I've been a fan of US writer T.C. Boyle since reading his 2009 novel The Women, a fictional rendering of the life of mercurial architect Frank Lloyd Wright. His 2011 novel When The Killing's Done is the story of a environmental battle over an island in the Santa Barbara Channel. It is both serious and funny. For his latest book, San Miguel, Boyle returns to the Californian coast. The novel tells the story of two families who arrive on the island of San Miguel and strive to make it their home. The first family arrives in 1888 and their story is a melodrama of thwarted fortune and ruffled gentility crossing two generations. The second arrival, in the 1930s, is that of a newly married couple who come to love the island, learning to live with its challenges while raising a family. This latest book is written with Boyle's customary skill and is convincing in both detail and plot. I missed the comedic spark that amped up the dynamics of the earlier books and made them particularly enjoyable. That said, reading T.C. Boyle is always time well spent.