Seeing ‘Blue Skies’ through smoke, rain

In his latest novel, “Blue Skies,” T.C. Boyle comes up with a new variation on the literary principal of Chekhov’s gun: If a character in a Florida story acquires a pet Burmese python, sooner or later that python will eat something it shouldn’t.

Satire has often been an important element in Boyle’s work, and environmental disaster a running theme, and both are at play in this ironically titled, beautifully crafted novel.

Beginning in the present day, it follows the lives of the Cullen family about a decade into the future. Father Frank, a doctor, and mom Ottilie live comfortably (well, for a while) in suburban California, and their son, Cooper, a graduate student in entomology, lives nearby.

Cooper has been fascinated with nature since he was a kid and he sees the world through the lens of climate change and the havoc it increasingly causes.

His parents earnestly take his advice, especially Ottilie, who acquires something called a cricket reactor so she can raise, then eat, the chirpy and nutritious bugs. Their various efforts to go green don’t do much, though, in the face of the megadrought gripping California with wildfires and punishing windstorms.

As California grows ever hotter and rain becomes a distant memory, daughter Cat Cullen is living in Florida, which is just as hot but much, much wetter — the rain almost never stops and flooding is persistent. Cat moved to Florida when her boyfriend, Todd, suddenly inherited his mother’s oceanfront house near Jacksonville. Todd is a brand ambassador for a rum manufacturer and Cat is an aspiring influencer.

When they wed at her parents’ home in California, it’s a lovely affair — until a windstorm starts flipping tents and tables, and the smell of smoke drifts in.

Nine months after the wedding, Todd is out of town when Cat’s twins are due, and Ottilie flies, then drives, into a hurricane to get to her daughter. Then things really go bad. Understandably, given these multiplying disasters and a world that seems less habitable every day, all of the Cullens feel anxious. All of them tend to self-medicate that anxiety with alcohol, which leads to more disasters, which ... well, on the plus side, they’re devoted to each other.

Boyle does a brilliant job of writing about an enormous subject in utterly human terms. He draws the Cullens with all their flaws but with tender affection, too. Amid the climate apocalypse, life goes on, which is, maybe, a sign of hope.