Ben Becker reads T.C. Boyle: ‘No Way Home’

The morally positive side of the ‘No Way Home’ story is told from the perspective of Terry, a junior doctor, whose life is thrown off course by his mother’s death, even though he deals with death on a daily basis. Terry, who works full-time at a clinic in L.A., unexpectedly inherits his mother’s house in the backwater town of Boulder City, in the middle of the Nevada desert, not far from a gigantic reservoir that is drying up further with every passing year. When Terry visits his mother’s abandoned house, he meets Bethany: attractive, manipulative and homeless. With her, Terry finds himself in a different life, over which he is increasingly losing control.

The woman of his dreams entangles him in a nightmare. For Bethany’s ex-boyfriend Jesse pursues him on his motorbike, threatens him and breaks every bone in his body. From Terry’s perspective, the lines between good and evil are clearly drawn. Yet T.C. Boyle also tells the story from the ‘bad boy’s’ point of view, and through Jesse’s eyes, the world looks very different indeed. Ben Becker lends not only his voice to these contrasting characters, but his entire experience as well, offering a glimpse into the depths of darkness and challenging moral preconceptions. In doing so, he lends the book a third dimension.

Anyone who wants not just to read T.C. Boyle’s *No Way Home*, but to experience it, will find just what they’re looking for with Ben Becker.