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Loading... Lonesome Doveby Larry McMurtry
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Where has this book been all my life? Oh, it's been sitting on my shelf for about 20 years. Why the long wait? 964 pages! This is the story of a cattle drive from Texas to Montana. One is able to find everybody in this story you would expect from a 19th century western: Texas rangers, cowboys, Native Americans, crooks, whores (author's word--not mine!;), and bandits. This is also a great love story. A love of friends and a love of a lifetime demonstrated in a selfless manner. It is worthy of the Pulitzer Prize. This is book 1/4 in this tetralogy; although not the first chronologically. Took me a while to get through, like a long cross country ride. I was along for the journey, content on getting there when I got there. It was a beautiful journey, and an instant favorite of mine. Throughout the journey I kept coming back to all the characters we met along the way, how their lives were so intensely changed by the chance encounters. Every single one of them felt all too real, as if I was there riding alongside the Hat Creek Cattle Company.
All of Mr. McMurtry's antimythic groundwork -his refusal to glorify the West - works to reinforce the strength of the traditionally mythic parts of ''Lonesome Dove,'' by making it far more credible than the old familiar horse operas. These are real people, and they are still larger than life. The aspects of cowboying that we have found stirring for so long are, inevitably, the aspects that are stirring when given full-dress treatment by a first-rate novelist. Toward the end, through a complicated series of plot twists, Mr. McMurtry tries to show how pathetically inadequate the frontier ethos is when confronted with any facet of life but the frontier; but by that time the reader's emotional response is it does not matter - these men drove cattle to Montana! Belongs to SeriesLonesome Dove (1) Is contained inContainsHas the adaptationHas as a student's study guideAwardsDistinctionsNotable Lists
Chronicles a cattle drive in the nineteenth century from Texas to Montana, and follows the lives of Gus and Call, the cowboys heading the drive, Gus's woman, Lorena, and Blue Duck, a sinister Indian renegade. No library descriptions found. |
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![]() GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC ClassificationRatingAverage:![]()
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My friend sent me this book for my 60th birthday citing it as one of her two favourite books (the other was To Kill A Mockingbird which she was sure I’d read. Correct!) My friend said she hoped I’d give it a go despite being a 950 page western.
People, this book was EPIC! I absolutely loved it. The characters were so vivid and the writing was beautiful. While I was reading I couldn’t wait to see what happened next and the fate of the central characters.
The book won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction and really is a masterpiece. I can definitely see myself reading this again, in fact the minute I finished it I wanted to go back to the start because I was so invested in the story and characters.
I have to know what happened to these characters before and after this book although my friend warned me the other novels in the tetralogy pale in comparison. I’ve also lined up the mini series starring Robert Duvall and Tommy Lee Jones to watch. My friend says it’s very faithful to the book.
It took me awhile to get through this but I absolutely LOVED it.
My one regret is that I’m not able to share this with my late father and his brother, my late uncle. They were western fans and I’m sure they would have loved it as much as me.
Without doubt one of the best books I have ever read.
Thank you Bonnie for sending me this book. (