SOURCE: A review of Without a Hero, in Publishers Weekly, Vol. 241, No. 11, March 14, 1994, p. 68.

Below, the critic presents a favorable review of Without a Hero, and Other Stories.

Most effective of the 16 technically ingenious and rudely funny, satirical stories in Boyle's fourth collection [Without a Hero] are the sketches of disaffected individuals who take refuge in hermetic surroundings, self-help programs, political causes and conspicuous consumption to hold at bay the banal world of convention and compromise. In "Big Game," Bernard Puff, impresario of Puff's African Game Ranch in Bakersfield, Calif., peddles a simulacrum of the African bush. His carefully nurtured fantasy world is punctured by the arrival of a cynical young real estate mogul who detects "every crack in the plaster," and whose rapacious hunting leads to a grisly twist of fate when the animals revolt on the veldt. In "Filthy with Things," a pathological couple whose home...