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The Tortilla Curtain | 
 enlarge | Author: T. Coraghessan Boyle
Publisher: Penguin Books
Category: Book
List Price: $15.00
Buy Used: $4.20
You Save: $10.80 (72%)
New (60) Used (151) Collectible (3) from $4.20
Rating:  244 reviews
Sales Rank: 1538
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 355
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5.1 x 0.8
ISBN: 014023828X
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN: 9780140238280
ASIN: 014023828X
Publication Date: September 1, 1996
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
While leading their lives in their gated hilltop community in Los Angeles, Delaney and Kyra Mossbacher accidently meet Mexican illegal aliens Ca+a7ndido and Ame+a7rica Rinco+a7n, and their encounter brings them together in a relationship of error and misunderstanding. Reprint.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 239 more reviews...
 A modern GRAPES of WRATH January 6, 2009
Tortilla Curtain is a modern day version of Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath. The Mexican immigrants are the Okies. I'm glad this great author kept up the theme that Steinbeck started of the down trodden workers.
Boyle's style is original here & quite different from Steinbeck's, but they are cut from the same pragmatic & humanistic cloth. Unlike Steinbeck, TC Boyle compares and contrasts the wealthy and the impoverished by interweaving their lives to startle the reader. As in all his novels, you will find humor blended with tragedy.
 Dynamite December 25, 2008
Not in a long time have I been gripped like this by a novel, fretting, twisting, turning to the next chapter with my teeth clenched, hands clasped onto the slippery book covers, waking up to find out we still don't know what's next. This book sucks its reader into a vortex, the same its characters are remorselessly pulled into. And Boyle is a master at varying pace; the more sedate chapters are just short and interesting enough they don't turn into an interference.
The Tortilla Curtain is a hard-hitting tale. Parallel universes intersect to periodic, catastrophic effect, that of miserable Mexican illegals and wealthy, spoilt Californian locals. Candido and his young, pregnant wife live from hand to mouth, in constant danger from vagrants and vigilantes, not to mention the elements. For them, the American dream is just that: a dream, quite distinct from the nasty struggle for survival that is their lot. At the beginning of the novel, Candido gets hit by Delaney's car. Delany Mossbacher is the liberal whose beliefs fail the test of reality, writing articles on nature while his community is being fenced in, worrying about his estate-agent wife's dogs instead of the man he has almost killed and who is now starving on his doorstep.
The book opens with a quote from The Grapes of Wrath. It begins where the literary monument to the depression dropped off, on a roadside in California. And this is another catastrophe of destitution facing indifference, then hostility. My only complaint about The Tortilla Curtain is with its ending, which also echoes Steinbeck's book (there is a flood, a life is saved, and something else happens which I won't betray). Boyle's novel is ironic, frequently biting and sarcastic. The Grapes of Wrath is pure tragedy. One can't have a Steinbeck ending without the same classical build up to it; it is just too brutal. Or so was my feeling: please judge for yourself, you will find it worthwhile!
Good read-great descriptions December 19, 2008
I enjoyed this book but did not like the ending. Good character development and descriptions of the environment. Good contrast between the two social classes. I thought some of the living conditions of the Mexicans seemed overdone but my California book club members say "Not so". They could see it happening as described. Interesting read.
i give it 10 stars! December 13, 2008
I'm surprised at how few 5 star reviews there are for this book. i read this book in high school and was one of the few out of all my classmates who didn't hate it. Very touching and moving, very real, believable characters, with rateable and real-life situations. The contrasting point of views are very effective and evoke empathy and understanding for both sets of couples. Wonderful novel.
 A waste of life December 4, 2008
Our book club selected this book and I couldn't be sorrier to discover that it existed. It pretends to be clever and sympathetic but delivered with the most disingenuous note. The best use for my copy would be to tear each page and use it to wipe windows or clean toilets. Total rubbish.
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