Really, I don’t
know why I read Boyle – I got very annoyed reading Tortilla curtain, and this book affected me in much the same
manner. Whatever can go wrong will. Don’t look behind you, someone or thing is
trying to kill you. Slowly and in great
detail. His books are didactic yet
thought-provoking. The former book dealt
with illegal Mexicans just struggling to get by and he subjected them to the
trials of Job. This novel pits two
different types of “environmentalists” against one another – one wants to
restore the islands off the Santa Barbara CA coast to their pristine,
pre-human-intervention state, even if this means killing off everything from
the introduced rats and plants to the now-native feral pigs; destroying a sheep
rancher’s livelihood; and relocating golden eagles. The other, more in the PETA
mode, wants to protect all living things at all costs, no matter whether they
are rats, or pigs, or humans. Well, most humans -- if they agree with him. I wasn’t
surprised that things end badly for almost everyone. But it really does make one think….once mankind has interfered, intentionally or
not, can the genie ever be put back in the bottle? 384 pp,
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