Talk Talk
Publishing House: Viking
Rated: NONE
WorkNameSort: Talk Talk
Tom and Huck were small-time dreamers compared to the characters of T.C. Boyle’s fiction. His get-rich-quick schemers have done everything under the sun to make a buck, from growing marijuana (Budding Prospects) to telling Americans how to get thin (The Road to Wellville). It was only a matter of time before he hit on the mother lode of modern scams: identity theft. Talk Talk is the result, and it’s one of Boyle’s swiftest novels yet. A literary tale paced like a thriller, it conjures a deaf high school teacher named Dana Halter who discovers there is another Dana Halter out there; only this one is a man, and he’s wanted in several counties for passing bad checks, assault with a deadly weapon and a host of other unsavory offenses. Americans have become familiar with untangling comparable messes. Boyle aptly captures the kind of rage this inspires. Dana (the real one) finally extricates herself from the courts, but she wants to know, who is this guy? She has worked so hard to become the Dana Halter she is ‘ she holds a Ph.D.; she’s a respected member of the community; she’s overcome her disability, one Boyle portrays with exquisite sensitivity and insight. Talk Talk really takes off when Boyle pits his two Danas on a collision course. As Dana and her boyfriend work their way east from San Roque, Calif., toward the thief’s lair, we get to know his mind-set, his yen for easy living. Ironically, his vision of the good life resembles the yuppie lifestyle Dana aspires to: ‘This was how life should be, no hassles and strains and worries, time on your hands, time to stroll through the farmers’ market and the wine shop and have a cappuccino.â?� In the end, Talk Talk shows how one of identity theft’s most basic irritations is that it steals the victim’s claim on hard-won happiness. And infraction by infraction, it takes away the ability to start over after falling down. What the victim can be left with is the emotion that drove the perpetrator in the first place: a feeling of having been cheated by life.
This article appears in Aug 16-22, 2006.