Talk Talk | 
 enlarge | Author: T.c. Boyle
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  45 reviews
Sales Rank: 68633
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 352
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5.1 x 0.8
ISBN: 0143112155
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9780143112150
ASIN: 0143112155
Publication Date: June 26, 2007
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Over the past twenty-five years, T.C. Boyle has earned wide acclaim and an enthusiastic following with such adventurous, inimitable novels as The Tortilla Curtain, Drop City, and The Road to Wellville. For his riveting eleventh novel, Boyle offers readers the closest thing to a thriller he has ever written, a tightly scripted page turner about the trials of Dana Halter, a thirty-three-year-old deaf woman whose identity has been stolen. Featuring a woman in the lead role (a Boyle first), Talk Talk is both a suspenseful chase across America and a moving story about language, love, and identity from one of Americas most versatile and entertaining novelists.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 40 more reviews...
of loss and the chase September 16, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
dana's deaf, and when deaf people get together, there's the relief of being among those who understand you, and they `talk talk', a nonstop, non self-conscious, sharing by sign and spoken languages. but this isn't quite what boyle's book is about, though frustration in the company of the hearing heightens along dana's chase, partnered by her boyfriend, after a man who has stolen her identity and wrecked her life - dana is jailed, loses her job as a teacher, and her credit as exorbitant purchases are billed to her accounts. her boyfriend's boss has a cousin who is a detective who locates a post office box used by the thief, in dana's name. dana and bridger, her boyfriend, stake out the post office and confront the thief when he shows up. he escapes them, and a cross country chase ensues, a chase that becomes a mad obsession, with bridger accusing dana of chasing her moby dick. a telling accusation; in a sense talk talk is a revision of moby dick. also the trip across country revises nabokov's humbert humberto's cross country flight with lolita.
any novel or short story by boyle is a pleasure to read; boyle is a dickensian storyteller. talk talk is a tale of our time and as good as any story written by boyle.
 Needs better talk talk August 11, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Character is destiny, 'tis said, so who needs a plot? Here we don't have one nor do we have fully developed characters.
Firstly, just how does the villan get away with his scams? Nextly, why is the deaf woman attracted to a toon-graphic nerd who loves music? And what does he see in her? She's too angry to be sexy.
How convenient they lose their jobs in time to chase the bad guy and how odd they have no idea what to do when they catch him.
By the time their affair fizzles out, this reader was very happy to close the book. Plenty of fancy food but not enough meat on the story. Suspend my disbelief, please!
 Holes, holes, holes July 26, 2008
I've read a couple of TC Boyle's other books, Drop City, Tortilla Curtain...and I was into this book at the beginning. It has a great premise, and I thought was quite promising, but I felt the relationship between Bridger and Dana didn't quite reach the potential it could have. There was much more subtlety that coud have been brought to the writing. Where was the physical aspect of their relationship? To me, they could have been best buddies on a wild adventure of a road trip. I just wasn't "feeling the love" between them...not for a relatively new relationship. Wouldn't they have bridged the communication gap with more sensuality, body language, reading each other in more intimate ways. I'm not talking graphic sex scenes, but it seems there was more intimacy between Peck Wilson, the creep, and his Natasha, than there was between Dana and Bridger. Could have been better developed. Sure she was a brainiac and he was a computer geek, but there was litte to no affection shared between them, no depth.
Second, did anyone notice the giagantic plot hole at the end? I'm surprised the editor didn't catch it. Sorry guys, but Wilson must have had a magic wand to make his cell phone suddenly reappear two chapters later after he had left it in his car at his mom's house. I won't go into details, but towards the end of this novel, things just become to easy for Wilson. Was Boyle working under some kind of mad corporate deadline.
The novel was quite shallow when it could have plunged and swirled. Left this reader unsatisfied.
 has the author's identity been stolen too? May 30, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
After reading T.C. Boyle's Drop City (excellent) and A Friend of the Earth (solidly good) it's hard to believe that Talk Talk was written by the same author. The novel's two principal characters, Dana and Peck, are insufferable caricatures motivated only by their uncontrollable anger, and the supporting characters are all passive and flatly one-dimensional. Boyle treats the subject of deafness with some sensitivity, and the identity theft information initially captured my interest, but both of these elements are merely used for dress and never developed to the support of significant themes. In fact the book doesn't appear to have any themes at all, other than the tedious ramifications of egoic anger unleashed. The great bulk of many chapters is actually devoted to describing the often ostentatious dietary preferences of the characters.
There is also a glaring plot problem early in the book. Dana is arrested for crimes apparently committed by someone using her identity, but when we're actually introduced to the thief, we learn that he is an exceedingly careful criminal who avoids committing crimes that would draw attention to his operation. This inconsistency is never explained. And though the characters' meal menus have been meticulously constructed, the book as a whole feels rather rushed and sketchy, the boorish screenplay story for a see-thru chase thriller. This is so unlike the engaging, complex qualities of Boyle's other books that one suspects he crapped out Talk Talk in order to meet a too-soon deadline. I only finished this novel because I was on a long flight with nothing else to read, and would rush to buy you another book if I saw you boarding a plane with this one. Talk Talk isn't even good for cheap thrills!
Disappointing February 18, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Talk Talk starts promisingly, but runs out of steam after the first 50 pages or so. A minimal plot gets lost in a sea of words. Characters don't come to life. There's no real pay off at the end (or anywhere else, for that matter--I kept waiting for something to happen!). Even Dana's deafness, the central point of her character, isn't particularly relevant, thematically. Switching back and forth between Peck and Bridger/Dana was more annoying than illuminating. At the end, I'm hard pressed to say what the book was about. I read this at the same time that I read an Elmore Leonard novel from the 80s (Freaky Deaky). That book uses a similar narrative technique, switching back and forth between the bad guys and the good guys, with the difference that the characters are more interesting, the plot has momentum, and I wanted to keep reading--in short, good escapist fiction. My guess is that T.C. Boyle was unsure what he wanted to accomplish with this effort, and consequently accomplished very little. I'm a little surprised as the number of glowing reviews here. Are they reviewing the book or the writer's reputation?
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