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    San Miguel
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    San Miguel
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    San Miguel
    Audiobook14 hours

    San Miguel

    Written by T.C. Boyle

    Narrated by Barbara Caruso

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    From the New York Times bestselling author of The Women, a historical novel about three women's lives on a California island

    On a tiny, desolate, windswept island off the coast of Southern California, two families, one in the 1880s and one in the 1930s, come to start new lives and pursue dreams of self-reliance and freedom. Their extraordinary stories, full of struggle and hope, are the subject of T. C. Boyle's haunting new novel.

    Thirty-eight-year-old Marantha Waters arrives on San Miguel on New Year's Day 1888 to restore her failing health.  Joined by her husband, a stubborn, driven Civil War veteran who will take over the operation of the sheep ranch on the island, Marantha strives  to persevere in the face of the hardships, some anticipated and some not, of living in such brutal isolation. Two years later their adopted teenage daughter, Edith, an aspiring actress, will exploit every opportunity to escape the captivity her father has imposed on her.  Time closes in on them all and as the new century approaches, the ranch stands untenanted. And then in March 1930, Elise Lester, a librarian from New York City, settles on San Miguel with her husband, Herbie, a World War I veteran full of manic energy.  As the years go on they find a measure of fulfillment and serenity; Elise gives birth to two daughters, and the family even achieves a celebrity of sorts. But will the peace and beauty of the island see them through the impending war as it had seen them through the Depression?

    Rendered in Boyle's accomplished, assured voice, with great period detail and utterly memorable characters, this is a moving and dramatic work from one of America's most talented and inventive storytellers.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateSep 18, 2012
    ISBN9781101579664
    Unavailable
    San Miguel
    Author

    T.C. Boyle

    T. C. Boyle is the New York Times bestselling author of ten collections of stories and fourteen novels, most recently, San Miguel, followed by the second volume of his collected stories, T. C. Boyle Stories II. His work has been translated into twenty-five languages and won a PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. He is a member of the Academy of Arts and Letters and lives in California.

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    Reviews for San Miguel

    3.5/5

    131 ratings21 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Historical fiction is rarely this flawless, but many T. C. Boyle fans may find San Miguel a jarring departure from Boyle's usual rock-and-roll black humor. I've loved the dark and wicked wit of Boyle's works, but everything I love best about Boyle is here. A chilling mastery of narrative distance, the omnipresent battle with nature red in tooth and claw, the harsh death of the Utopian dream, and characterization so all-consuming that I felt I had to tear myself loose from each central female character (Maranatha, Edith, and Elise) in turn.

      I've often wondered what fictional magic would occur if Boyle expanded his inimitable short stories into novellas, giving the rich characterization a chance to really take hold. This novel is really a triptych of fully realized novellas, all sharing the same setting and one minor character. The reader faces the Boylean dilemma yet again. With everything rigged against us, including nature itself and our own human aspirations and limitations, how do people survive and achieve the good life? If we had reached the good life, would we even realize it?
    • 3/5
      Three women, three experiences, one island: San Miguel. Told from the perspectives of Marantha "Minnie" Waters, a consumptive in the 1880s; her daughter Edith, who wants to go back to living on the mainland and dreams of being an actress; and a librarian lately married Elise who comes to the island in the 1930s with her husband, San Miguel explores life at its most isolated and, for much of the book, its most bleak.This book, I gather, is much different from T.C. Boyle's sometimes humorous work and short stories. It's historical fiction that, from what I looked up, sticks pretty close to the record, while exploring the isolation and experiences that three women on one of the California Channel Islands may have felt when they picked up everything and moved. Marantha and Edith's sections are incredibly desolate and hard to read. Elise is joyful in comparison, though she too is not without suffering. I would have rather the book was all about her, and it's mainly because of her and the lyrically descriptive writing that I'm rating the book as high as I am.
    • 4/5
      Interesting how different isolation effects people. Very fitting to read during the covid pandemic.
    • 5/5
      Historical fiction is rarely this flawless, but many T. C. Boyle fans may find San Miguel a jarring departure from Boyle's usual rock-and-roll black humor. I've loved the dark and wicked wit of Boyle's works, but everything I love best about Boyle is here. A chilling mastery of narrative distance, the omnipresent battle with nature red in tooth and claw, the harsh death of the Utopian dream, and characterization so all-consuming that I felt I had to tear myself loose from each central female character (Maranatha, Edith, and Elise) in turn.

      I've often wondered what fictional magic would occur if Boyle expanded his inimitable short stories into novellas, giving the rich characterization a chance to really take hold. This novel is really a triptych of fully realized novellas, all sharing the same setting and one minor character. The reader faces the Boylean dilemma yet again. With everything rigged against us, including nature itself and our own human aspirations and limitations, how do people survive and achieve the good life? If we had reached the good life, would we even realize it?
    • 4/5
      I really enjoyed the writing/imagery/characters....but wanted a bit more to the story (depth).
    • 1/5
      didnt finish. writing not interesting enough
    • 3/5
      I enjoyed this book but I thought that the two distinct stories could have been tied together a bit better.
    • 4/5
      After reading "The Women", I was anxious to read another T.C. Boyle novel. This one didn't disappoint. This is basically the story of an island: San Miguel, just off the coast of Santa Barbara, California. However, it's the story of an island as portrayed through the lives of fictional women who inhabited it. Marantha is the first women we meet, a women wracked with tuberculosis. Marantha comes to the island with her husband Will and her adopted daughter Edith. Marantha wants nothing more than to leave.Her daughter Edith finds herself unwillingly brought back to San Miguel by Will and becomes virtually a prisoner on the island. A young woman who loves books and music, she hungers for a better life and is willing to take risks to escape which she is finally able to do. Edith's life after the island is cleverly told in the third section of the book with only enough detail to "make you wonder."I felt the story truly became live with the telling of Elise's experience on the island years later. Growing up in New York, married late in life, Elise embarks on a unimagineable venture coming to San Miguel with her husband Herbert. Never thinking she would have children, she soon gives birth to two daughters. TheAfter reading "The Women", I was anxious to read another T.C. Boyle novel. This one didn't disappoint. This is basically the story of an island: San Miguel, just off the coast of Santa Barbara, California. However, it's the story of an island as portrayed through the lives of fictional women who inhabited it. Marantha is the first women we meet, a women wracked with tuberculosis. Marantha comes to the island with her husband Will and her adopted daughter Edith. Marantha wants nothing more than to leave.Her daughter Edith finds herself unwillingly brought back to San Miguel by Will and becomes virtually a prisoner on the island. A young woman who loves books and music, she hungers for a better life and is willing to take risks to escape which she is finally able to do. Edith's life after the island is cleverly told in the third section of the book with only enough detail to "make you wonder."I felt the story truly became live with the telling of Elise's experience on the island years later. Growing up in New York, married late in life, Elise embarks on a unimagineable venture coming to San Miguel with her husband Herbert. Never thinking she would have children, she soon gives birth to two daughters. The island undergoes changes as the world changes: communication, transportation, World War II. The island is affected by all, but Elise's steadiness remains. The story builds to a dramatic but not totally unexpected ending. island undergoes changes as the world changes: communication, transportation, World War II. The island is affected by all, but Elise's steadiness remains. The story builds to a dramatic but not totally unexpected ending.
    • 4/5
      I was actually so inspired by the historical aspect of this story that I pulled up a google map of the island to look at while I was reading. The combination of the storytelling and the map had me so wrapped up in the lives of the families within the pages that I felt as if I were planning a visit.San Miguel is mostly about the relationships of various family members. It follows the actions of one person to the next, but I wouldn't say this is a book with deep plot or that it contains any real adventure or serious drama. What this book does do is somehow find a little voice within certain characters to really tell their story as they live their lives. The fact that moving to the island wasn't all beauty and rainbows, is not lost on the author, who easily describes the harsh realities of solitary living in such a way that I could vividly picture the experience for myself.Told in two parts, but through the eyes of three characters, I might have been able to predict much of what was coming as each story developed, but I still devoured every page in eagerness for the next one. I may just have to read more from this author.
    • 3/5
      A second novel set on the Channel Islands off CA coast.
      Quote from Boyle: "derives from my research into the ecology and history of the region for my previous novel, 'When the Killing’s Done'."
      I read 'When the Killing's Done' and enjoyed it - would be a recommend. 'San Miquel' isn't quite as compelling a read as the more intense events in first book.
      However, it's based on the families who lived on this island in the 1880's and again in the 1930's and was a compelling historical story of the island, the families and their living conditions.
    • 4/5
      It’s been a while since the last time I read anything by Boyle. There was a period when I read a lot of him, but then I got caught up with new authors and well, you know how it goes. San Miguel had been on my wishlist for while so I just went for it and despite the mixed reviews it’s received, I enjoyed my time with it. I think I’ve said this before of Boyle, that he works better when he doesn’t have to drive a plot. When he can just tell a tale of what happens next with some really interesting characters, living in interesting places, doing interesting things. Even routine things he can make interesting and that’s what he does here. It reminded me strongly of Wallace Stegner’s Angle of Repose because of the setting and spirits of the women he wrote about. Some wanted to be where they were and pursuing their hard-scrabble lives on San Miguel. One didn’t and it was the combination of those separate personalities that reminded me of Susan Ward and her duality. Some reviews comment that the stories are too loosely connected, but I found it wasn’t necessary for me to enjoy them and especially liked when Jimmy started up a story about Edith and her time on the island. It didn’t feel forced since you had to take the Jimmy in Elise’s story as the same one in Edith and Marantha’s. Plus it finished her tale, which had ended so abruptly. A few other characters pop up as well, to thread the stories, but each one focuses on the inhabitants and even more closely on the women. Yes, Captain Waters is a force on the island, and Herbie just skewers you from an emotional perspective, but really these are stories of women and their respective states of convalescence, confinement and contentment. Well done and well told.
    • 5/5
      Author T. C. Boyle said of San Miguel in the Wall Street Journal, “It’s something I’ve never done before. A straight historical narrative . . . without irony, without comedy. . . . Just to see if I can do it.” Personally, I don't think it was ever in doubt that he could do it. San Miguel is a historical novel that takes place on San Miguel, one of the Channel Islands off the coast of California. This is historical fiction based on the lives of two real families who resided on San Miguel. As noted "In retelling the story of the Waters and Lester families during their time on San Miguel Island, I have tried to represent the historical record as accurately as possible, and yet this is a work of fiction, not history, and dialogue, characters and incidents have necessarily been invented." It is divided into three sections and follows three different women who live there.

      In the 1880's, Marantha Waters, who suffers from tuberculosis, arrives at San Miguel for the cleansing air that will make her well. Her new husband, Will has spent the last of her money buying the sheep operation on the island - which will ostensibly benefit her health. Boyle's descriptions of Marantha's coughing, gasping for air, and suffering are very detailed as she fights for her every breath on the desolate wind and sand blasted island. After she dies her daughter, Edith, is essentially turned into a servant by her stepfather and held captive on the island. She dreams of escape. Finally, Boyle introduces us to newlyweds Elise and Herbie Lester, who arrive on the island In 1930. They are decidedly in love and raise two daughters on San Miguel. Elise and Herbie establish a way of life, making peace with the island, although their story is bittersweet in the end.

      My first thought after finishing San Miguel is that T. C. Boyle wrote these women characters very realistically. He has a natural insight into their thoughts and feelings. This is especially true with Marantha and Edith, less so with Elsie. I did want to learn more of what became of Edith, as her story on the island was truncated by her escape, although I understand that once she left the island,she was no longer part of this story.

      My second thought is that this is an atmospheric novel; there is not wildly active plot. Boyle relies on the mundane activities of everyday life as shaped by the island's isolation and location for the drama. But, the limitations and challenges the island and weather impose on the characters makes the island a character in its own right. The characters have to react to the island.

      I thought this was a highly successful venture into historical fiction for a writer who is not known for this genre. Certainly the quality of the writing itself is exemplary.

      Very Highly Recommended

      Disclosure: My Kindle edition was courtesy of the Penguin Group and Netgalley for review purposes.
    • 4/5
      A good read even for those of us who have spent our lives "shuffling through the card catalogue [and opac], unwrapping a sandwich for lunch at her[our] desk..."
    • 4/5
      I enjoy most of T.C. Boyle’s books and this was no exception. Taking place on a remote island off the coast of Southern California, spanning the late 1800’s to the advent of WWII, it is the story of three generations of women embarking on new lives. Their stories are of how each strive to survive the isolation, the struggle and the extremes of life as wives and daughters of men who seem to be “loners” but who also depend on their women for companionship and survival. Frightening, maddening and heartbreaking at times, this book has wonderful period detail and characters that will linger in your hearts for a very long time. Read it and enjoy for T.C. Boyle can weave a tale!
    • 5/5
      Historical fiction (based on history and diaries) of the island of San Miguel. Doyle brilliantly tells this turn of the century story through the voices of three women from two families who lived on this remote barren island off the Californian coast. Complex and rewarding.
    • 2/5
      Slow and plodding. Had potential but story dragged along
    • 3/5
      Hard to read, in a way. Aching, sad stories of loneliness and frustration, fear and desolation, but inspired characters! Both stories told through the minds of the wives of men who staked their lives on challenging the forces of nature, and taming the wild, uncivilized island just off the coast of California. Almost like Robinson Crusoe. Took my breath away.
    • 4/5
      If I had read this book without knowing who wrote it, probably my last guess would've been T.C. Boyle. I re-read "Wellville" recently, and was again struck by how the men characters are treated as weak buffoons. This is the fourth book of his I've read, and it's the first honest historical novel of the four. The others (World's End, East is East, Wellville) all seem to be about showing off how clever the author is and how stupid people can be--and isn't it fun to watch them slip and fall? Ha ha ha. In "San Miguel," the men are once again making foolish plans and dragging their families along for the ride, but this time the author shows empathy for his characters. This is a book about the American Dream of a place of one's own, and how that dream can become a fatal delusion. Like the sodbusters before them, scratching out a living from the plains as the country grew westward, these two families take a chance on their dream. But unlike in his previous novels, Boyle is not up in his ivory tower laughing at the fools down below. Instead, he presents their story as clearly and truthfully as he can, leaving the reading to pass judgement. This is a difficult book to read, due to the difficult lives of the people who tried to make a life out on the edge of the old frontier. But I'm glad I stuck with it. I look forward to Boyle's next work. I hope he continues in this new vein, writing historical fiction honestly, and with empathy.
    • 3/5
      Wanted to love it but left me wanting a better story. Was very interesting to read about the Island and it's history but wasn't enough to make the whole book a great read.
    • 4/5
      Inspired by historical records, T.C. Boyle tells the story of the Waters and Lester families during their respective tenures of San Miguel Island. Two brides, fifty years apart, journey to the tiny haven off the Californian coast in support of their husbands enthusiasm for its potential but the tiny windswept island resists the determined efforts of its tenants to tame it.It is the landscape of San Miguel that takes precedence in this novel, the characters little more than visitors to a place that endures. Boyle captures the claustrophobic feeling of isolation of the rocky outcrop that can only be reached by boat. The author's use of language is rich and evocative, so much so that you imagine you can hear the seals bark and the sheep bleat plaintively as the wind howls and the waves crash upon the shore, despite your suburban surrounds.The narrative of everyday life on the island, especially in a time barely remembered and a place unfamiliar is fascinating, but there is an absence of plot in San Miguel. Drama fails to eventuate, scenes and even characters rarely resolve. It's obvious Marantha will not survive long due to her advanced case of consumption, just as it is clear things are not going to end well for a manic depressive with a gun collection. I felt as though Marantha's and Elise's stories had merit but their scope was forcefully limited. At times Boyle exhibits great insight into the thoughts and emotions of the brides as they struggle with the challenges of island life, and their respective mercurial husbands. Yet I also felt the author was regularly distracted by the island itself, so that the entire novel lacks the cohesion I would have liked.I haven't read anything else by TC Boyle but I am given to understand San Miguel is a departure from his usual style. Perhaps that explains the flaws in this novel but still I was appreciative of his style (despite the odd pretentious flourish) and hope to read something else of his soon.
    • 4/5
      I love the clarity of this author's prose, his Drop City is one of my favorite books. This one did not disappoint as I loved the history behind the story. The first half of the novel was rather grim and bleak, the island and the house barely habitable. I always know an author has done a great job when I can feel the dirt, the wind, the rain and the mud, the seclusion and isolation and all that these people experienced. Could picture the rain entering my bedroom from a leaky ceiling, soaking all the bedclothes. Would have liked to have known what eventually happened to Edith but since that part of the story ended on a positive note I decided thing must have turned out well. Looking forward to seeing what this author tackles next. ARC from NetGalley.