A Friend of the Earth

By: T.C. Boyle

Narrated by: Scott Brick

A Friend of the Earth opens in the year 2025, as Tyrone O'Shaughnessy Tidewater ekes out a bleak living in southern California, managing a rock star's private menagerie. Global warming is a reality. The biosphere has collapsed and most of the major mammalian species are extinct. Once Ty was so seriously committed to environmental causes that he became an ecoterrorist and convicted felon. Once he unwittingly endangered both his daughter, Sierra, and his wife, Andrea. Now when he's just trying to survive, Andrea comes back into his life. What happens as the two slip into a reborn involvement makes for a gripping and topical story told in Boyle's uniquely funny and serious voice.

"America's most imaginative contemporary novelist blends idealism and satire in a story that addresses the ultimate question of human love and the survival of the species."—Newsweek

Critic reviews

“As disaster tales go, this is a sly, hip one. . . . Boyle has always liked to play circus barker for life's extremes and what better freak show than the environmental apocalypse itself?”—The Washington Post

“Fiction about ecological disaster tends to be written in a tragic key. Boyle, by contrast, favors the darkly comic.”—Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction

“Both entertaining and informative . . . hits like a warning shot from twenty-five years into the future.”—Chicago Tribune

“A Friend of the Earth is about people and nature coming to terms with each other. In many ways it is a far more convincing argument for sustainable living in nature than any nonfiction environmental tract.”—San Francisco Chronicle

“Boyle gives us a vivid, grim, hilarious portrait of our world . . . he has a marvelous gift for translating large-scale environmental scenarios into immediate, palpable terms . . . What gives A Friend of the Earth's comically dismal future its bite is how profoundly it is embedded in the present . . . Boyle's energetic prose achieves a fine balance between wacky comedy and serious reflection.”—The San Diego Union-Tribune

“Ripped from tomorrow's headlines, the ecobiography of Tyrone Tierwater—failed monkeywrencher, ex-husband, ex-con, ex-zookeeper of the last Patagonian fox, and still-grieving father of the tree-dwelling Sierra, a twenty-first-century martyr to the redwoods.”—Outside

“The story careens along with the breathless authority of a roller coaster . . . In A Friend of the Earth, Boyle sets himself a new challenge, swinging a leg wide to plant a foot solidly on new ground. Part antic comedy, part ecological intelligencer, part heartfelt plaint, it is a comic novel on grievous themes, a serious exploration of tragic truths. It not only marks Boyle's progress as a literary talent but demonstrates his consistent ability to entertain.”—Los Angeles Times

“Boyle is still one of the most inventive and exhilerating novelists around, showing how you can drive a narrative and still have fun with language.”—The Philadelphia Inquirer

“Boyle’s wonderful writing is simultaneously wild, talky, and charming. If A Friend of the Earth is a provoker of conscience, it is also—and foremost—rich entertainment.”—The Cleveland Plain Dealer

GREAT Environmental Novel!

TC Boyle creates a world after a slow, not-quite-apocalypse that seems completely plausible both in terms of culture and nature. We have worn the Earth out like a ragged pair of jeans and humanity is limping along pretending it's wearing a tuxedo as the pants fall off in the dirt. Probably not the best book for optimists and book clubs, unless the book club members have a little grit. SUPER book for anyone who is interested in humanity's impact on the environment, in moral philosophy, or just a thought-provoking yarn.

Mediocrity and Boring

It is the story superficially of the destruction of the ecology of the earth. A bit deeper…it’s the standard story of a lost man in the late 20th and early 21st century. Lots of complaints; lots of depression. No ability to really do anything that helps to resolve the problems surrounding him.

ok

I really liked "Talk Talk" so I listened to all of TC Boyle's audio books. This one was ok. It seemed a little too dark for me. There's no true hero and lots of villians, to put it bluntly. But, its still worth a credit.

Boyle at His Best

One of the amazing things about Boyle's books is that you always walk away knowing a bit more about the world, a bit more about human experience, and end up with just as many questions as answers. The story is so well researched and the multiple plots are woven so masterfully. I will always remember these characters and the dystopian scenes in these pages! Despite the characteristically human flaws in the main characters, I'm very much drawn to explore deep ecology and other literature associated with that movement because of this book.

My Favorite Audible

The animals need us more today than ever.
A very fun listen with some tears too.