Talk, Talk, by T. C. Boyle

I’ve enjoyed another novel, Tortilla Curtain, by this writer, and Sue has read several, so I decided it was time to revisit him.  His writing is very modern in its subject matter and style.  This story portrays a clash between very different worlds, and a reckoning, a detente if not an embrace.

Dana is a deaf woman, educated, honest, hard-working, in a promising new romance.  Bridger, her boyfriend, is a tech worker, also honest, and headlong in love with Dana.  Peck Wilson is a criminal, ex-con, living the high life on his latest scheme, identity theft.  Peck steals Dana’s identity and, besides binge spending with her credit cards, lets his own history become hers.  So when she is pulled for a minor traffic violation, the cop sees a record of assault, robbery, and other assorted misdemeanors and felonies, he approaches with gun pulled and arrests her.  She endures a long weekend of rough treatment and insult, made incalculably worse by her deafness.  After release, her righteous anger moves her to pursue the thief.  Bridger eagerly joins her.  

The collisions of worlds--between the law-abiding and the criminal, between the hearing and the deaf--is well developed, revealing a rich combination of research and Boyle’s fertile imagination.  I do worry about identity theft.  With the hacker attacks on Yahoo, Uber, even the government, I’m sure much of my personal data is out there.  Just yesterday at a doctor’s office I was asked to sign an insurance authorization that showed, on hard copy, my name, address, date of birth, insurance group number, and my Medicare ID, which happens to be my Social Security Number, a fact that even the lamest of identity thieves would know.  Uber data included a credit card number.  I feel vulnerable, and reading this book certainly did nothing to allay my concerns.  

Perhaps years from now technology will have all but eliminated identity theft.  But the sound wall that segregates the deaf from the hearing, the disabled from the non-disabled, will endure, and the insights into that separation offered by this book will have lasting value.  

This was a good read.  Boyle’s writing sparkles, careens, booms, rumbles, and flashes, in his descriptive passages as well as the plot lines.  Highly imaginative and enjoyable.