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Summary: Best western novel of all time...
Review: I have read Lonesome Dove four or five times and the best parts never seem to lose their steam. A few passages grow even more powerful with time and familiarity. Simply the finest novel I have ever read and I read a hundred books a year. Gus is my favorite fictional character in literature--yes, literature. Let us not forget that besides being fun and exciting, this book also captured the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for fiction. What more need be said?
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Summary: The Most Compelling Page Turner Ever
Review: Larry McMurtry has given us a story that will go down inhistory as one of the greatest westerns of all time! The charactersand scenes are extremely well written with depth and complexity. This is the stuff good stories are made--stories that touches you in a gripping way!
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Summary: Make me feel like going to Montana...
Review: I've read most of L.M.'s novels, but this might be the best novel ever written by him. I was often moved by what those heros and heroines experienced and just like the author pointed out, I cried a lot, maybe as much as the female characters in this book did. This great western saga in addition to Harry Comb's great novel of the western, "BRULES", perhaps are the two greatest stories ever created by two modern persons, one of them, like J.Grisham, almost becomes a movie co-producer instead of a writer, the other one is just purely an outdoor man, yet both failed to transcend themselves in their bore-to-death sequels or prequels and had both shamefully ruined my wonderful memories.
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Summary: Of all the novels I have ever read, this one is my favorite.
Review: When I finished reading Lonesome Dove, I concluded I had been born about 100 years too late. The American West is often villianized in today's liberal culture, but there is something that draws people to stories of the Old West. Lonesome Dove captures that better than any other western book I have ever read. The characters are so real, they are your friends (or enemies). McMurtry does what so many authors try to do; he makes the reader feel every single thing the characters feel. Lonesome Dove takes the reader to a time when life was uncluttered. As John Denver sings, it is about "all the simple things you cannot comprehend".
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Summary: Finished it in 10 days!
Review: Lonesome Dove had always intimidated me due to the 1000+ page length. But a friend finally convinced me to tackle it. So, I started reading it on July 4 and finished it 10 days later. I absolutely could NOT put it down. And this is from somebody who could count on one hand how many books I've read for pleasure in the preceding 10 years! As a native Texan, Lonesome Dove probably impacts me in a way only a native Texan could appreciate. However, I firmly believe that the story is universal -- crossing state and national lines. The characters, the settings, the storylines -- all of these come together to form a truly remarkable adventure that takes you through the Old West. But at the same time, the novel is filled with lessons applicable to your 90s life.
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Summary: Hamlet on horseback
Review: Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry has been knocking around for more than a decade and is recognized by many as a classic of American Western literature. And no wonder. If you like a good cowboy story; if you're an aficionado of the West, in love with its history and geography; if you want your heart torn out and kicked from Texas to the Teton, then Lonesome Dove is the book you're looking for.
Augustus McRae, Woodrow Call, and Jake Spoon, three has-been Texas Rangers, hatch a half-baked scheme to abandon their dusty lives in the un-town of Lonesome Dove on the Rio Grande, and embark on a cattle drive to the upper reaches of Montana. They depart with two thousand head of re-stolen cattle along with a misbegotten crew of sometime ranch hands, lost and found Irish brothers, green local kids, a Mexican cook who can't, and the town whore Lorena -- with hair of gold even though her heart isn't.
They struggle north to untamed country none of them but Jake has ever seen -- and him a liar. They cross the Neuces, the Colorado, the Red, the Canadian, the Arkansas and up and up, fighting desperados, Comanches, sandstorms, water moccasins, bad food, bad water, bad luck and bad news. Multiple plots weave and braid and separate and double back upon you again like all the streams and rivers descending from the High Plains.
But it is into the strange landscape of the human heart which the reader has been lured. For while this story concerns a pilgrimage to Montana, it is, on another level, a journey in understanding what human life amounts to, balanced as it is between hope and hopelessness, and in the words of Gus McRae, "rich with hardship." It is McMurtry's characters, as much as the route they take, which define this journey. With all their quirkiness, these characters are mind-stickers, all. We're talking Dickens 'n dogies, here. Hamlet on horseback. From the raping, torturing Comanche renegade Blue Duck, so evil as to be devoid of humanity, to the feisty widow who has her way with the the deputy sheriff, a man who finds her "almost as scary as wild pigs", to the tragic young whore Maggie, who asks only to hear her name spoken once by the man she loves, it is a haunting group we travel with.
Snake attack on the Neuces to sneak attack on the Musselshell, Lonesome Dove ropes the reader, drags him through hell and high water, and leaves him feeling that the one certain thing is love, the existence of which is proven only by the size of the hole it blasts in the human heart.
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Summary: Wonderfully dramatic, well written; above all heartbreaking.
Review: My mother, who is a librarian, persuaded me to read >Lonesome Dove< this summer. I have never made a better choice than I did in choosing to read this book. >Lonesome Dove< is not just a simple tale of the American West. It is a beautifully written story of people who yearn for a better life. You will not find two heros anywhere else in fiction who can match Agustus McCrae and Woodrow Call for their kind hearts, quick wit, and emotional appeal. Also, there will not be any characters you will care more about in all of literature. >Lonesome Dove< reads like a cattle stampede: swift, dramatic and overwhelming
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Summary: A masterpiece of writing that has never been surpassed
Review: This is definitely the best book anyone has ever written. The words glide from page to page, its sheer poetry. When you do finish the book, it is hard to go back to the world of fast food and tv. While reading the book, I felt such a close connection to the characters, I could not believe that they were not living at one time. This book will make you laugh and love and cry. Read it and you won't be sorry, I promise.
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Summary: One of the best books ever written
Review: This book left me reeling; it is a true masterpiece. What a glorious, sad, uplifting, powerful testimony to the human spirit. Such were the men that blazed the trails that we now comfortably drive. "What they dreamed, we live, and what they liver, we dream." It took me a month to recover from reading it, and a whole year before I could handle watching the superb mini-series on tape. The characters are perfect, the tale sweeping and colorful, and the writing masterful. I can't praise this book enough. Whenever I see it in a book store, I always re-read two of the greatest chapters ever written, chapter 57 where Gus rescues Lorie, and chapter 85, where Call beats the Army Scout senseless. It simply does not get any better than that. My final comment -- you must read this book
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Summary: The BEST read I've ever encountered!!
Review: An absolutely wonderful book that I could not put down. I was quite sad upon completing the book to find that my adventure with Gus and Call had ended. The book inspired me to search out my own version of the Great Western adventure. Please read this book as you will not be disappointed
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