Rating: 
Summary: Do yourself a favor and buy this immediately!
Review: ...Boyle is roughly 100 years ahead of his time, since the public has not yet caught up.There is no other author writing English stories who can compare with Boyle for sheer inventiveness and creativity. And his inventiveness has a point, for each story, besides entertaining, makes you think deeply about issues that are important to all of us. This collection should top the best seller lists and be required reading in high school and college classes. If you read O'Henry in h.s. like I did, or Shirley Jackson, you may think you have read the best. Read Boyle and you will quickly revise that opinion. Only gave this five stars because I couldn't give six!
Rating: 
Summary: Montecito's best novelist & short story writer
Review: As a pedestrian writer who finished my first T.C Boyle novel, after running across him by accident @ the Miami International Book Fair, it came as a blitz when I left the Cold Spring Tavern and stopped at a place that said T.C. is there twice a week on average. Tonight, Valentine's day, I took my wife (actually she found the place) to an Asian-fusion restaurant on 23rd St. Obviously that has nothing to do with T.C.'s stories, at least yet. T.C. is a little like Mark Twain. It's cool to find someone who enjoys writing as much as this guy does. He should tour the Elmore Leonard Coast of Florida. From my point of view, along with Tom Wolfe, John Irving and the guy that wrote "Billy Bathgate" (whose name escapes me even though I know where he goes for egg cremes in Surfside...and it isn't Issac Singer)T.C. has a very cool view of how to tell a story. This guy sure does know how to write! I'll read this guy's stories the way I listen to Niel Young songs...or read Sam Shephard stories...carefully.
Rating:
Summary: Trying to even things out
Review: I am trying to even things out. I have not yet finished the entire collection of stories, but the ones I have read are quite good. As I write this there is only one other review displayed here, and that guy gave T.C. a single star. Why? His review didn't seem that harsh? Because I have not finished the book, I can only rate it a 4 star effort. But I give it 5 stars because that last wacko can't add, and I want to even things out.
Rating:
Summary: Hard-Boyled and Enduring
Review: I can't remember when I've enjoyed a collection of short stories any more. TC Boyle is an imaginative bottomless pit of intriguing short fiction ideas. At 691 pages, this collection is a comprehensive look into the mind of one of our most talented prose stylists. Boyle is, in fact, at his luinous best in the shorter work. While his novels become at times ponderous, the reader will not find that to be true in the shorts. There are way too many great stories to mention here, but a few highlights for me were "Heart of a Champion," "The Human Fly," The Ape Lady in Retirement," "Mexico," and "Bloodfall." I've taught "Greasy Lake" for years to survey Lit classes who have typically found Boyle, if nothing else, to be provocative. Boyle's presence over the years in the highbrow New York magazines should solidify his place among American writers of his generation. It's nice to see the mass of this work in this well-organized very readable collection.
Rating:
Summary: Hard-Boyled and Enduring
Review: I can't remember when I've enjoyed a collection of short stories any more. TC Boyle is an imaginative bottomless pit of intriguing short fiction ideas. At 691 pages, this collection is a comprehensive look into the mind of one of our most talented prose stylists. Boyle is, in fact, at his luinous best in the shorter work. While his novels become at times ponderous, the reader will not find that to be true in the shorts. There are way too many great stories to mention here, but a few highlights for me were "Heart of a Champion," "The Human Fly," The Ape Lady in Retirement," "Mexico," and "Bloodfall." I've taught "Greasy Lake" for years to survey Lit classes who have typically found Boyle, if nothing else, to be provocative. Boyle's presence over the years in the highbrow New York magazines should solidify his place among American writers of his generation. It's nice to see the mass of this work in this well-organized very readable collection.
Rating:
Summary: A must-have book for your contemporary fiction collection
Review: I discovered T.C. Boyle four or five years ago by accident, and a very happy accident it was. While I love all his books ("Water Music" still makes me laugh until I cry), I have always had a love for anyone who can consistently write good short stories, and his are some of the best. This book collects them all into loose categories instead of chronologies, which is far better. And while the "Love" collection starts the book, the most unusual and funniest stories are to be found in the "Everything Else In Between" category at the end of the book. If you enjoy reading authors that continue to surprise you, read T. Coraghessan Boyle.
Rating:
Summary: Retrospective of the BEST of T.C.
Review: I've been reading T.C.Boyles short stories for years, and I have never discovered books that I can read so many times without inflicting bordom on myself (still not tired of any of these). They are like CD's that can become glued to the CD player and no one seems to care. This collection just wraps it all up. Sigh...if only Thomas Pynchon could write such short 'n' sweet stories...I might actually understand him.
Rating: 
Summary: Deeper! We must go deeper!
Review: In "Rapture of the Deep," one of the more than 60-plus brilliantly realized stories collected here, Jacques Cousteau confronts a crew starved for the culinary comforts of land. Cousteau seeks to explore the dark and bizarre landscapes, the truly remote regions of the planet, to document the life that desperately struggles in harsh and exacting circumstances. You can tell where I'm going here, right? T.C. Boyle is our Cousteau, and he takes short little voyages in his literary bathyscape, taking us to meet all sorts of strange, colorful creatures, people living in remote corners of the world. Or, like the blind sea-life who do not need eyesight to understand their universe, his self-centered humanity can't see around their own immediate aims. In as comprehensive a collection as this, there are bound to be quite a few clunkers. The surprise is how few there are. Boyle's vision of people and their dreams, their impact, their victories and losses, their neighborhoods is about as diverse as the entire planet has to offer. Vignettes, fables, speculative jokes, romances, tragedies, and just plain absurd, the range is amazing.
Rating:
Summary: I inhaled this one
Review: T. C. Boyle is a master of short stories. In this 700 page tome, Boyle covers the gamut of subjects in a funny, witty, and satirical way. His writing style offers an amusing, introspective, and memorable view of American culture. This one is as entertaining as any book I have read.
Rating:
Summary: SHORT STORIES ARE MUCH BETTER THAN HIS NOVELS
Review: T.C. Boyle is one of my favorite modern short-story writers (William Trevor is another) and you can drop in on any of these and be swept into his quirky worldview and be out in less than 20 minutes. The same can't be said for his overwrought, baggy novels but thank goodness for this collection that keeps it altogether (now I can throw out all those paperback editions of his short fiction). There are too many wonderful stories to choose a favorite here but here's a suggestion for prospective buyers. Go to a favorite bookstore that let's you sit and read, pick any story in this volume and read it and if you like it, go home and order it here. THE REST IS EASY because T.C. Boyle's a very consistent writer of short fiction and if you like one, you'll like most all of 'em.
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