Rating: 
Summary: It's hard to be humane in unhuman conditions
Review: An excellent perfectly told story. But what is it about ? A hippy commune in California is under the menace of being ousted by the local court and the sheriff. They move to Alaska, to extreme conditions of survival. This brings out the psychology of every character and it is not very flattering for some. Extreme survival conditions reveal the hidden face of each one of them and some of these revelations are absolutely devilish. They are also set in parallel with a young couple that makes it a real trade and adventure to survive in the best conditions and yet without getting into extreme hatred or survival strife with their neighbors. This couple is like the measuring rod to evaluate the hippies. The book reveals that you need to be particularly hard working in such condittions and this reveals those who are hippies to escape any discipline. They become parasites and very fast they start living on the back of the others, without working really and going as far as stealing, and then they drop out before being rejected. Then you have those who cannot bear anything slightly hard and these will eventually drop out. Here there is a touch that bothers me : one of these is a black man, the only black man who manages to follow the commune to Alaska. It reveals open racism among the locals there but it also contains, symbolically, a racist rejection of the character and since he is the only black he becomes the representative of his racial group and that verges onto symbolical racism. Finally you have those who are going to prefer some sentimental attachment to the hardship of living through the Alaskan winter and night. This is the case of the « guru » who owns the land and leads the others to Alaska but he leaves before the winter arguing that his girlfriend, who is no hard-struggling group-minded survivor, is sick. Extreme conditions are the revealing touchstone for all of them and few are those who will go through the adventure and the hard works it entails. Pessimistic in a way, it is also optimistic by the simple conclusion that in such conditions some will be able to cope and some will not be able to cope. Hippyism is easy in California, an easy way to live on the back of others, particularly on the women's back (if I can say so) concerning the men, but this parasitism leads to plain antisocial attitudes or dropping out back to society for some of them. The book is in a way an illustration that humanity needs a challenge, needs extreme conditions to reveal itself, but it is not clear about the fact that some of the survivors will survive on the bodies of many victims of their pushing. Enjoy the book.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
Rating:
Summary: Perhaps Boyle's Best Yet!
Review: A friend of mine prefers Boyle's more modern works, with "Budding Prospects" as his favorite. I prefer his more historically-based novels. "World's End" is my favorite. But we both loved this book! Some of Boyle's books require a lot of patience to get through the first 80 or so pages, but this one grabbed us from the beginning. His characterizations have never been better. In fact, this book isn't quite a negative as some others. The characters aren't quite as hypocritical as usual, and they don't endure quite as much suffering. But all the typical bite and wit are here. I love Boyle because his work seems so real for me. This book made me feel like Boyle really lived through much of what he has written about. Highest possible recommendation.
Rating: 
Summary: Best Book This Summer
Review: I read the second half of this book in one afternoon, I just couldn't put it down. T C Boyle will make you feel as if you are right in Drop City. You will feel the California sun beating down on you and the bitter below-zero cold that settles in come October. Would love to know what becomes of Pam, Sess, Star and Marco.
Rating:
Summary: A marvelous talent
Review: This is the first book by Boyle I'd read, and I was hooked from the first page. Having flirted with this lifestyle in the late sixties, I recognize it all, with a mixture of amusement (the book is hysterically funny) and relief that I escaped before I got in too deep. Boyle has caught the scene perfectly, and he's one of the most talented writers around. I've now read everything he's written, and a steady diet of him is depressing (and predictable), but what a relief to find someone so talented getting the recognition he deserves! If you enjoy/ed Tom Wolfe's "Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test", you'll love this book.
Rating:
Summary: another winner from Boyle
Review: Highly readable, with great character and scene set-ups. With the exception of The Road to Wellville, Boyle has consistently delivered winning fiction (as opposed to literature). This is fun, intelligent stuff; not profound, perhaps, but it doesn't pretend to be, either.
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Summary: Goats and Kids
Review: I found myself immersed in Drop City from the first pages, and as with most well-crafted novels, I was willing to "suspend my disbelief" and to accept the parameters of time, place, character and structure which the author set out. However, there were two issues which brought me immediately back to the "surface" and broke the connection to Boyle's constructed reality. The Goats: Hard as I tried to imagine it, I could not believe that two goats travelled from California to Alaska on the roof of a bus travelling 24/7 up the long highway. Would the Border Police have allowed entry of livestock like this? Why would a purportedly famous "rock band" be travelling with two live goats? The Kids: Even if the parents were as derelict as portrayed, surely someone on the commune would have taken some care or had some affection for these children. At the communes I visited in the sixties (and I did) children were revered and celebrated -- viewed as "old souls" or as "clean slates" on which the future would be written. So.... an excellent and evocative novel, but loss of a star for "waking me up" from the story.
Rating:
Summary: Readable and engrossing, but don't take it too seriously
Review: *Drop City* is vintage T.C. Boyle: a fascinating torrent of words and images saturated with a cynical wit that can both amuse and annoy. This time around Boyle has chosen what has become an all-too-easy target, those silly, misguided, fog-brained communal west coast hippies of a generation ago. Readers looking for a "balanced" or nuanced portrayal of the communards will not find it here. Boyle's style is to lampoon and even sneer at his subjects, rendering them one-dimensionaly pathetic in their naivite and their self-delusion. Surely all of the stereotypes Boyle has presented here are based upon real human types who populated the now mostly defunct hippie communes, but from my own experience as a young, starry-eyed hippie wannabe from that era, I know that many communes included wise, thoughtful, even heroic individuals, and yet it is clear that Boyle has little interest in this more positive aspect of the hippie legacy. To his credit, Boyle does demonstrate that a major cause of the communes' many shortcomings was that old axiom of small group sociology, "a few people spoil things for everybody." No matter how well-meaning most communards might have been, these institutions' lack of firm structure and rules rendered their arrangements vulnerable to all varieties of pathological and predatory individuals. Boyle shows how both in northern California and in Alaska, one or a few rogue individuals were able to poison what otherwise would have been far more congenial social arrangements. One of the most satisfying aspects of Boyle's rambling narrative is that clearly he did his research when it came to matters of space and place. His portrayal of central Alaska, particularly its climate, landscape, and ecology is nothing short of superb. One can almost feel the clouds of mosquitoes and black flies that plague anyone venturing out of doors during June and July. *Drop City* is magnificent for Boyle's amazing ability to turn phrases and create vivid images. The book is a terrifically entertaining read and there is hardly a dull moment throughout. On the negative side, however, the characters tend toward the one-dimensional and the ending does seem to be both abrupt and arbitrary; I found myself disappointed as I finished the last page. Overall, however, this is a very fine effort by one of America's most gifted writers.
Rating:
Summary: Thoroughly engrossing.
Review: I really enjoyed this book. It took me to other places, another time, and was not too depressing despite the harsh realities in each venue. I cared about the characters and saw hope for the ones that I sympathized the most with. This book was so good that I neglected housework and stayed up too late reading. It made me think about life, I tasted a slice of Baked Alaska (ha ha) and it was a great adventure! Bravo T. C. Boyle! I will try another one of his books to see if it can measure up to this one.
Rating:
Summary: Compulsively Readable
Review: Really loved this book, loved his word choice and cared about the characters. Kind of reminded me of why I like Tom Wolfe novels in its journalistic approach. I ate up the details on what it's like to be a hippie. I liked that Boyle suggests there is no free lunch since "dropping out" is portrayed either as a self-indulgent loveless enterprise or nightmarish hard work, and that the extremes of either communal living or complete solitude aren't answers. Makes me appreciate the 'burbs more. If you haven't read it yet, don't read the following:
What's interesting too is how Boyle suggests we are products of our environment. The stress of Alaska broke the hippies, exacerbated Ronnie/Pan's evil and eventually caused the leader to bolt, a breach of everything he stood for. Pre-Alaska, their brotherliness and camarderie was fostered by the comfort and drugs, but how many of us our bolstered in brotherliness and camarderie by our comfort and our beer? Sess's hatred of the contemptible Joe Bosky is understandable, but he's as much a product of the environment as any wolf, heartless as the climate.
Rating: 
Summary: Occasionally entertaining slice of commune life...
Review: Boyle has the most fun here when he forces his California-conditioned hippies to endure the endless winter of the Alaskan wilderness. It's an interesting premise, and occasionally it hits the mark, but it still leaves the reader feeling "so what?", because ultimately these are just a bunch of unlikeable layabouts. His descriptions are uniformly excellent, and one can't help but wonder whether he rather wasted them on the characters here, but Drop City is quite readable in a voyeuristic, zoo-type way. Better than a lot of counterculture portraits because it has its tongue firmly in its cheek, but unless you really care about selfish pothead pseudo-spiritualists and their helpless struggles you're not going to find the Great American Novel here.
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