T. C. Boyle’s up-to-the-minute new novel copies out in full the old equation. The book’s wonderfully vivid villain, Peck — a.k.a. William a.k.a. Will a.k.a. Billy a.k.a. Frank (‘Sex M, Race W, Age 33, Ht 6-0, Wt 180, Hair BRO, Eyes BRO, SS# ?, D/L 820 626 5757, State NY’) wants the best that money can buy. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have a lot of money himself, so he just steals the identities of those who do, and is busy living the good life on their behalf and to the full extent of their credit-card limits: the cars, the clothes, the fine wines, the condo overlooking the ocean, the attractive young Russian girlfriend, and plenty of state-of-the-art pots and pans, because like any sociopathic pussy-hound ex-jailbird worth his salt Peck loves to cook (‘he thought he might make Wiener schnitzel, with pickled red cabbage, spätzle and butter beans, just for a change, though on second thoughts… he might just go with potato salad and bratwurst on the grill’).
Someone, of course, has to pay the price for Peck’s living the American Dream and that someone is Dana Halter, a deaf woman and one among the many whose identity Peck has stolen. Dana lives a quiet life as a teacher with her boyfriend Bridger in San Roque, the sort of small, sweet, juicy American coastal city that everyone dreams of living in — nice restaurants, plenty of culture, plus sunshine — but when Dana’s identity is stolen and she finds herself in jail, falsely accused of crimes she did not commit, she soon discovers her inner bitch and sets out to hunt down the man who has ruined her life. Can Dana and Bridger find the dastardly Peck? And will their coast-to-coast chase strengthen or destroy their troubled relationship?
This may sound like the plot of a made-for-tv movie, but the book is in fact far superior to your average genre fiction. Boyle is the author of numerous fine, super-crafted novels (most famously The Road to Wellville, 1993, which was made into a film starring Anthony Hopkins) and perhaps even finer and certainly more numerous short stories. He specialises in high-toned but broad-sweeping historical fiction — World’s End (1987), Drop City (2003) and The Inner Circle (2004), hefty but readable books which cover the 17th century, the 1940s, and the 1970s respectively. So, he is a writer accustomed to dealing with grand narratives and themes; and Talk Talk, clearly, is all about identity. Peck has learnt everything he knows about identity theft from a shady character called the Sandman whom he met in prison, and who is basically Uncle Sam in reverse: ‘He was talking about the Internet … He was talking about Photoshop and color copiers, government seals, icons, base identifiers. The whole smorgasbord. Be anybody you can be.’ This is perhaps not what Ralph Waldo Emerson had in mind when he wrote his essay ‘Self-Reliance’.
Boyle has a firm grasp of his major themes, and his books are typically thick and sticky with detail. Even minor characters are sketched with a kind of gooey brilliance: ‘Radko Goric, a 38-year-old entrepreneur wrapped in 200-dollar designer shades, off-color Pierro Quarto jackets and clunky vinyl shoes out of the bargain bin’. Everything is so flavoursome, everything painted in such vivid colours, there’s such richness and zest — like one of Peck’s sauces — that it’s a disappointment when the inevitable confrontation occurs and there is, suddenly, satisfaction; no more suspense; no more curiosity; no more more. The problem with x + 1 = y is that sometimes you do get what you want. And it’s not enough.
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