BLUE SKIES by T.C. Boyle

The title of this book is ironic, as climate change is rearing its ugly head on both coasts.  Cat is a twenty-something in Florida where the rain never stops.  Her parents and brother, Cooper, are in California where wildfires rule.  These family members are on opposite coasts with opposite attitudes.  Cat buys a python as a fashion accessory, while her mother is experimenting with recipes using crickets that she is raising.  Cooper is an entomologist who loses his arm due to a tick infection and becomes sullen after his “abridgement.”  Will an environmental catastrophe in which all the insects die wake him up?  Cat, however, is the real focus here, and she just does not get any smarter as the book progresses.  I knew what calamity was coming and didn’t have to tear through too many pages to get there.  Afterward, Cat becomes marginally less vapid and more responsible but not enough to anticipate or head off the next disaster.  She and Cooper both attack their problems with lots of drinking, adding to Cooper’s depression and Cat’s tendency to screw up.  The sanest person in this novel is their mother, whose attempts at being a good steward of the planet, repeatedly get thwarted, but she keeps on striving to keep her family afloat—literally.