The Harder They Come (Boyle) - Book Reviews

Book Reviews
[S]tunning…. The Harder They Come…is very much a showcase for all of Mr. Boyle's storytelling talents. It's gripping, funny and melancholy, and opens out from the miseries of a father and his troubled son into a resonant meditation on the American frontier ethos and propensity for violence—a dramatic novelistic rendering, in many ways, of the scholar Richard Slotkin's pioneering studies on the mythology of the American West…. From the novel's thrilling set piece of a start…to its pensive conclusion, The Harder They Come is a masterly—and arresting—piece of storytelling, arguably Mr. Boyle's most powerful, kinetic novel yet.
Michiko Kakutani - New York Times


The Harder They Come…takes on the paranoia of the far-right sovereign citizen movement and off-the-grid/mountain-man survivalism, as well as more mainstream American notions of independence. This could easily have been an opportunity for a writer of Boyle's comic gifts to go full-tilt satirical, but Boyle takes a darker and more restrained approach. He has written a compelling, complex and intimate novel about three particular people in a specific time and place, a novel that tells us something unnerving about certain precincts of the American Now.
Dana Spiotta - New York Times Book Review


Boyle has long been one of the most exciting and intelligent storytellers in the United States. His upcoming novel describes a mentally ill young man involved with a group of violent anarchists.
Washington Post


This new work of fiction from Boyle presents a fractured threesome: a 70-year-old ex-Marine, his troubled son and the son’s older girlfriend-a right-wing anarchist. A dark novel, The Harder They Come explores violence and the American psyche.
Houston Chronicle


T.C. Boyle again explores his favorite territory, the American psyche, in a gripping novel about an aging Vietnam vet and his mentally unstable son, out in April.
Tampa Bay Times


The latest from a prolific and acclaimed novelist, The Harder They Come is a family saga that maps the relationships between the three people at its heart, as their potent mix of violence and paranoia urges them toward tragedy.
Huffington Post


Boyle's...hypnotic narrative probes the complexities of heroism, violence, power, and resistance.... Written with both clarity and compassion, each of the novel’s characters inhabits a rich and convincing private world.... [and] their haunting stories illuminate the violent American battle with otherness.
Publishers Weekly


(Starred review.) A paranoid survivalist....retreats to a deep-woods bunker with his weapons where his shooting of a perceived "alien" will set off a massive manhunt. Verdict: ...Boyle tellingly explores the anger, paranoia, and violence lurking in the shadowlands of the American psyche. A powerful and profoundly unsettling tale. —Lawrence Rungren, Andover, MA
Library Journal


Violence corrodes the ideal of freedom in an ambitious novel that aims to illuminate the dark underbelly of the American dream.... Adam and Sten function more as types and symbols than individuals, though Boyle remains a master at sustaining narrative momentum as the sense of foreboding darkens and deepens.
Kirkus Reviews