Rating: 
Summary: Well-written and thought-provoking.
Review: This book concerns the opposition between two cultures and two couples that live in close proximity in Southern California. This is only a physical nearness, however, because the two couples, like the two cultures, counldn't be farther apart.The point of view shifts between Delaney and Kyra, two well-to-do liberal yuppies, and Candido and America, two illegal immigrants fighting to work and make a life for themselves in a nearby makeshift campsite. Their lives intersect at different points in the story, and though some may find it contrived, it works in driving the conflict between the characters. As a reader, I did feel the conflict ... at times I rooted for Candido and America, and other times I realized that I'd probably feel much like the suburbanites who hate and fear them. I guess that's the point. I did come away from the book with the distinct impression that California may have the weather advantage most of the time, but the drawbacks presented here make me glad to be 3000 miles away. Overall this is a good reading experience: there are characters to care about, ideas to think about, and a good story to follow. It is well worth your time.
Rating:
Summary: What? A *Classic* that¿s FUN to read?!
Review: I first read this in my HS English Lit class, and in four years of public HS it was the one book that really spoke to me. It's exciting, heartbreaking, and incredibly vivid and well-written. I've since become a big TCB fan, and basically most of his stuff is awesome . . . but I keep coming back to this first one as my very favorite. It's got literary allusions and contentious issues, great for English class, but also once you read it these characters live with you forever, and in a very real way this book is a modern Steinbeck (and a hell of a lot more fun to read). It does have the power to sway people because seeing things from a different perspective is undeniably powerful. But besides all that, this book is just good. Why? Well, it just is. It's a must-have for any serious reader, but it's also a thrilling page-turner. Whether you agree with the politics is beside the point, because this is meant to spark internal debate. It doesn't offer any answers. You have to find that for yourself. But what's so amazing about Tortilla Curtain is that TCB understands that you don't ever have to sacrifice excitement in order to be serious lit or in order to use beautiful language or in order to have deep thematic undertones.
Rating: 
Summary: Racialist Pap.
Review: T.C. Boyle wrote a very boring novel about races (not the inspirational Chariots of Fire kinds of races, but the depressing kind of races), and it's like whatever. Good thing: the author's initials are TCB. TAKING CARE of BUSINESS! Whoo!
Rating:
Summary: A Quick Quiz
Review: Assuming you haven't read this book and are actually scanning the reviews to figure out whether you should, I've devised a brief set of questions which may help. 1.) Have you ever traveled on your own in a Third World country?
2.) Did you enjoy the film "El Norte?"
3.) Do vast disparities between wealth and poverty disturb you?
4.) Are you politically left-leaning?
5.) Is social commentary in the form of an outrageous tragicomedy something that would interest you? Each "yes" answer is worth one star. 3 stars = worth a try
4 stars = a strong buy
5 stars = what, are you high? It's five stars! As for some of the negative reviews I've read in these pages, I must strongly disagree with certain statements. For instance, one reviewer says the characters are "stereotypes." Hardly. I've spent most of my life in So Cal. In twenty minutes I could take on a tour that would show you nearly everything that appears in "Tortilla Curtain," from the guys hanging around in front of the mega-hardware store, desperately hoping for some day work, to the obnoxious mini-mansions sprouting in the hills, to the plywood shanties where migrants live without running water or electricity, to the cell-phone wielding suburbanites tailgating each other down the freeway at 80 M.P.H. Everything else, you can read in the newspaper several times a week. It's all real, folks.
Rating:
Summary: California Dreaming
Review: Q: So what is this book about? A: Hmm, that's a pretty good question. There are issues of race involved, and racism, but you probably guessed that from the title. Honesty and values are questioned and examined. And national pride is also a going issue. And comparative wealth. But these aren't really what the book is about. It's more about... well, you'll just have to read it. Q: That sounds like a cop-out. Didn't you read the book yourself? A: Of course I did. I just finished reading it last night, around suppertime. Q: Then why can't you give me a rundown of what the book's about? A: Because it's a complex and sophisticated book. Author T. Coraghessan Boyle creates characters who represent both literal and supra-literal themes, contrasting the extremes of the economic spectrum in Southern California. His use of symbolic language and imagery is on a par with Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner. He consciously makes us think of modern issues in terms that were defined in other eras by writers like Voltaire, Aristotle, Keats, Jefferson, and Rousseau. This is an important and meaningful work. You really ought to read it. Q: Sounds like the boring "literature" I had to read in high school that didn't even pretend to communicate with me. Is this going to be as dull as those books were? A: Not hardly. I found it gripping reading. I put off preparing dinner to have time to read this book. I was late to class behind the time I spent reading this book. I missed my bedtime because I didn't want to stop reading this book. There are a lot of painfully dull books out there that we read because we're told we ought to, but not this one. You'll want to spend time reading this book, even as it challenges your assumptions. Q: But that's not what this book is really about. Can you give me a thumbnail plot summary? A: Sure. Delaney Mossbacher is a red-haired writer in his forties with liberal leanings and a tendency to become passionate about issues, living in California, though born on the East Coast-notably, this is a description that also applies to Boyle. Cándido Rincón is an illegal immigrant from Mexico, camped with his wife in a grassy creek valley in the middle of L.A. Each is afflicted with his own worries, and each invests the same weight in his respective worries, though their respective circumstances mean they have very different worries. Delaney frets about the environment, racial parity, crime, and making payments on his house and car. Cándido worries about getting work to buy food, and whether his wife will be able to give birth in a hospital. Both are afflicted by a common seeming curse: everything either one tries to accomplish ultimately fails. One day Delaney accidentally hits Cándido on the road, leaving the poor immigrant wounded and unable to find work. If Cándido goes to a hospital, the INS will deport him, so he accepts $20 from Delaney and slinks off to heal. All this happens right on page one and the next few pages-Boyle isn't interested in wasting the reader's time with slow set-up, and heads straight for the meat of his story. From that one accident, the lives of the two men and their families move in tight orbits around each other, though they never discover it. They can't communicate, because they don't share a common language, and they're doomed forever to misunderstand one another. Each thinks the other to be something he isn't, and as they wade through a morass of non-comprehension, leading to a cataclysmic confrontation, both watch everything they thought they knew about themselves and the world around them crumble under the weight of suspicion, ignorance, and doubt. You really ought to read the book. Q: But you make it sound like there's even more going on than just the plot. What all is this book trying to tell us? A: It's about California. The two characters are emblematic of the spirit and nature of the state. Bear in mind, the California of the Beach Boys hasn't existed since about 1974. California is a divided state. Wealthy white people like Delaney get ahead by working and living with a go-go-go drive that leaves them too occupied to enjoy anything they've accomplished. These people are dependent on the working poor like Cándido for cheap, plentiful labor, but they despise these aliens for the very reason they need them-they work tirelessly, cheaply, plentifully, without paying taxes or being regulated. Q: Is California really like that? A: By and large. When I was younger I thought the Beach Boys' California must still exist, especially since I didn't notice the kind of life Boyle describes when I was attending high school in San Diego. However, that was over ten years ago. Having gone back as an adult, I have seen that California is a fragmented state, carved up into characterless subdivisions, ruled by glossy high-tech corporations, and consuming more of the natural world than it returns. The success-oriented California culture leaves no room for slacking off, and eats the few remaining pleasure-seekers and beach-bunnies for lunch. And it's fueled by the bulk labor of the inexhaustible supply of illegal immigrants that cross the border every day. It's all there to be read, you really ought to read the book. Q: But what is the book ABOUT? A: Everything I've said and more. It's sophisticated literature and it's lunchtime reading. It's brutally honest and it's humane. It sympathizes with the characters even as it's damning them. There's only one thing I can say about it: you really ought to read the book.
Rating: 
Summary: Brutally honest, but not highly enjoyable.
Review: The Tortilla Curtain is a tragic account of brutal honesty. It made me really question my morals and how if I actually abide by them. It is difficult to read such honesty and sometimes it is even engaging. However Tortilla Curtain was not engaging for me. I found myself skipping the chapters about the Mossbachers and reading the story of the Rincons, for the simple reason that the Mossbachers had nothing to offer me, and the Rincons had an actual story.
The book was not an enjoyable, engaging read, but I am glad I read it and found I had more questions to ask of human nature and people's motives after I read the story.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing
Review: The setting is in California in a ritzy neighborhood with its perks. The Main characters are Delaney, Kira, Candito, and America. Delaney is a well to do guy. He has a wife, Kira, a son and two dogs. Kira is the breadwinner of the household, with her main stay in Real-estate. Candito is an honest immigrant man trying to make a living in the USA with his pregnant wife America. Plot : Delaney hits a man in the road. This man is like a dog, he is filthy and obviously not a middle class citizen. With $20 and a look behind his shoulder Delaney is off and back to his life. Candito was on his way back to his wife when a rich white man struck him. He refused any medical treatment because that meant deportation for him, and an unsecured life for America. In two different worlds, both man and their wives find out the interrelationship between all human beings and what it is to have hope. Techniques: T.C. Boyle masterly uses flashing back between the lives of Candito, America, Delaney, and Kira, to show different perspectives while giving incredible depth to his novel. Themes: Boyle's characters are the epitome of the American condition. They show the hypocrisy that lives all around us. He shows a perspective between the lowest forms of human life to the highest and how they interchange. What we can be in life, what we are, and what we want to be is all relative.
Rating: 
Summary: Realisticly disturbing
Review: Title: Tortilla Curtain Author: T.C. Boyle
Genre: Realistic Fiction
Setting: Southern California in present time. Near the border of Mexico where many illegal immigrants come to find a new life.
Characters:
Delaney- A middle to upper class liberal, who feels one with nature. Is also a stay at home parent and writer. Is comfortable with his surroundings and becomes angry when his life style is at risk.
Kyra- The wife of Delaney and strongly work involved real estate agent. She lives for her job and will do anything for her next sale.
Candido- An illegal immigrant from Mexico whom is trying to make it in America with his young wife and unborn child. He is hit by many hardships and barely escapes death on a number of occasions.
America-Candido's wife and a scared, naive, and young illegal immigrant. She dreams of living in a real home and raising her child the American way. She is pregnant and miserable and would do anything to be happy. Plot: Delaney gets mixed up with Candido by hitting him with his car on a highway. Delaney feels badly at first but then begins to feel anger and rage. He becomes scared for his lifestyle and blames Candido for everything that has happened to him. Candido tries to find work and make a life for himself but continually gets hit with hardships until one day he lights the canyon that he lives in on fire. He then ends up living in a shack behind the housing development that Delaney lives in with his family. Later things continue to go wrong for both Delaney and Candido and Delaney decides to hunt down Candido for revenge. He hunts him down with a gun and when he finds him a mud slide carries them away.
Techniques : By using a variety of techniques such as detail, irony, and imagery Boyle creates an unimaginable story that could happen to anyone. The story is so realistic that it is disturbing to your stomach. Theme: In the pursuit of happiness we can be forced to do unimaginable things. We will never know what we are capable of until the time comes for us to react...
Rating:
Summary: Close to Home
Review: It doesn't surprise me that few who have read T.C. Boyle's,The Tortilla Curtain,truly appreciate its brilliancy. For many of us it hits way too close to home and pushes us to the point of discomfort. Boyle's use of alternating point-of-view and excellent imagery enhances the quality of this thought provoking novel. It is definitly worth your time to check it out.
Rating:
Summary: Maybe a little too much tragedy
Review: The novel was really insightful and eye opening. I, in some cases agree with you about the ways of our society. The tragedy kept me entertained and interested, but it may have been a little too much. After a while, I got tired of hearing of the next drama the characters went through. I don't know if it was realistic in the sense that someone could experience such a great amount of hard times in such a short period. Overall, I'm glad I had the chance to read it.
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