I Walk Between The Raindrops
by: T.C. Boyle
2022
ECCO/Harper Collins
**** ( 4 stars)

TC Boyle is one of the masters of short, chracter-driven stories, and this one does not disappoint. I love that his stories are all about 20 pages long, easy to read and fall into.
Boyle takes basic human situations on a twisted path with a lot of left turns. Clever and introspective, I enjoyed every story in this collection.
My three favorite stories in this collection are 'Asleep At The Wheel', 'The Thirteenth Day' and 'SCS750'. In 'Asleep At The Wheel', we are taken into the future....maybe our own....where cars are driven by themselves, and the different scenarios that could arise, if this were a reality. 'The Thirteenth Day' is a story about a couple who take a cruise to rejuvenate their relationship, and end up quarantined for 13 days at sea, due to a covid outbreak on the ship. 'SCS750' is a score, in a world where everyone is given a score that they must wear on a badge, the score gives them privileges, and accumulate from your "activity". Everything has a score. Except loyalty.

If you enjoy extraordinary characters in dire situations, that leave you with points to ponder, pick up one of TC Boyles novels of short stories. ( )

I Walk Between the Raindrops: Stories by T. C. Boyle is a very highly recommended collection of thirteen imaginative and irresistible short stories.

The stories range from the reactions of a wealthy couple amidst a variety of experiences, passengers quarantined on a cruise ship, a society controlled by a social credit system, a man kills a rattlesnake in his yard, an author faces his paternity of a young man, a man makes a deal with an elderly woman, a man being evicted by his parents and more.

Boyle writes excellent short stories and I Walk Between the Raindrops is a superb addition to his oeuvre. The writing is impeccable, providing concise descriptions of characters and situations while establishing the plot and setting. The stories cover both realistic situations and surrealistic ones and are set both in the past and the future. They can be simultaneously funny and serious. Some of the stories are idiosyncratic character studies, others veer toward social commentary, and some are futuristic. I thoroughly enjoyed this collection.

Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of HarperCollins via NetGalley.
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2022/09/i-walk-between-raindrops-stories.html ( )

A man wanting to celebrate Valentine’s Day with his wife is hounded by a possibly deranged lady claiming to have ESP. A woman taking a leisurely cross-country train journey has an unsettling encounter with an apologist for a mass murderer. A man makes a bet with the elderly owner of an apartment he covets but quickly learns to regret it. Cruise passengers at the outbreak of Covid make the best of their extended time on board the ship. A self-absorbed alcoholic writer is confronted by a son he never knew he had with a mother he cannot remember. A fungus infecting baguettes in a small French village causes a hallucinatory panic among the citizens. In a future where people’s lives are ruled by their Social Credit Score, a young man makes some impactful relationship decisions. The exasperated parents of their 31-year old unemployed son go to court to evict him from the family home. A medical student with an animal activist girlfriend has misgivings when asked to operate on a friendly dog.

What is the unifying theme connecting these plot summaries? I honestly have no idea, but they represent many of the thirteen stories contained in the volume I Walk Between the Raindrops by acclaimed author T. C. Boyle. Some of the tales can fairly be categorized as social commentary (‘SCS 750’, ‘Not Me’, Dog Lab’), with others being quirky—twisted, really—character studies (‘These Are the Circumstances’, ‘Big Mary’, ‘The Shape of a Teardrop’), while still others rise to a level that borders on magical realism or science fiction (‘Asleep at the Wheel’, ‘The Hyena’). All told, then, the stories appear to share little with one another save two things: they are all well-crafted narratives featuring Boyle’s signature style that combines strange plotlines with familiar settings that move across time and location, and they are all quite funny and entertaining.

Overall, I really enjoyed this collection of short fiction, as much because of its eclectic nature as despite it. This was the first time I have read Boyle’s work, but after seeing him likened over the years to writers such as Raymond Carver, John Barth, Flannery O’Connor, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez—all favorites of mine—I thought it was time that I did. The book did not disappoint in any way and each of the stories held my interest from beginning to end. That said, I certainly had my favorites; I found myself attracted more to the character-driven tales, such as ‘The Thirteenth Day’ (about the quarantined cruise ship) or ‘The Apartment’ (which involved the housing bet gone wrong) than the ones in which the author let his imagination run a little more to the wild side. Still, there is not a weak selection in the set and this is a book that I can enthusiastically recommend to both seasoned fans of the author and those new to his work. ( )