T C Boyle’s The Harder They Come opens with this D H Lawrence quote: “The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.” Partly because the novel’s themes are universal, and partly because the USA is the largest cultural exporter in the modern world, the novel’s stern, cold dissection of the “American Dream” resonates from the get go.
The book opens in Costa Rica with a 70-year-old war veteran on a tour with his wife. Sten is put under threat and he kills a bandit with his bare hands. While we fear for what the consequences of this may be for him, he goes back to his country without much effort on his part or on the part of the Costa Rica police. Soon thereafter we meet Sara, an anarchist who believes that the US government is an oppressive corporate oligarchy that imposes upon the freedom guaranteed to its citizens in the constitution. She loves her pet, takes care of sick horses, and refuses to wear her seat belt even when a cop flags her down and specifically asks her to do so. Initially annoying, as the book progresses, we begin to understand her and empathise with her. After that, we meet Adam who is in many ways the central character and a man whose delusions affect the lives of everyone around him. Adam is always on his own level and imagines himself to be an adventurer who is at one with nature. How these three characters’ lives affect one another and the society around them forms the rest of the book.
None are particularly likeable characters and in the hands of a lesser writer would never have gained the empathy that they do as the novel progresses. Boyle’s writing is simple, efficient and lucid. Action follows action, and as the story progresses, we get to see the world from the perspectives of an aging man of violence who is thrust reluctantly into a position of responsibility, a young man living half in reality and half in delusion and woman who sees her freedom as separate from the law.
While the plot is interesting, it is the characters and their experiences that create much of the tension in the novel. Throughout the book, violence—explicit, invisible, unintentional, delusional, authoritarian, towards self, towards others—remains a key theme. The writing is kinetic and the characters well fleshed out.
Boyle fills the novel with succinct yet vivid images and brilliant, memorable dialogues. The book stays with you long after it is over.
The Harder They Come is one of those rare books that caters to the casual reader as well as those who expect to take something home from the stories they read.