"The novel talked about the torture in police stations, the forging of elections, the bribes and corruption and agents.
In his propulsive but ultimately disappointing new novel, "Talk Talk," Mr. Boyle fashions these two sides of the coin into a single story.
I lived in Trinidad for half of 2006, writing a novel, talking to my mother, playing Scrabble, and drinking tea with her most days.
New drugs like Prozac were entering the market; novel talking therapies were proving effective, too, particularly cognitive behavior therapy, in which people learn to defuse upsetting thoughts by questioning their basis.
And then Gerry Nicosia, who wrote Memory Babe, a huge biography of Jack Kerouac, came to our "bootcamp" and played us tapes of LuAnne Henderson, who's Marylou in the novel, talking about her love for Neal and also Jack.
In 1991 the group gave him its highest honor, its Grandmaster Award, after he had solidified the Navajo Tribal Police series with "A Thief of Time" (his own favorite novel), "Talking God" and "Coyote Waits".
Today, writers who are trying to expand the possibilities of the novel talk about incorporating the techniques of memoir and essay, of hewing closer to the author's subjective experience, of effacing the difference between fiction and their own personal nonfictions.
By the end of Barnes's 1991 novel "Talking It Over" — in which the three participants in a love triangle make their cases directly to the reader — Oliver had stolen the lovely and capable Gillian away from his best friend, Stuart.
The following is an excerpt from T.C. Boyle's novel Talk Talk (Viking Adult, 2006).
