As many others have said, T C Boyle CAN write. Drop City was terrific. But this, after Part I, stunk. I found the whole easy id theft hard to swallow. How easy is it to put a house in someone else's name? Many things irked throughout the novel and by the end I was hoping the bad guy would just shoot the good guys.

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!

This is the first time I've ever felt like reviewing a book. Actually, it is more of a warning to potential readers. While the character development is good and parts of the book make you want to keep turning pages to find out what happens next, the ending completely falls apart. There were also a few parts where there was too much detail about something that ended up not being very pivotal to the plot, but I would have forgiven that had the story ever gotten wrapped up.If you like a book to have an ending where either the good guy or the bad guy prevails, then don't read this book. Pretty disappointing. This was my first book by this author and I will not likely try him again.

Boyle's most recent novel had such a great premise - and a well-executed and engaging beginning and middle... Unfortunately, the ending fell a bit flat for me. The epilogue failed to serve as a satisfactory conclusion to the book. Including it all felt pointless! There was no justice in the way it ended... And the relationship between Bridger and Dana felt incomplete and left hanging. The book just ended without much of a hopeful feeling for these characters that Boyle so skillfully created. Peck's fate along with Natalia and Madison's seemed uncertain, too. The book just felt very unfinished... unsatisfying in the end, which was such a shame because I really loved the rest of it. It was surprisingly exciting, filled with great writing... but without a better ending, it missed the greatness mark.

I have not yet read much by TC Boyle, but what I have read I've enjoyed immensely, and this book is no exception. Briefly, it involves a hearing-impaired woman and her boyfriend and the man who stole the woman's identity. The way Mr Boyle gets into each character's head, shows his or her most primal motives, is just genius. The plot moves along, the characters are interesting, the writing is crisp, funny, smart, and sometimes mean (in a good way!). Others have given more detailed reviews; I just wanted to add my voice to those who liked the book.

T.C. Boyle is one of the best writers in the US today. I think thatshort fiction is his strongest suit, however he has written severalvery good novels. As in his other novels, the character in "Talk, talk"are members of an american subculture. The book tells a fairly convincing storyof identity theft, and uses it to provide a study of the three mainprotagonists: Dana, Peck and Bridger. As the book progresses, itappears that the plot is there mainly to put these characters intosituations far out of the ordinary and examine their behavior. WhilePeck is certainly a borderline sociopath, there are really no heroes inthe story. However, sufficient background is provided to motivate theaction of all the characters.