"Greasy Lake"
The irony in this story is made clear through the connection a phrase from the opening paragraph which recurs again near the end. This is a coming-of-age tale in which the narrator and friends go from wanting to be “dangerous characters” who are not to becoming “dangerous characters” who wish they weren’t.
"Top of the Food Chain"
While Boyle is almost a constant inhabitant of the land of irony, one can fairly say “Top of the Food Chain” is an exercise in pure irony. Nearly every paragraph adds another layer of irony to the opening situation: how to handle an insect infestation problem in Borneo. The story takes the form of a witness testifying before Congress about how things went from an insect problem to, well, something much, much bigger as each new step in the process only serves to expand the situation well beyond insects. The final irony is the understated—to say the least—summation of the experience: “it could be a worse, and to every cloud a silver lining.”
"The Hector Quesadilla Story"
Another irony-laden story in which an aging athlete a decade past his prime suffering from corns, ingrown toenails and hemorrhoids is poised is poised to become the latest entry into a still-growing list of fictional baseball players situated as mythic heroes. That is the ironic foundation upon which smaller ironies are constructed: Quesadilla (an ironically silly name for a hero) sees his big moment to become a hero come and then go and, amazingly, come back around. Any story in which sports become a metaphor tends to require completion to fulfill the point: either the Mighty Casey hits a home run or he strikes out, but he’d better do one or the other. For Hector…not so much, ironically.
"The Ape Lady in Retirement"
The ape lady used to study the behavior of primates in the wild before retiring to her family’s home in Connecticut. While there, she becomes the guardian of a chimp who spent his entire life as the subject of an experiment. The situation could not be more ironic: the ape lady must now try to teach her young charge to unlearn behavior that has turned him into a hairy little human who consumes junk food, puffs on cigars and wiles away the day in front of the TV.
"I Dated Jane Austen"
The irony in this story is one of context. The man who arrives to take Jane out on a date is named “Mr. Boyle and he clearly is a figure of the 20th century. Jane’s means of speaking in such language as “the air is so frightfully delicious” is not. Nor is the parasol and long skirts that makes it difficult for Jane’s sister Cassandra to fit in Mr. Boyle’s Alfa Romeo. The character of Henry Crawford’s failure to register recognition when the author refers to him as a character from Austen’s Mansfield Park seals the deal on the underlying irony of bringing 19th century manners into the 20th century.
