Still Waters run deep

T.C. Boyle is not one of those authors who can be accused of writing the same novel again and again. Over the past 30 years, his subject matter has ranged from 18th-century Africa to the California of the future, from Mexican immigration to the sex life of Frank Lloyd Wright.

Even so, what has tended to unify his work is verbal extravagance, dark comedy and a taste for satire that sometimes borders on contempt. All of which makes San Miguel his most unexpected book yet. A historical novel of almost heroic restraint, its prose remains resolutely unflashy, and its tone is sympathetic to the point of genuine warmth.

On New Year’s Day 1888, Will and Maranatha Waters arrive on the island of San Miguel off the California coast with her teenage daughter Edith, and a couple of helpers, to become sheep ranchers and sole inhabitants. Will has sold the move to his wife as a cure for her consumption — but it’s soon clear (not least to her) that this is just a ruse for him to escape the modern world. Shocked by the living conditions and ferocious weather, Maranatha settles into a low-level depression, punctuated only by moments of more acute despair.

For a while, in fact, it looks as if Boyle may not have solved the traditional problem of how to depict boredom without himself being boring. (As Maranatha writes in her diary, there isn’t ‘anything to report but rain and tedium and more of the same’.) By basing the book ‘as accurately as possible’ on historical events, he also seems stuck with the shapelessness of real life. The Waters have occasional visitors and more regular arguments; but mainly they carry out the endless chores that island life demands.