Loop Group - Hardcover

McMurtry, Larry

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0743250796 ISBN 13: 9780743250795

Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 2004

Synopsis

In perhaps his finest "contemporary" novel since Terms of Endearment, Larry McMurtry, with his miraculously sure touch at creating instantly recognizable women characters, and his equally miraculous sharp eye for the absurdities of everyday life in the modern West, writes about two women, old friends, who set off on an adventure -- with unpredictable and sometimes hilarious results.

As Loop Group opens, we meet Maggie, whose three grown-up daughters have arrived at her Hollywood home to try and make her see sense about her life, which isn't easy, first of all because their own lives are a mess, and secondly because as far as Maggie is concerned her own life makes perfect sense. She is self-supporting, running a successful "loop group" dubbing movies, she has a lover (admittedly he is married, and her psychoanalyst, and very old), and leads a busy life that intersects with lots of interesting -- all right, bizarre -- people.

Still, her daughters push her into having a few second thoughts about her life, and these are reinforced when her best friend, Connie, seeks an escape from her own world of complex and difficult relationships with men. Since neither high-end nor low-end shopping seems to relieve their angst, and since a succession of sad events takes place that shakes Maggie to the core, she conceives the idea of driving to visit her Aunt Cooney's ranch near Electric City, Texas, and the two women prepare for the trip by buying a .38 Special revolver (which leads to unexpected trouble along the way). This road trip will end by changing their lives.

Tangling along the way with Hopi Indians, with a bearded vagrant who turns out to be an old acquaintance, with the theft of their car (and their revolver), and with every possible variety of cardsharp, faker, charmer, and crook, the two women eventually proceed through the desert landscape to Electric City and discover some home truths about life. When they return to Hollywood, they find that one of Maggie's old friends, an ancient MGM producer, has left her a gift that enables her to make a new start to her life and to bring a new measure of sanity to her family and friends.

Alternately hilariously funny and profoundly sad -- even tragic -- Loop Group is a major Larry McMurtry novel and a joy to read.

About this title

About the Author

Larry McMurtry is the author of twenty-nine novels, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Lonesome Dove. His other works include two collections of essays, three memoirs, and more than thirty screenplays, including the coauthorship of Brokeback Mountain, for which he received an Academy Award. He lives in Archer City, Texas.

Reviews

Oddball characters aren’t necessarily a death knell to a novel, particularly when they come from McMurtry’s pen. In Loop Group, his sheer wealth of personalities, which encompasses everyone from sons-in-law to a local trooper who walks into the story only for a line or two, continues to entertain. But critics weren’t moved by what they saw as unrealistic dialogue, hackneyed characters, and a tired and predictable plot riddled with inaccuracies that don’t reflect modern Hollywood. In the end, readers crave an answer to life that goes deeper than a trip to Nordstrom’s, and they expect wiser council from the 60-something bunch.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

In his 28th novel, Pulitzer-winner McMurtry again displays his knack for compelling characters and plots, this time as two women of a certain age take a road trip through Texas. Sixty-year-old widow Maggie Clary hasn't felt like herself since her hysterectomy; though her Hollywood company, Prime Loops, is doing well—they dub in the grunts and groans for movie soundtracks—she secretly wonders if she's going "bats." Maggie's three well-intentioned daughters have appeared on her doorstep for a Sunday morning "intervention." Though Maggie's diminutive Sicilian psychiatrist has improved her mood (thanks, in part, to their mid-session sex), she decides to follows the advice of a flirtatious waiter and try a change of scenery. Maggie invites fellow "looper" and best friend Connie (the two have been inseparable—and boy crazy—since they were 14), to join her on a drive to her octogenarian Aunt Cooney's Texas chicken ranch. Despite family troubles that threaten to sabotage their trip, the two stay the course on a road rife with reprobates, from a relentless "professional" hitchhiker to a mild-mannered car thief forever violating his parole. Aunt Cooney's brief appearance is among the high points of McMurtry's life-affirming tale: sporting an "old mashed-up" cowboy hat and an abundance of rouge, the gregarious granny greets her city slicker niece by yanking a pistol out of her pocket and firing shots into the sky.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Few contemporary novelists can handle a road saga like McMurtry. His most memorable works of that genre, Lonesome Dove (1986) and the Berrybender Chronicles, are massive, sprawling epics set against an untamed frontier. His latest book is on a smaller scale, but it is a gem, with two memorable characters and delightful vignettes. Maggie and Connie are two 60-year-old women who eke out a marginal existence in contemporary Los Angeles as loopers--dubbing voices and sounds for B-movie tracks. Friends since grade school, they both fear life, especially their love life, has passed them by. Hoping to jump-start their lives with a bit of adventure, they decide to drive a van cross country to visit Maggie's aunt, who runs a Texas chicken farm. Their brief odyssey is filled with wondrous scenes of natural beaty, visits to amusingly odd museums and tourist traps, and encounters with a variety of eccentric and occasionally dangerous characters. What makes this work special is McMurtry's gift for creating a genuinely likable, believable pair of protagonists and weaving an often touching fabric around their intertwined relationship. Maggie and Connie can be frustratingly self-absorbed, even whiny, and they often irritate each other, but their shared experiences over decades help make this a quirky but enjoyable buddy story. Jay Freeman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0743250796
• ISBN 13: 9780743250795
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 256