Streets of Laredo

Rating:
Summary: a brilliant, painful book
Review: Streets of Laredo is a great book. McMurtry shows, from the first page, something few writers ever show: His characters are human. They die. Gus died in Lonesome Dove, and Newt and July also died at the beginning of Streets of Laredo. Now besides Call, these two were my favorite characters, and when I read that they died on the same page, I neraly put the book in the trash. Then I realized something: McMurtry is honest. He doens't care if we want Call to claim Newt, or July to live happily ever after with his son Martin, or for people to understand the pain and sorrow Call keeps hidden from the world (my own personal opinions) He shows us that life is violent, sad, and ironic. The biggest irony is that the very horse Call gave his son (come on, we all know he is by now) is what killed him. McMurtry makes us realize that no one ever lives happily ever after the way they want to. Just a quick note: Although I love the series of Lonesome Dove and rather frantically read through every book numerous times, sometimes I wish McMurtry had just left it at Lonesome Dove. At least then everyone could pretend that maybe, just maybe, someone in the book could live happily ever after.

Rating:
Summary: A ridiculous cartoon using Lonesome Dove characters.
Review: The aimless wanderings of Call mirror the writer, who apparently knew he needed alot of violence, but couldn't quite string the segments together.

Rating:
Summary: Engaging, but too long
Review: Streets of Laredo is an interesting and engaging book, but too long. McMurtry repeats himself such as the times when Joey Garza keeps thinking that he is going to his mother's house to ahve his wounds cleaned. Other characters' thoughts are also repeated unnecessarily. This makes a long story even longer.

Yet the characters of this novel are interesting. Joey Garza's hatred of Maria, his mother, is left unfinished. The reader knows his attiude is inocrrect, but Joey never realizes it. Also how he became bad is left to the reader's imagination.

Minor characters appear in this book, who require circumstances. Doobie Plunkert appears as a rash, immature girl. Yet she will have some relationship to the story toward the end as her husband Deputy Plunkert roams Texas with Woodrow Call and his posse. The story of this couple and that of the accountant Brookshire and his wife Katie seem to serve as reminders that people live and die and are promptly forgotten. Perhaps also this is McMurtry's way of showing how relentless the brutality was in the developing west.

The impact of all these deaths was depressing.

Despite some of these problems Streets of Laredo continued where Lonesome Dove left off. I wish McMurtry had not killed all those people in the former book. It would have been nice to have seen Newt again.

Rating:
Summary: Streets of Laredo....excellence
Review: No author quite like McMurphy has dealt such memorable characters that you enjoy following them book after book. With Lonesome Dove, his well-deserved Pulitzer Prizer winning novel, he introduced us to an outfit in the West who, in nine-hundred pages, are planning to ranch cattle in Montana (was it Montana, though? I forget). We were introduced to the whole Hat Creek Outfit and fell into understanding w/ the old yet undiminished friendship between Gus McCrae and Woodrow Call. A lot happened in the novel and I was left w/ that rush, a rush that only comes when I complete a novel so grand and so moving that I'm almost regretful to place it on my finished list. Well, I was left w/ the same feeling after this novel. The characters, man, are excellent. The book is not as long as its predecessor, you should know, yet McMurtry boasts such lively, illuminating scenes, and harbors equally lively, illuminating characters within its pages. Joey Garza and his mother Maria alone are reason enough to read this novel. Call, Lorena, and Pea Eye return and it makes you feel sad yet proud at how they turned out (Call's now an old man, fight is almost out of him; Pea Eye realizes he can't keep going out to help the Captain because he now has a family with Lorena; and Lorena is now an educated, strong mother and wife... reminds you of Clara Allen). What I really love about McMurtry's novel is that it doesn't always end happily... a lot of death, a lot of violence, a lot of unresolved matters. I won't say what they are because I think Lonesome Dove fans should give it a chance... it's a prize!!!

Rating:
Summary: Great but...
Review: Well, this is supposedly the end of the Western tetralogy that started with "Dead Man's Walk". The human side of the characters is here- the ability McMurtry has of creating characters readers care about, is here. This book differs from the others in the fact that it is much more heavily accented with a brutal, dramatic tone. Yet that does not suggest this book should be tossed aside as trivial trash that glorifies in graphic violence and blood and guts flying everywhere. Violent people like Joey Garza, Wesley John Hardin and Mox Mox exist unfortunately, and their creation in these pages is simply McMurtry's attempt to recreate the brutality of that kind of life. The graphic violence is what adds the color to the book, I would say, and it proves indispensable to make this a book as good as I herald it. Yet... I finished it, and I did so with a feeling of "is that it?" The future of certain characters was left still to be decided. Does that mean a fifth book in the series is in the making, perhaps? It would certainly be nice if such an idea was considered, maybe it wouldn't do McMurtry any harm if he sat back and thought about that for a while. Summing up, these four books really were pretty much very interesting and I'd recommend them to anyone who isn't intimidated by lengthy novels.

Rating:
Summary: GREAT BOOK!!! I LOVED IT!!
Review: This was a GREAT book! Some parts of it were a little boring, but, so were some parts of Lonesome Dove, or any other great book. Some of the reviews for this book make me sick. In my opinion they liked Lonesome Dove so much, they're reluctent to admit that a book can be every bit as damn good as Lonesome Dove. Larry McMurtry creates the most vivid charactors, such as Famous Shoes, the Kickapoo Indian tracker, or Call in his old age. It didn't have a happy ending, because I doubt events in the old west ever had happy endings, or one that gave you a sense of resolvement. I've loved every single one of the Lonesome Dove saga, and every other one of Larry McMurtry's work is superb!!! I would stronly reccomend it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Rating:
Summary: A big drop-off from Lonesome Dove and Comanche Moon
Review: Unlike Lonesome Dove and Comanche Moon, Streets of Laredo was a chore. Much of the time the book deals with senseless brutality, graphic violence, death, and characters that you just don't care too much about. Whereas I loved LD and CM, I would recommend a pass on this one.

Rating:
Summary: Larry McMurtry is a God!!!
Review: I was afraid to read this book because I just knew that it could not be as good as Lonesome Dove. I was pleasantly surprised! A great sequel to a great story!

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing and Weak. A waste of time.
Review: I never imagined that I would read the best book I've ever read in my life and the worst book I've ever read in my life by the same author. Lonesome Dove was a capitaving, brilliant story, perhaps one of the best novels ever written. Streets of Laredo is terrible. It is one disappointment after another. McMurtry makes his first mistake when he kills any redeeming characters that survived through Lonesome Dove, leaving Captain Call and Lorena to guide the story. These two characters who are identifed by their quiet and shy personalities are not fit to guide a novel. They barely even speak! I'm sorry I wasted my time reading about two mutes and the dim-witted Pea Eye chase after a gang of weak characters. Bottom line, just stick with Lonesome Dove. I have tried to forget that I ever picked up this sequel.

Rating:
Summary: A bleak disappointment
Review: Like many other readers, I absolutely loved Lonesome Dove, which was the first novel I read after two years of only non-fiction. Lonesome Dove reminded me of what I was missing and I looked forward to Streets of Laredo.

I suffered a big disappointment. I am not so naive as to expect a sequel to be EXACTLY the same as the original (or maybe I was), but while Lonesome Dove was joyously written, Streets of Laredo seems angrily written.

McMurtry is a good writer and Lonesome Dove is surely his masterpiece. There is a reason that book is a beloved modern classic and Streets of Laredo is not.

The first book was anchored on the charisma of a truly memorable character, Gus McCrae, and his relationship with the reserved Captain Call. Their quest is the story, but the characters, and their friendship, drive the book.

There is none of that richness here, and I think McMurtry feels a little lost and angry without it. The book is filled with nearly pointless violence that seems designed to simply show that there is cruelty out there. Over and over, we are subjected to ugly scenes like the old Indian woman's trampling death, the attempted burning of the children, Joey's mutilation and murder of one of his mother's husbands. The list goes on and on.

Lonesome Dove had its share of violence, too, but it served to bring home the danger and ruthlessness of the West, casting into relief the bravery and heroism of the characters in the novel.

Here the west seems merely ugly and mean, an evil and frightening place. That is but one half of the vision McMurtry projected in Lonesome Dove, and it makes this book about half as good, which is to say just average.

I think McMurtry should have used his prodigious talents on new characters with new conflicts, instead of trying to force something out of the remnants of a group whose stories have already been marvelously told.