Rating: 
Summary: Its not right, but its okay
Review: While the content of the book is not entirely satisfactory (the plot is rather thin and astonishingly easy to predict) you cannot be less than satisied with Boyle's delightful style of writing. He is gifted with the ability to assess situations and recresate them in his novels in a way that we can all identify with. While it's not the best book i have ever read, i can reccomend it to you - particularly as a holiday read
Rating:
Summary: absolutely great
Review: The novel is not only entertainment but makes you think about problems of misunderstanding, intolerance and prejudices between the Americans and the illegal immigrants. Because of the shifting point of view the reader is able to identify with both couples and doesn't take side. Boyle managed to write an interesting novel about a very important topic. Besides this book isn't as boring as most of the books you read in school. You can also read it a second time and you will still discover more and more allusions and details. We can only recommand it because you don't waste your time by reading it!
Rating: 
Summary: Bonfire of the Vanities does California
Review: This is "Bonfire of the Vanities" does California, and the cultural contrasts between the lives of Latino immigrants and liberal yuppies is striking. It is a gifted author who can make you feel most sympathtic to the characters you have the least in common with. If Boyle is a little over the top at times, that's much more fun than missing the mark.
Rating: 
Summary: A promising but ultimately disappointing novel
Review: In this novel, Boyle has tackled an important contemporary social issue in entertaining fashion. The book is a definite page-turner, drawing the reader in with exciting, non-stop action and inventive, image-evoking prose. However, I ultimately was disturbed by Boyle's commercialized, superficial treatment of the issues he confronts in this novel. Especially when a book is entertainingly written, it is easy for readers to forget that the novelist has nearly limitless power to manipulate his readers through story line, tone, and character development. Consequently, fictional accounts of "significant issues" can easily be mistaken for "documentary treatments," with unfortunate results. Here, Boyle seduces the reader with superficially realistic portrayals of the illegal alien protagonists and their Topanga Canyon liberal-yuppie counterparts. Actually, however, his characters are merely cardboard cut-out stereotypes who dance like marionettes in accordance with Boyle's ideological predilections--which turns out to be tiresomely predictable in way that he pillories "hypocritical yuppies" and romanticizes poor, "martyred" Mexicans immigrants. Boyle had an opportunity here to create a work in which the real tragedy of contemporary California is demonstrated, i.e., that well-meaning people of all backgrounds and situations are cast into a difficult situation over which they ultimately have little or no control. Boyle does follow this pathway for much of the book, but as the ending nears, he succumbs to the temptation to manipulate his readers by revealing, bit by bit, the truly vile nature of supposed "liberals." Yawn. This sanctimonious stance has become all too predictable among the artistic/academic set, whose principal intent ultimately seems to be to seek and hold the moral high ground against their unenlightened professional-managerial class rivals. This book ultimately disappoints. The issue of illegal immigration, its impacts and social repercussions, is far too important to be reduced to the soap-opera themes and characterizations to which Boyle ultimately succumbs.
Rating:
Summary: A really great novel!
Review: We are 18-year-old students from Bad Kissingen. We read the book in our English lesson and were fascinated at once. The novel is not only entertainment but makes you think about problems of misunderstanding, intolerance and prejudices between the Americans and the illegal immigrants. Because of the shifting point of view the reader is able to identify with both couples and doesn't take side. Boyle managed to write an interesting novel about a very important topic. Besides this book isn't as boring as most of the books you read in school. You can also read it a second time and you will still discover more and more allusions and details. We can only recommand it because you don't waste your time by reading it!class 12, Gymnasium Bad Kissingen, Germany Carolin Albert, Julia Borst, Markus Erhard, Heike Heel
Rating:
Summary: HIghly engaging!
Review: Excellent story of real-world California. Gives a first-hand account of the socio-ethno-economic battleground in Southern Cal. Amazing characters are richly described and very realistic. I hope my next book is as good as this one...
Rating:
Summary: Good fences do not make good neighbors
Review: As someone who works with undocumented aliens and immigration (from an advocacy point of view), I would hope that the issues raised by the author were already sufficiently known that they could be presented less melodramatically than the author did. But, if one has never thought much about issues of immigration and its connection to American culture before, the book will provide an interesting and occasionally moving introduction to the subject. You could, however, watch the movie "El Norte" and have the same thoughts provoked, and more profound questions raised. Finally, the snap ending ...was it meant to be Maupassant or was it just a gimmick? I think it was the latter.
Rating:
Summary: Great novel. Loved every word.
Review: The book was an irresistible read. I felt for the Rincons more than I would have ever expected myself to. The book made me stop and think about my attitudes, and responsibilities as a member of society. I feel as though I owe a great deal to Mr. Boyle. He opened my eyes, and made them cry, as Candido "reached out and took hold of it". TC Boyle was very intelligent in ending the book so abruptly. It left me with an obvious choice, one that I could not possibly turn oblivious to: the choice of whether to reach out as Candido did, or wall myself in like Delaney. Nevertheless, I would have liked to know, superficially, what happens to the two families in the end. The Tortilla Curtain deserves a six-star rating, if there is such a thing. Thank You T.C.Boyle!
Rating:
Summary: An exploration of the contrasts of society
Review: This book has helped me change my paradigms about today's immigrants as well as today's privileged elite. I would recommend this book to others that I know who may be negative toward the influx of immigrants, but especially to those who may be envious of the "way of life" of all the yuppies trying to set up their sterile utopias. Great character studies and a great ending.
Rating:
Summary: a thriller teaching understanding and compassion
Review: I read this book three years ago and taught it a year later in my English class in Germany. While I was reading it I sometimes hated it for forcing me into the lives of two groups of people that are very strange to me or not really humans I'd normally know or identify with. But I was compelled to think their thoughts and induced to sort of like them and feel like them and feel their losses. And as soon as I had got used to them and started to sympathise with their problems I was taken to the other one of those two different groups, made to identify with them and so on. Thus the author manages to irritate you and this irritation makes you think and feel much more deeply about all the book's characters than you normally do. A clever achievement! But what is also great is that the book is also a thriller. This was the first time that my students asked me if they could finish the book when I had just told them to read the next chapter.
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