T. C Boyle

The lives of two different couples--wealthy Los Angeles liberals Delaney and Kyra Mossbacher, and Candido and America Rincon, a pair of Mexican illegals--suddenly collide, in a story that unfolds from the shifting viewpoints of the various characters.

"When animal behaviorist Guy Schermerhorn demonstrates on a TV game show that he has taught Sam, his juvenile chimp, to speak in sign language, Aimee Villard, an undergraduate at Guy's university, is so taken with the performance that she applies to become his assistant. A romantic and intellectual attachment soon morphs into an interspecies love triangle that pushes hard at the boundaries of consciousness and the question of what we know and how...

This is the title story from the collection Wild Child and was originally published in McSweeney's.

It is at the end of the eighteenth century, in the new French Republic, when the savage is first seen outside the village of Lacaune. The boy quickly becomes a legend among the townsfolk. Is he truly a human child or a wild beast?

"Wild Child" is based on the story of Victor of Aveyron, the feral child brought from the French

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T. C. Boyle is one of the most renowned storytellers of the modern era. This collection of fourteen stories drifts effortlessly between myth and reality, encompassing a panorama of human emotions. In "The Marlbane Manchester Musser Award," Boyle reveals a writer's dismay when a simple trip is turned upside down by a stranger. "Los Gigantes" tells the story of a group of giants being used to create a new breed of soldier for the military. In "The Way...

This short story from the collection Wild Child was originally published in Best Life. Smithstown is a divided community, and Cal is right in the middle. He believes, like his best friend Dave, that evolution is scientific fact. But he's drawn to Lynnese, a devout Christian who believes in intelligent design and whose daughter, Mary-Louise, has only widened the chasm forming in the town. As Smithstown is split between science and religion and their...

This short story from the collection Wild Child was originally published in the New Yorker. When Gerald Loomis loses his wife, friends and neighbors try to rally him with food and suggestions for pets to keep him company. But Gerald has already picked a pet, a Burmese Python he's named Siddhartha. During a cold snap, Gerald ventures out to the pet store to pick up a rat to feed Siddhartha but finds he can't follow through with letting the rat die....

This short story from the collection Wild Child was originally published in Playboy. It's the middle of a snow storm, and Johnny Bandon, a washed up crooner in the style of Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, is getting ready to record a Christmas single. The session musicians are there, and so is his backup singer. Darlene Delmar is a down and out soul singer ravaged by cheating boyfriends and STDs. But for this one moment in time, maybe music can reach...

This short story from the collection Wild Child was originally published in Harper's and selected for The Best American Short Stories, 2008 by Salman Rushdie. In high school Nisha worked as a dog-sitter for the Strikers, eccentric millionaires, taking care of their prized Afghan, Admiral. When she returns after college to tend to her ill mother, the Strikers call on her once again. But this time they want her to take care of Admiral II, the clone...

This short story from the collection Wild Child was originally published in the New Yorker. Gordon is a delivery driver with a predilection toward road rage, and he's on the most important delivery of his life. In Santa Barbara there's a mother of three on life support waiting for Gordon, waiting for the liver he's transporting from Los Angeles. But there's a mudslide, and cars are being swept away, people being buried in the sludge. And Gordon,...

This short story from the collection Wild Child was originally published in the New Yorker. Thirteen-year-old Dill has a tendency to get in trouble, to act out, and perhaps it is due to his mother's latest boyfriend, Grady, leaving them behind. Meanwhile Sanjuro Ichyguro and his wife have moved from Japan to the United States and are having trouble adjusting. Between the cultural divide, the swelling emotions of their respective losses, and budding...