SOURCE: A review of The Tortilla Curtain, in Library Journal, Vol. 120, No. 11, June 15, 1995, p. 92.

In the review below, Fialkoff remarks favorably on The Tortilla Curtain.

Appearing after the wackiness of The Road to Wellville, Boyle's sixth novel [The Tortilla Curtain] is a dash of cold reality. The lives of two couples living in Topanga Canyon (Los Angeles) intersect when Delaney Mossbacher slams his car into Cándido Rincón. But the couples couldn't be more disparate: Delaney is a nature writer ("Pilgrim at Topanga Canyon") whose wife, Kyra, is a successful realtor; the Rincóns are illegal aliens camping out, looking for any work at all, and América pregnant. From that impact on, Boyle explores the aliens in "our" midst, the progressive, growing fear of "them" by even the liberal Mossbacher, whose column about coyotes sounds suspiciously like his wife's reaction to Mexicans: "[They] keep coming, breeding...