The Tortilla Curtain: T.C. Boyle - Tapa blanda

This novel examines America's guerrilla war between the haves and have-nots with a zing unequalled since The Bonfire of the Vanities ... rock'n'roll, full of exciting, vivid American landscapes, utopian, manic (Observer)

If Dickens were alive today he would be writing this sort of book (Rosie Boycott The Times, Books of the Year)

A harrowing, even horrific, tale of an immigrant couple's venture into California, and the shockingly brutal reception they receive ... a remarkable feat of imaginative empathy (Daily Telegraph)

Thrilling ... it's the same set up as Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities but Boyle immediately enlivens it (Independent on Sunday)

Stirring ... The Tortilla Curtain confirms Boyle's reputation as a novelist of exuberance and invention ... It also adds to his fictional range an open-hearted compassion for those whom society fears and reviles (New York Times Book Review)

A bold, strange novel ... a hectic satire on LA liberalism and real estate - Tom Wolfe meets Steinbeck (Daily Telegraph, Books of the Year)

Irresistible ... Boyle is a gifted and empathic satirist, the finest craftsman masked as a pop-literary author current American fiction has (Bret Easton Ellis Vogue)

Lays on the line of our national cult of hypocrisy. Comically and painfully he details the smug wastefulness of the haves and the vile misery of the have-nots (Barbara Kingsolver)

A powerful novel ... One of the best books I've read this year (Marie Claire)

What makes Boyle's book so good is not only its juggernaut plot, but also the author's keen eye for satire ... He has achieved that rarest of literary doubles - creating a message novel that is also a thundering good read (Esquire)