Some of Boyle's novels are worth reading and some aren't. This one isn't, although the writing is deft and the story moderately amusing. I did finish it, but put aside another Boyle novel (Talk, Talk) after reading 20 pages. Then I read San Miguel (report to follow) which was a wonderful story.
Boyle certainly can write, even if some of it is drivel.
In Budding Prospects, three friends agree to plant and tend a crop of marijuana for a share of the profits. The farm is near Willits in the coastal mountains of northern California. They live in a ramshackle broken-down building for months, fearful of discovery by the law or the locals.
They have great expectations.....of course.
"In June, the weather altered abruptly. Whereas before we'd shivered through a perpetual riveting downpour that made every moment of hole-digging or fence-stringing a curse and a trial, now suddenly we blistered under an unmoving sadistic sun. It was as if we'd bee magically transported--house, weeds, garbage and all--from the windward coast of Scotland to the desert outside Tucson....Lizards appeared from nowhere, as if they'd been conjured from the air, hummingbirds hung like mobiles over the bells of flowers, streams fell back and left their banks exposed like toothless gums. Mud caked, dried, fragmented to dust. The arid season was upon us."
"Dried, that is deprived of the water weight that composed seventy percent of its bulk, the crop took on an increasingly withered and reduced look. Leaves shriveled buds shrank. Plants that had been big as Christmas trees now seemed as light an insubstantial as paper kites."
Maybe if you've tried growing pot for profit, you might like this book more than I did. And you know who you are...
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