Though the novel ultimately covers a lot of territory, this isn’t a return to the Oscar-winner’s epic sweep of Lonesome...
McMurtry delivers more laughs and a lot more sex than usual as he chronicles the transition from the waning days of the Old West gunfighters through the rise of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West.
It’s hard to imagine how a novel beginning with a father’s suicide by hanging, leaving the narrator and her brother as orphans, should quickly turn into a comic romp. It does so through the eyes, voice and gallows humor of Marie Antoinette Courtright, known as Nellie, the latest in the prolific McMurtry’s seemingly inexhaustible supply of feisty frontier damsels. Few men can resist Nellie’s saucy charm, and fewer still are worthy of her, though she’s willing to settle for less whenever the frequent desire for copulation strikes her. And she’s not all that particular as to where it strikes, taking her sexual pleasure in a jail cell, a hayloft, whatever’s convenient. Almost every man who meets Nellie either courts her or proposes to her, thus giving McMurtry (The Colonel and Little Missie, 2005) plenty of chances to namedrop the likes of “Georgie” Custer, “Billy” Hickok and the irascible brothers Earp. Her allure also sets in motion the minimal plot, as she convinces a smalltown sheriff, one of her many fiancés, to hire her teenage brother, Jackson, as his deputy. When Jackson single-handedly guns down a gang of outlaws, the episode attracts plenty of notice to this frontier outpost, and Nellie’s account of her brother’s exploits gives her quick success as a writer (thus allowing McMurtry the opportunity for droll commentary on the author’s lot and the mixture of fact and fiction that popularly defines the Old West). It also brings her to the attention of Buffalo Bill Cody, whom she comes to adore above all others, but who is the one man who can resist her charms (not that he’s oblivious to them).
Though the novel ultimately covers a lot of territory, this isn’t a return to the Oscar-winner’s epic sweep of Lonesome Dove, but it’s an easy, breezy read.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-7432-5078-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2006
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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