Chamblee54

PG read The Tortilla Curtain by T.C. Boyle. It is a good story, which is all PG asks of a book. When he was commuting on Marta, a good story could make the time between Chamblee and Peachtree Center go by in a flash. Maybe that is the role of reading in life, something to pass the time on life’s journey.
The Tortilla Curtain ( Which is the same initials as Tom Coraghessan.) is a story of Los Angeles in the early nineties. The riots of 1992 have come and gone. The landscape is beautiful, but fragile. Some people flourish, and live a life of glittering excess. These people are scared to death by the Spanish speaking masses pouring over the border. The Tortilla Curtain is a story about what happens when worlds collide.
This is the first novel by Mr. Boyle that PG has read, after reading two collections of short stories. The man knows how to tell a story. While there are a lot of coincidences in this tale, your suspension of disbelief does not get in the way of a good time. (Unless you are a fuddy duddy English major, in which case what are you doing reading this blog?) The tale of two families rolls along, like a mudslide going down a canyon, to it’s sticky conclusion.
There is only one issue here. PG got his copy of The Tortilla Curtain at a yard sale. The printer made a mistake when assembling the book. At page 294, the wrong section was inserted. Page 231 to 294 are repeated, instead of the conclusion of the story. At the point of this mistake, PG was reading this story every chance he got. The momentum was intense. At this point, the only choice was to order the book from the library, and wait a few days to finish it.
By the time the complete book arrived at the library, the magic was gone. The plot twists seemed a bit more unlikely. By the time the story came to the  conclusion, PG was shaking his head in disbelief.
The story of the yardsale where PG got this book is almost as good. The house was a few doors down from where PG used to live, and was a 1948 Cape Cod house spared the plague of McMansionization. The cd’s were negotiable, and the book was a quarter. For two dollars, PG got the book, Alladin Sane by David Bowie, Zenyatta Mondatta by The Police, Chronicle by Creedence Clearwater Revival, and a cd by Emmy Lou Harris.
PG knows to check the cd case. The one by Emmy Lou Harris was empty. The yard salesman gave PG a dollar back. PG found a four cd box set by the Moody Blues, and bought it for one dollar. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. The spell check suggestions for McMansionization : Acclimatization, Colonizations, Stigmatization.