Blue Skies: A novel

From best-selling novelist T. C. Boyle, a satirical yet ultimately moving take on contemporary American life in the glare of climate change.

Denied a dog, a baby, and even a faithful boyfriend, Cat decides that she needs a snake: a glistening, writhing creature that can be worn like “jewelry, living jewelry.” But when the budding social influencer finally gives in to impulse, buying a Burmese python from a local pet shop, she sets in motion a chain of increasingly dire events that culminates in one of the most memorable denouements in recent fiction, one that ensnares her entire family, from her eco-obsessed parents, Ottilie and Frank, to her frat-boy-turned-husband, Todd. But there’s more than meets the eye in this compulsive family drama. Lurking beneath the banal façade of twenty-first-century California and Florida is a caricature of materialist American society that doubles as a prophetic warning about our planet’s future. An ecothriller with teeth, Blue Skies is vibrant, penetrating satire that reveals the inexpressible sadness at the heart of our existence.

About the Author

T. C. Boyle is a novelist and regular contributor to The New Yorker. He has published eighteen novels, including World's End and The Tortilla Curtain, and twelve collections of short stories. A Distinguished Professor of English Emeritus at the University of Southern California, he lives in Santa Barbara.