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4.58 AVERAGE
4.58 AVERAGE
First book of the genre for me. Recommended from someone on YouTube. Great book. Great characters with solid endings. Glad there's more of the story to get into eventually.
adventurous
emotional
funny
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
This book will sit with me for quite a while. Diverse character work.
adventurous
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
reflective
relaxing
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 didn’t want this book to end. It was that good.
adventurous
emotional
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
emotional
inspiring
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
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:
Complicated
I find it difficult to give this one a star rating. Certainly worth all the time and effort but I can’t say I had fun with it for a fair portion or was even compelled to keep reading. The last 100 pages or so are so terrific they feel like they belong in a different book. Everything for about 300 pages before that ranges wildly from great to decent, at times from one chapter to the next and often erring more toward the latter. The narrative during this period is entirely formulaic but interesting enough, though not at all helped by how lustreless McMurtry’s prose can tend to be.
As many reviews here will say it’s really the characters which capture the reader, but I find it difficult to agree with many of the simple conclusions I’ve seen about these characters. While certainly loveable in some ways, the actual strength of the characters is in how conflicted you feel about them. Gus and Call are both dishonest, shallow, misogynistic, racist and aggressive men who have been tempered into colonial killers by life on the frontier. They constantly lie to people they love in the pursuit of their own goals and by the end of the book they are almost exactly the same as they are at the start. Yet, in such a simple, tragic sense, they’re redeemed by their love for each other and their attention to those around them. It’s a classic love story which sadly stops just short of making Call and Gus kiss </3. If it were the case that they were simply “loveable” men, I worry the entire point of the book would be lost — they’re very emotionally complicated, and this entire story is a vessel for their emotions.
As many reviews here will say it’s really the characters which capture the reader, but I find it difficult to agree with many of the simple conclusions I’ve seen about these characters. While certainly loveable in some ways, the actual strength of the characters is in how conflicted you feel about them. Gus and Call are both dishonest, shallow, misogynistic, racist and aggressive men who have been tempered into colonial killers by life on the frontier. They constantly lie to people they love in the pursuit of their own goals and by the end of the book they are almost exactly the same as they are at the start. Yet, in such a simple, tragic sense, they’re redeemed by their love for each other and their attention to those around them. It’s a classic love story which sadly stops just short of making Call and Gus kiss </3. If it were the case that they were simply “loveable” men, I worry the entire point of the book would be lost — they’re very emotionally complicated, and this entire story is a vessel for their emotions.
adventurous
dark
emotional
funny
informative
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
I had very high hopes for this book due to the bountiful amount of praise that I heard, and I especially wanted to read it after taking my Wild Wests class this past semester. For the reasons that people said they like it, I absolutely agree -- you really grow to know and care about the characters, and I found myself having the strongest opinions about fictional people that I have had in a while. While some of this could be attributed to the sheer length of the novel, it is also in the way that McMurtry very masterfully writes about the actions, thoughts, and points of view of the characters. The quick shifts in POV were very unlike probably any other book I've read, which at first was a bit whiplash-like but overall I think helped to really flesh out the characters and how they all behaved in such dire situations. Obviously, the very problematic and stereotypical depiction of blood-thirsty Native Americans took me out of the novel a fair amount, as it was impossible to overlook. I don't expect a book like this to be progressive, per se, but it was aggressive in its portrayal. There was a lot of cognitive dissonance that I experienced in wanting to root for the characters I had grown to know and love as they were quite literally being colonists. Probably because of this, I didn't have that *feeling* that I've heard others use to describe their love of this book, and that I have felt with other novels. I can absolutely appreciate its merits, and do not regret that it ate up about half of my summer.