Oprah Winfrey; T.C. Boyle

Oprah ... never gave her seal of approval to T. Coraghessan Boyle, aka T.C. Boyle, did she?

I was wondering about that today, as I read a couple of the tough, evocative short stories from his 2001 collection After the Plague.

Boyle's stories, some of the best that appear in The New Yorker these days, are compelling, lively little nuggets torn from the pages of everyday life.

He peoples his stories with offbeat characters, often involved in strange encounters: In "Baby Killers," an ex-con and possibly recovering drug addict attempts to make a new start by moving in with his older brother, a doctor who runs an abortion clinic; in "Mexico," an insecure overweight guy wins a trip to Mexico, where he drinks heavily, re-reads Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano and hangs out with a beautiful female wrestler.

Both of the above are included in After the Plague, called "uproarious and unforgiving" by The New Yorker, whose reviewer went on to say this:

"She Wasn't Soft," the title of one story, says it all. If Boyle finds dark humor in the lives of peeping toms, he also writes with tenderness about a widow waiting "for something she can't name."