Review by Booklist Review
Engaged twentysomethings Cat and Todd are living the dream in an inherited Florida beach house. Todd, a Bacardi ambassador, keeps the drinks flowing, while Cat racks up followers as a social media influencer. Inspiration strikes Cat when she sees an exotic snake in a petshop window and envisions viral photos of her wearing her latest accessory, a Burmese python, like living jewelry that conveniently matches a Paul Klee reproduction at home. On the other coast, Cat's family deals with California's drought, heat wave, high winds, and rampaging fires. Cat's entomologist brother, Cooper, a science nerd anointed Bug Boy, begins to see a rapid decline in butterfly populations indicative of dramatic climate change, while mom Ottilie experiments with raising crickets as a food source. Boyle, long a fervent proselytizer for environmental and animal rights, strikes the perfect satirical note to illustrate the nonchalance and obliviousness many otherwise intelligent people display. Extreme climate events and myriad endangered and invasive species all point to an inevitable environmental collapse, yet humans seem more interested in willfully adapting than preventing impending doom, like Nero playing the fiddle. Boyle's genius lies in his ability to blend the horrific and the humorous, to slowly ratchet up the tension while crafting a gripping yet eerie narrative that forecasts a disaster of our own making.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Boyle's spirited latest (after the collection I Walk Between the Raindrops) follows an extended family through a series of ecological disasters. In Beach Haven, Fla., an aspiring influencer named Cat impulse-buys a Burmese python, dreaming of racking up views on social media. Her fiancé, Todd, a Bacardí brand ambassador, is less enthusiastic. Back in Santa Barbara, Calif., Cat's mother, Ottilie, adds insect protein to her diet to appease her entomologist son, Cooper, an outspoken climate fatalist. Soon, disaster strikes: Cooper contracts a nasty infection that changes his life, and Cat and Todd's California wedding is thwarted by wind and wildfires. Later, torrential rains and flooding in coastal Florida prevent Todd from returning from a business trip and a pregnant Cat goes into labor alone; Ottilie, arriving for the birth, is forced to commandeer a rowboat. Meanwhile, a massive global insect die-off has Cooper sifting through bug carcasses in triple digit temperatures in California's Santa Ynez Valley, and as the weather gets worse, no one emerges unscathed. Boyle remains a vibrant stylist, with fondness for his complex characters and a knack for zany details (Ottilie's dinners with her physician husband include fried grasshoppers and mescal-worm tacos). Equal parts entertaining and anxiety inducing, this dazzles. Agent: Georges Borchardt, Georges Borchardt Inc. (May)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A tragicomic novel of environmental apocalypse in which no matter how bad things get, there's worse to come. Cat is a recent transplant from California to southern Florida, exchanging the threats of drought and wildfire for hurricanes and flooding. Well past adolescence but too young for middle age, she's attempting to get her life on track, hoping to become a viral influencer. A creature of impulse (this novel sees the creature inside every human), she wanders into a store selling snakes and finds herself smitten by a baby Burmese python. She knows it will eventually grow bigger, but right now it is the perfect fashion accessory to drape around her arm and neck. And Cat really isn't the type to think things through. Boyle knows what should happen when you put a woman and a snake in a place once considered Eden, and, soon enough, all hell breaks loose. Or maybe not quite soon enough, for there is some plodding and padding before the plot really takes off. Though, when it does, the breathless momentum matches the tonal command, which walks a tightrope between darkest humor and truly horrifying. Beyond snakes, droughts, floods, and fires, there are ticks, termites, heatstrokes, amputations, and a huge social media backlash as Cat learns that celebrity has its downside. She has become "Python Mom" (and her brother is "Bug Boy"). To reveal too much plot would spoil the suspense, but the rituals once celebrated and the routines taken for granted--dating and mating, weddings, dinner parties, going to work or for a drive, a swim, or a drink--are all potentially fraught with terror. Yet so much of this is so funny, in a twisted sort of way. At one point, a character describes the novel he's reading as cli-fi, and this novel might fit that category as well. Yet it doesn't so much imagine a climate future as awaken us to today's. Be afraid. Be very afraid. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
