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4.58 AVERAGE
4.58 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I will come back at another time and give this a more in-depth review. For now, the TL;DR is that this is a Western Epic of the highest order, and one which I'd recommend to any fans of the genre, and perhaps even to those who aren't.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Violence
Moderate: Death, Gun violence, Rape, Injury/Injury detail
Minor: Racial slurs, Sexual content, Sexual harassment
adventurous
emotional
tense
slow-paced
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
An epic adventure laced with incredible writing. I loved the way McMurtry wrote his characters—in all their deep flaws and human desires, their ability or inability to reconcile the two leaves an indelible mark on those around them.
I loved the female characters especially. I want to believe that most of the male characters are buffoons, simply to address and critique the male bravado and pervasive patriarchy in westerns. Men who are emotionally stunted and aimless will drive cattle from Texas to Montana and risk their lives to do it.
The men in the book refuse to take any accountability but instead chase after pleasures, adventure, or an opportunity to conquer and make a name. I found most of the male characters to be simple and shallow, but the female characters delightful. Clara is my favorite character. Gus and Josh Deets are tied for second.
I enjoyed how expansive yet intimate McMurtry made the world of the characters feel. The scene of Gus and Lorie in their tent watching the sunrise on the Kansas prairie will stick with me. Beautiful and tragic book.
I loved the female characters especially. I want to believe that most of the male characters are buffoons, simply to address and critique the male bravado and pervasive patriarchy in westerns. Men who are emotionally stunted and aimless will drive cattle from Texas to Montana and risk their lives to do it.
The men in the book refuse to take any accountability but instead chase after pleasures, adventure, or an opportunity to conquer and make a name. I found most of the male characters to be simple and shallow, but the female characters delightful. Clara is my favorite character. Gus and Josh Deets are tied for second.
I enjoyed how expansive yet intimate McMurtry made the world of the characters feel. The scene of Gus and Lorie in their tent watching the sunrise on the Kansas prairie will stick with me. Beautiful and tragic book.
“It ain’t dying I’m talking about, it’s living,” Augustus said. “I doubt it matters where you die, but it matters where you live.”
adventurous
emotional
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
"You should have died in the line of duty, Woodrow. You'd know how to do that just fine. The problem is you don't know how to live."
a man devoted to silence talking out loud to the air trying to resume a conversation.......a man allergic to sentiment dreaming about someone so hard when he opened his eyes he expected to see him...........................okay..........for sure..........
craaaazy how a man can base his whole life and worth on working and working and working and working and then just give it all up for...........no particular reason....
oh gay deadbeat dad cowboy, you and your womaniser partner have enthralled me.
a man devoted to silence talking out loud to the air trying to resume a conversation.......a man allergic to sentiment dreaming about someone so hard when he opened his eyes he expected to see him...........................okay..........for sure..........
craaaazy how a man can base his whole life and worth on working and working and working and working and then just give it all up for...........no particular reason....
oh gay deadbeat dad cowboy, you and your womaniser partner have enthralled me.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Domestic abuse, Gore, Racial slurs, Racism, Rape, Vomit
adventurous
emotional
funny
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
challenging
emotional
funny
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I went into this book a bit apprehensive—Westerns aren’t usually my thing—but I was intrigued by the glowing reviews and the fact that it won a Pulitzer Prize. I’m so glad I gave it a chance, because Lonesome Dove turned out to be an excellent read.
The storytelling and character work are top-tier. Despite a large cast, each character is distinct and memorable. I felt the full range of emotions while reading—there are scenes, characters, and lines I’ll forever associate with Gus and the world of Lonesome Dove.
Yes, it’s a long book (nearly 1000 pages), but I wouldn’t cut a single word. I’m already looking forward to continuing the series.
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
informative
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Don't meet your heros. The thing about cowboy movies, they don't usually show you the human side of them, or the fact that they are set during a time period of racism, sexism, and classism. Lonesome Dove at its heart is a human story. It's raw, honest, and at some parts beautiful. But, it's set in a time period where I'm not the right demographic and it was hard to connect. That's why cowboy movies are fun, because I can pretend the human part of story doesn't exist, and I can be Tonto to someone's Lone Ranger and not an extra in the background.
adventurous
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
relaxing
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
There are ultimately very few things I could say about Lonesome Dove that have not been said by others, and yet I am about to write what I presume to be a lengthy review anyways. It is a book that deserves respect and attention to the themes McMurtry weaves into it.
McMurtry's works all lie in this grand discordant space -- he writes in the suspension, nothing is properly resolved and the world moves on anyways, and in that way I think he speaks to the disharmony within all of us. Lonesome Dove is a deep exploration into this oft overlooked aspect of life; we prefer our stories concluded, our plots resolved and loose threads resolved, but Lonesome Dove refuses to give that comfort to it's readers in favor of reminding us of the harsh reality we coexist within.
The word that underscores the novel, for me, is "isolation." This isn't a perfect word for the phenomenon I am going to outline, but it gets as close as I can manage in summarizing a titanic book in one word. McMurtry writes characters with rich inner worlds that all exist in isolated space. It feels like connection for each of them is just barely on the cusp of attainability -- Call and Gus are so close to a true understanding of the other, Lorena + Clara and Gus, Newt and Call; there are so many characters that live in a painfully close suspension between each other. McMurtry shows over and over the deep pain of connection. No character can reach the point of interpersonal absolution, and those who try experience an immense amount of pain in trying to do so. Clara and Gus resonate on frequencies so slightly different that being together would shatter them both. Call cannot live with his choices, cannot claim Newt as his own and cannot let himself breathe. In this, McMurtry verbalizes this fundamental struggle of humanity in a wonderfully poignant manner.
Isolation serves other purposes -- it is isolation from one's purpose. Jake Spoon spends his whole on-paper existence searching for a purpose that eventually gets him hung by his compatriots.
Call cannot live out his life in Lonesome Dove for he is too isolated from any sort of personal drive. Call at the outset is Ahab without the whale, a man so desperate for meaning that he jumps at the semblance of opportunity offered by uprooting his entire outfit and traveling to Montana. Gus is no stranger to it either; the reader lives largely under the assumption that Gus has somehow divorced himself from the insanity of the world, has become a Camusian absurdist hero in a way, but in the end we see he is as much a slave to purpose as his partner. He cannot live in a world where he is not an active participant. Death is preferable to inaction, preferable to the inability to exert his will on the Earth (which, in a way, feels very much like the character of the Judge in Blood Meridian. That’s something I’d like to explore).
Isolation resonates in Bolivar walking away from the crew and wishing desperately to be called back, only to not be recognized in this way. It is in July and Joe and Roscoe and Janey trying quite literally to find each other only to be brutally murdered once it seems like it might be possible.
"Yesterdays gone on down the river and you can't get it back" -- it is the isolation of the past from the present, the isolation of the dead from the living.
Newt experiences a quintessential coming of age in the most brutal way possible; he experiences the loss of his mother, his hero in Jake Spoon, his first love in Lorena, and ultimately his hope of having a father. The shocking deaths of Deets and Gus and various other crew members show the reader the brutality of the west as well as the brutality of life itself. In the largely stoic reactions to death in the crew, we see people ultimately isolated from themselves in ways that seem irreconcilable.
And yet, there is a feeling of warmth that resonates from the crew. It is plain that the characters do care for one another, that death and tragedy do effect them, but the world is not kind enough to let them experience the depth of that feeling.
Only in the home of Clara does connection flourish in some sense. Over the course of the latter half of the novel, Clara's ranch becomes a kind of sanctuary for people who are lost, first reached by Elmira who chooses to forego connection for the pointless search for a kind of purpose. July finds himself there after losing everything he ever had and makes himself a foil to Elmira in his staying with Clara, able to live out his life because of his ability to give up a search he knows is pointless. Dish ends up there at the end of the novel after going over 3000 miles north to Montana. Gus and Newt are so close to understanding the haven Clara provides but ultimately Gus is unable to bear the pain of connection and heads off to die shortly after. There is not a purpose outside of being and working with each other. I can only hope Newt finds his way there in his later life.
There is a poison in a search for purpose; it creates restless men, people who cannot settle down as they are hyper aware of the world turning beneath them. Purpose provides an excuse to evade death. In the minds of these men, death is irrelevant to those who have a reason to be living. Gus gives Call what I would consider to be the ultimate gift and also the ultimate burden in requesting his burial be done in Texas. He gives Call a purpose; but this purpose rips him away from Newt and his growing stead in the north. This is what the book is about for me; embracing what we are given and being content in a world unkind in its provisioning of reason.
This is a personal thematic essay of the book and much less of a review, so I will spend the next paragraph or so on an actual review:
McMurtry is a fantastic character writer. I could read thousands of pages of Gus and Call on their ranch. My favorite scene in the novel aesthetically is the outline of Gus's morning routine. The image of him making biscuits and watching the morning sun peek over the horizon is vivid and stark in my mind. Lorena is a fascinating almost anti-Ophelia that would be so incredible to dissect further. Newt and Pea Eye and Lippy and Dish and Xavier Wanz - each fascinations in their own right that I don't have time to write about.
This book is almost like the light-mode Blood Meridian. It serves the same want of demystifying the American west while also outlining its tragic beauty and horrific brutality in such a manner as to linger in the minds of all who read it.
Gus and Call are some of the best characters I have read. They fit together in such a beautiful manner and I've wanted to read more of them in Comanche Moon since the second I finished this book.
Truly a fantastic book and deserving of its accolades.
McMurtry's works all lie in this grand discordant space -- he writes in the suspension, nothing is properly resolved and the world moves on anyways, and in that way I think he speaks to the disharmony within all of us. Lonesome Dove is a deep exploration into this oft overlooked aspect of life; we prefer our stories concluded, our plots resolved and loose threads resolved, but Lonesome Dove refuses to give that comfort to it's readers in favor of reminding us of the harsh reality we coexist within.
The word that underscores the novel, for me, is "isolation." This isn't a perfect word for the phenomenon I am going to outline, but it gets as close as I can manage in summarizing a titanic book in one word. McMurtry writes characters with rich inner worlds that all exist in isolated space. It feels like connection for each of them is just barely on the cusp of attainability -- Call and Gus are so close to a true understanding of the other, Lorena + Clara and Gus, Newt and Call; there are so many characters that live in a painfully close suspension between each other. McMurtry shows over and over the deep pain of connection. No character can reach the point of interpersonal absolution, and those who try experience an immense amount of pain in trying to do so. Clara and Gus resonate on frequencies so slightly different that being together would shatter them both. Call cannot live with his choices, cannot claim Newt as his own and cannot let himself breathe. In this, McMurtry verbalizes this fundamental struggle of humanity in a wonderfully poignant manner.
Isolation serves other purposes -- it is isolation from one's purpose. Jake Spoon spends his whole on-paper existence searching for a purpose that eventually gets him hung by his compatriots.
Call cannot live out his life in Lonesome Dove for he is too isolated from any sort of personal drive. Call at the outset is Ahab without the whale, a man so desperate for meaning that he jumps at the semblance of opportunity offered by uprooting his entire outfit and traveling to Montana. Gus is no stranger to it either; the reader lives largely under the assumption that Gus has somehow divorced himself from the insanity of the world, has become a Camusian absurdist hero in a way, but in the end we see he is as much a slave to purpose as his partner. He cannot live in a world where he is not an active participant. Death is preferable to inaction, preferable to the inability to exert his will on the Earth (which, in a way, feels very much like the character of the Judge in Blood Meridian. That’s something I’d like to explore).
Isolation resonates in Bolivar walking away from the crew and wishing desperately to be called back, only to not be recognized in this way. It is in July and Joe and Roscoe and Janey trying quite literally to find each other only to be brutally murdered once it seems like it might be possible.
"Yesterdays gone on down the river and you can't get it back" -- it is the isolation of the past from the present, the isolation of the dead from the living.
Newt experiences a quintessential coming of age in the most brutal way possible; he experiences the loss of his mother, his hero in Jake Spoon, his first love in Lorena, and ultimately his hope of having a father. The shocking deaths of Deets and Gus and various other crew members show the reader the brutality of the west as well as the brutality of life itself. In the largely stoic reactions to death in the crew, we see people ultimately isolated from themselves in ways that seem irreconcilable.
And yet, there is a feeling of warmth that resonates from the crew. It is plain that the characters do care for one another, that death and tragedy do effect them, but the world is not kind enough to let them experience the depth of that feeling.
Only in the home of Clara does connection flourish in some sense. Over the course of the latter half of the novel, Clara's ranch becomes a kind of sanctuary for people who are lost, first reached by Elmira who chooses to forego connection for the pointless search for a kind of purpose. July finds himself there after losing everything he ever had and makes himself a foil to Elmira in his staying with Clara, able to live out his life because of his ability to give up a search he knows is pointless. Dish ends up there at the end of the novel after going over 3000 miles north to Montana. Gus and Newt are so close to understanding the haven Clara provides but ultimately Gus is unable to bear the pain of connection and heads off to die shortly after. There is not a purpose outside of being and working with each other. I can only hope Newt finds his way there in his later life.
There is a poison in a search for purpose; it creates restless men, people who cannot settle down as they are hyper aware of the world turning beneath them. Purpose provides an excuse to evade death. In the minds of these men, death is irrelevant to those who have a reason to be living. Gus gives Call what I would consider to be the ultimate gift and also the ultimate burden in requesting his burial be done in Texas. He gives Call a purpose; but this purpose rips him away from Newt and his growing stead in the north. This is what the book is about for me; embracing what we are given and being content in a world unkind in its provisioning of reason.
This is a personal thematic essay of the book and much less of a review, so I will spend the next paragraph or so on an actual review:
McMurtry is a fantastic character writer. I could read thousands of pages of Gus and Call on their ranch. My favorite scene in the novel aesthetically is the outline of Gus's morning routine. The image of him making biscuits and watching the morning sun peek over the horizon is vivid and stark in my mind. Lorena is a fascinating almost anti-Ophelia that would be so incredible to dissect further. Newt and Pea Eye and Lippy and Dish and Xavier Wanz - each fascinations in their own right that I don't have time to write about.
This book is almost like the light-mode Blood Meridian. It serves the same want of demystifying the American west while also outlining its tragic beauty and horrific brutality in such a manner as to linger in the minds of all who read it.
Gus and Call are some of the best characters I have read. They fit together in such a beautiful manner and I've wanted to read more of them in Comanche Moon since the second I finished this book.
Truly a fantastic book and deserving of its accolades.
Depressing over all. Great writing great characters. Clara was the best.