I had a hard time deciding what to rate this, because this is a book with flashes of brilliance and insight which ultimately I don't think works. The book follows two couples that live near each other in the outskirts of Los Angeles: one a rich white tofu-eating liberal American couple, Delaney and Kyra; the other two illegal immigrant Mexicans, Candido and America, squatting on public land.
The two families first come into contact when Delaney runs over Candido in his car. Candido is able to walk away from the accident--Delaney sops his conscience by giving Candido twenty dollars. Next we follow Candido down to where he's camped out with his pregnant wife. His desperate circumstances are effectively told, and the contrast and savage irony with Delaney's assumptions (and Delaney's own lyrical nature column on the glories of staying out in the wilderness) is priceless (which earned it the two stars). There are flashes of brilliant insight like that throughout the book, when Boyle is able to hold out contemporary Americans' assumptions and prejudices to a bright satiric light that kept me reading. The book is well-paced, a page-turner, and I enjoyed Boyle's voice and style.
I felt mixed about Boyle's characterization of the Mexican couple at times--feeling there's something a bit too facile and caricatured about his characterizations that depended too much on a sprinkling of Spanish and bits of cultural trivia.
But what ruined this book for me were the twists and turns of plot. This book had the potential to humanize the plight of the illegal immigrant, but in the end I feel it's too easy to simply roll your eyes at Boyle's book and dismiss it because of the ridiculous pile-on of disasters. I almost put the book down twice at certain events and the conclusion made me want to throw the book against the wall.
