Loop Group

Multiple award-winning author Larry McMurtry takes his act on the road in this irresistible novel that travels from California to Texas and back again. It's a tale of friendship, sisterhood, love, loss, sex, and Hollywood as only this premier storyteller can imagine it. Set solidly in McMurtry territory, and featuring a cast of hundreds, Loop Group tells the story of Maggie and Connie, two women rapidly approaching their sunset years, and fiercely determined to have one last grand adventure before it's too late. Maggie (think Diane Keaton) runs a "loop group" dubbing voices for movies; she has a much-older, kinky Sicilian psychoanalyst for a lover, and is being pushed around by her trio of married daughters who make the witches in Macbeth seem benign. Her best friend Connie, who has a thing for younger men, may have taken on a real nut this time, and when a series of bizarre events occur that even shopping doesn't cure, the two women become truly desperate.

Armed with a .38 Special, they drive due east, headed straight for Maggie's Aunt Cooney's ranch near Electric City, Texas. Along the way, they encounter the quirkiest, kookiest, sorriest cross-section of humanity you'll ever hope to meet. Loop Group is about getting older, getting better, and getting on with your life. As usual, the author takes us to a place where life and death, tragedy and comedy collide. Hilarious and heartbreaking, it's destined to be the next McMurtry classic.

"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. Agent, Andrew Wylie. (Dec. 7)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"Loop Group is a playful, naughty, surprising book, painted on a small scale but still big (and only sometimes melancholy) fun." The Seattle Times

"Entertainingly offbeat." St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"McMurtry's plot is wacky, the style is deadpan and friendly to the two women, and the effect is compelling. This may prove to be the funniest book of the year." Newhouse News Service

"The proportions may be wrong, but there's something here for everyone: An affectionate peek at the workers clinging to Hollywood's lowest rung; campy sex; drama on the highway; and canny insights into the dynamics of family and friendship." Kirkus Reviews

"Fun and sex-obsessed, McMurtry's latest...will find an audience." Library Journal

"Clearly, more sincere praise of the mature woman is overdue. And McMurtry's adulation is more than sincere, it's heated." Liesl Schillinger, The New York Times Book Review

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 busy life, a life that intersects with lots of interesting — all right, bizarre — people. Her daughters push her into having a few second thoughts about it, and these are reinforced when her best friend, Connie, seeks an escape from her own world of complex and difficult relationships with men. Maggie 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.

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

Multiple award-winning author Larry McMurtry takes his act on the road in this irresistible tale of friendship, sisterhood, love, loss, sex, and Hollywood. This is the story of Maggie and Connie, two women rapidly approaching their sunset years but fiercely determined to have one last grand adventure before it's too late.

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.