Summary: A collection of 14 short works by the PEN/Faulkner Award-winning and National Book Award-finalist author of World's End focuses on a theme of nature and includes in the title piece a retelling of the story of a feral boy who was captured in the forests of Napoleonic France. - (Baker & Taylor)
Booklist Reviews
Although the "wild child" of this book's title is the "Wild Boy of Aveyron," a feral French youth who perhaps embodies the book's epigraph ("In wildness is the preservation of the world"), Boyle's latest collection of stories is as much about the uses adults have for children as it is about the children themselves. In his opening salvo, "Balto," an alcoholic father asks his 12-year-old daughter to be his designated driver, with disastrous results. In "The Lie," a man's impulsive excuse for skipping work ("The baby's dead") goes little better. And in the lengthy and vividly imagined title story, Victor, the wild boy, doggedly resists his superiors' attempts to mold him into something useful and understandable to them—he is wild nature personified. That's a thematic oversimplification of these diverse and wonderful stories, of course, and the appeal of Boyle's short fiction remains remarkably broad. His intelligence and style satisfy lovers of capital-L Literature, while his hooky, propulsive vignettes satisfy readers who just want a damn good story. And there are some damn good stories here. Copyright 2009 Booklist Reviews.
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