, romances, tragedies, and just plain absurd, the range is amazing.
Rating:
Summary: I inhaled this one
Review: T. C. Boyle is a master of short stories. In this 700 page tome, Boyle covers the gamut of subjects in a funny, witty, and satirical way. His writing style offers an amusing, introspective, and memorable view of American culture. This one is as entertaining as any book I have read.
Rating:
Summary: A Wonderful Collection
Review: T.C. Boyle is one of my favorite short story writers; he has a marvelously skewed view of life and his characters often find themselves in situations that the average human being encounters only in nightmares or drug-enduced reveries. He illuminates the basic truths of life in with an imagination that is unlike any other writer I've read. This collection spans the broad spectrum of his short stories; there is a little bit of everything here, love/hate, death, relationships, life in general. From the whimsical to the deadly serious, these stories will capture the imagination of the reader whose mind is open to them.
Rating:
Summary: Boyle Does Not Come Up Short
Review: T.C. Boyle is probably one of the greatest contemporary (and most under-read) American authors that we have. I have read many of Boyle's novels, and though while not being a fan of the short story genre, I thought I would give this massive collection of 70 short stories a try. If anything it has made me a greater fan of this talented author. Boyle excels in the shorter format bringing us tales that are highly imaginative. A warning to the Boyle uninitiated, these stories are very eccentric with a lot of dark humor throughout. Just when you think the author could not come up with a more a possibly more bizarre premise, he tops it in a later story. Boyle has a wonderful command of language and readers will be amazed by how he can created a total picture with minimal words. For example, in a story I read recently, he wrote "the house... seemed almost to sink under the weight of its mortgage." Boyle consistently creates this kind of amazing imagery throughout these stories. From full-body condoms to a struggling game safari in the California desert to a women who keeps squirrels as pets - it is almost guaranteed that you have never read anything as original or inventive as these Boyle stories. Do yourself a favor and pick up "T.C. Boyle Stories" -- and take your time and savor (I usually read a handful of stories between novels)!
Rating:
Summary: A Must-Have for any Serious Reader
Review: This book is indispensable, and what's more, it will provide you with hours of thrilling, hilarious and heartbreaking reading. Broken up into three sections: Love, Death, And Everything In-between, "TCB Stories" is a single book that will sustain nearly any taste, because TCB is able to master so many disparate personas and styles in these stories. If you like smart, insanely well-written, exciting and bizarre, you will not be disappointed. But if you're looking for beauty, understatement, and heartbreak, you'll find that here too. Experiments in form? Stunning metaphors? Social commentary? Yes. Also quiet character-driven pieces, monologues, and love stories. Quite frankly, this book's got it all. Bring it with you on a road-trip, or backpacking in Europe and you won't need to pack anything else. You will revisit this book again and again, you will find yourself referencing it in conversations, and most importantly you will LOVE reading it. TCB understands that you don't ever have to sacrifice excitement in order to be serious lit or in order to have deep thematic undertones -- which means that you might not even notice the implications as you're breathlessly rushing through the plot . . . until you put it down and ponder and then it hits you: wow, these are brilliant on just about every level.
Rating:
Summary: Boyle Gets Under My Skin
Review: This collection of Boyle's fiction is big enough to make a great doorstop, but don't you dare use it that way! His muscular and sometimes head-spinning use of the English language is matched only by his wonderfully strange plot lines (full-body condoms in "Modern Love" or death by bee stings in "King Bee"). Sometimes he will make you sigh in the deep sadness of families torn apart by alcohol ("If the River Was Whiskey"), or laugh out loud with the viciousness of food critics ("Sorry Fugu"). Long after Boyle leaves this world, people will read his work. If you love great writing, buy this book. If you're an aspiring writer, devour this book.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent flow and playful with words
Review: This is an excellent collection of varied stories. All come at some different direction like dreams and continue in a fast pace. The unexpected will arrive and thrill you, knock you over and make you think of endless possibilities. His descriptions are as good as anyone who has held a pen. Read these stories for the authors play with words and often thrilling movement.
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