I thought I would really enjoy this book, but so far I have been bored. It is too full of lengthy descriptions that don't leave too much to the imagination. I only got 30 pages into it. I am disappointed because I am fascinated about anything Mexico, but this book hasn't delivered.

Not the best of Boyle's novels, but still enjoyable. If you're new to Boyle, start with the Road to Wellville or Drop City.

A growing fear of immigrants and desire to wall off property...could have been written this year instead of over 20 years ago. A good look at the view from both sides of the wall.

T. C. Boyle's The Tortilla Curtain is not a very good book, overall. The characters, and especially the female characters, are caricatures, the plot is heavy-handed, and the symbolism is a little too obvious. It does have a few good aspects, such as the remarkable ability of Boyle to create a setting. (The only other book of his I've read also shared that strength, but also the same weaknesses.)

Dramatic tale that follows the lives of a struggling Mexican couple & a wealthy CA family. Good stuff.

Tortilla Curtain is a very topical story of a Mexican couple and an American couple. Candido and America survive several horrendous events in order to beg for work every day and live in a hovel in the woods behind a rich neighborhood in a canyon outside of Los Angeles. Delaney and Kyra live in that neighborhood with their son and are key personalities in the neighborhoods conflict to raise a wall around their homes to keep poverty and crime out. T. C. Boyle has some interesting points to make on both sides of his argument, or maybe he blatantly sides with the immigrants...

An uncomfortable read throughout, but great for post-read discussion!

That ending was so, so harrowing.
I wasn't sure what I was expecting but it sure wasn't that - that environmental shift.
Throughout Cándido and América's journey I followed along with their hope as well as their loss of it.
This book was a journey itself because I went back and forth between liking and not liking it.
I liked the way the stories are woven together, as separate bodies that eventually met.
I did not like at one point how T.C. Boyle seemed to make a comedy of Cándido's hunger. Maybe not a comedy, maybe it was trivialised. I'm not sure, I know books are meant to be entertaining, and that the eating of the cat was necessary, but the way it was phrased seemed strangely dramatised.
Anyway, there is far more to a book than my interpretation.
I think this was a good, essential read that paints a picture of immigrant life and survival, juxtaposed by the racist hatred in America, that I only have a view of through media such as this.