When the Light Goes: A Novel - Softcover

McMurtry, Larry

Softcover

ISBN 10: 141653427X ISBN 13: 9781416534273

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2008

Synopsis

In this masterful and often surprising sequel to the acclaimed Duane's Depressed, the Pulitzer Prize- and Oscar-winning author of Lonesome Dove has written a haunting, elegiac, and occasionally erotic novel about one of his most beloved characters. Duane Moore first made his appearance in The Last Picture Show and, like his author, he has aged but not lost his vigor or his taste for life.

Back from a two-week trip to Egypt, Duane finds he cannot readjust to life in Thalia, the small, dusty, West Texas hometown in which he has spent all of his life. In the short time he was away, it seems that everything has changed alarmingly. His office barely has a reason to exist now that his son Dickie is running the company from Wichita Falls, his lifelong friends seem to have suddenly grown old, his familiar hangout, once a good old-fashioned convenience store, has been transformed into an "Asian Wonder Deli," his daughters seem to have taken leave of their senses and moved on to new and strange lives, and his own health is at serious risk.

It's as if Duane cannot find any solace or familiarity in Thalia and cannot even bring himself to revisit the house he shared for decades with his late wife, Karla, and their children and grandchildren. He spends his days aimlessly riding his bicycle (already a sign of serious eccentricity in West Texas) and living in his cabin outside town. The more he tries to get back to the rhythm of his old life, the more he realizes that he should have left Thalia long ago—indeed everybody he cared for seems to have moved on without him, to new lives or to death.

The only consolation is meeting the young, attractive geologist, Annie Cameron, whom Dickie has hired to work out of the Thalia office. Annie is brazenly seductive, yet oddly cold, young enough to be Duane's daughter, or worse, and Duane hasn't a clue how to handle her. He's also in love with his psychiatrist, Honor Carmichael, who after years of rebuffing him, has decided to undertake what she feels is Duane's very necessary sex reeducation, opening him up to some major, life-changing surprises.

For the lesson of When the Light Goes is that where there's life, there is indeed hope—Duane, widowed, displaced from whatever is left of his own life, suddenly rootless in the middle of his own hometown, and at risk of death from a heart that also doesn't seem to be doing its job, is in the end saved by sex, by love, and by his own compassionate and intense interest in other people and the surprises they reveal.

At once realistic and life-loving, often hilariously funny, and always moving, Larry McMurtry has written one of his finest and most compelling novels to date, doing for Duane what he did so triumphantly for Aurora in Terms of Endearment.

About this title

About the Author:

Larry McMurtry is the author of twenty-nine novels, including the Pulitzer Prize–winning Lonesome Dove, three memoirs, two collections of essays, and more than thirty screenplays. He lives in Archer City, Texas.

From Booklist:

In his now-classic debut novel, The Last Picture Show(1966), McMurtry introduced readers to a dying Texas town called Thalia and a lively teenager named Duane Moore. McMurtry revisited both in his novels Texasville (1987) and Duane's Depressed (1999), rendering Duane as a sort of West Texas equivalent of Updike's Rabbit Angstrom. McMurtry's latest novel begins with Duane, now 65, returning from an overseas sabbatical designed to relieve his grief for his deceased wife. He finds that his life in Thalia has receded; his children have all moved on, his oil company is successful without him, and he is utterly alone. In walks Annie, a young blond and new employee at the company. Annie flirts with Duane but soon reveals that--despite her 27 years--she knows almost nothing about sex. Duane hasn't learned much either but is willing to share his meager education with Annie. McMurtry keeps the sexual play frank--too frank, with descriptions of Duane's impotence falling under the heading of too much information Although Duane is surprised by his late-blooming sexuality, readers won't be, and his prolonged malaise deadens the impact of his self-discovery. Still, it's nice to know what ultimately becomes of old Duane--even if it isn't particularly enthralling. Jerry Eberle
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About this edition

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 141653427X
• ISBN 13: 9781416534273
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 208