The Terranauts

Author: T. C. Boyle
Publisher: Harper Collins 2016

I somehow remembered  T. C. Boyle.  I initially thought Boyle was one of the authors recommended by P. B. Jayasekera.  After buying the book I checked P.B.'s list of books and he did not recommend Boyle.  Only later did I realize that Boyle was recommended by Caitlin O' Connell.  

In a desert in Arizona eight people are going to live inside a glass dome.  It has "a rainforest", "a savanna", "a desert'', "an ocean with a beach", and “marsh”.  There are wild animals as well as domesticated animals.  The eight people, four men and four women will live under the glass for one year.  They are mimicking life on Mars and have to be self-sufficient.  The eight people have different expertise and they have to work together if they want to survive the whole year.  Opening the hatch before the year is up is unthinkable.  They were selected from a highly competitive selection process and there were very disappointed people who did not make the cut. They are known as Terranauts.

The story is told by three narrators, two inside and one outside.  The book was highly addictive and I finished the 500+ page book without switching to another book while reading it.  I was reminiscing about the book for several days after finishing it.  I could get my mind off of it only by starting to read another book.

Anthony Doerr had a similar theme in his latest book Cloud Cuckoo Land.  But he was not as successful as Boyle with the plot.  Boyle is definitely the better writer.

I am copying the following form the cover of the book since I can not think of a better way to say the same thing.

"T. C. Boyle indelibly inhabits the perspectives of the various players in this survivalist game, probing their motivations and illuminating their integrity and fragility to illustrate inherent fallibility of human nature itself."

T. C. Boyle won the PEN/Faulkner award in 1988 for his novel "World's End".   His novel "The Harder They Come" won the inaugural Mark Twain American Voice on Literature Award in 2016.  He is the distinguished professor of English emeritus at the University of Southern California.