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Boyle always starts his books with such an unusual premise that you are glued to the book, because you think everything will unfold in an unusual way too. It doesn't. The author repetitively emphasizes the predicament in slight variations. This happen in "East is east". I got very tired of how Hiro ends up in mosquito and alligator invested swamps after yet another debacle with American rednecks. Once you find out that Hiro wants to be a samurai you can guess the end of the story.

What redeems the book is its originality, interesting be it somewhat stereotypical character and it social engagement. ( )

Hiro Tanaka jumps ship off the cost of Georgia, hoping to find the City of Brotherly Love and perhaps even his American father, but nothing goes as planned. Stuck in the swamps and lowlands of an island off Georgia's coast, Hiro is accused of setting a fire and causing a death, and the manhunt can't seem to do anything right. Hiro is a strange mixture of naivete and slyness. Most of his naivete is about America, and he doesn't understand the language very well. A lot of this book is funny, but some of it is dark, with an underlying message about how we view outsiders. And the ending is brutal - I didn't expect that!

The largest complaint I have about the book is about the author not understanding Southern! He has people say "y'all" to a single person, and as far as I know, that is never done. Y'all is the second person plural.

Other than that, I found the book fun to read and unpredictable. ( )

Those of you who have read T.C. Boyle before will know what I mean when I say that East is East is typical Boyle (at least of what I've read of his works thus far): his characters are vivid and mostly memorable, the storyline a wild and crazy ride, the feeling of having a movie unfold before you in your mind as reading. And, Boyle doesn't hold back -- no concerns about being politically correct or whatever. And he doesn't try to dumb-down his stories at all. I was kind of unsurprised by the ending, though, because of one of the main character's fixation on a certain author (I won't elaborate in order to keep this relatively spoiler-free). This was a good read. ( )