Synopses & Reviews
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.
Review
"Larry McMurtry won the Pulitzer Prize for Lonesome Dove. That fact alone gave me high hopes for his new novel Loop Group. However, this book disappoints in many ways. Maggie and Connie, the two main characters in the story, are nothing like any flesh and blood women I've ever met. Are there women in their sixties who are so crass, appearance-oriented, sex-driven, and drug and alcohol-dependent? Okay, the novel is set in Hollywood, so maybe I'm naïve. Even so, if people like these two do exist, I'm loathe to spend two hundred and forty pages with them.
McMurtry also attempts to adopt a colloquial style by using phrases like 'kind of' and 'sort of.' The result is not a familiar tone, but instead clunky and tedious prose. And the plot? Let's just say that if this book were a movie, I'd have been looking for an excuse to leave in the middle. Much of the novel is the description of a road trip to Aunt Cooney's chicken farm in Electric, Texas. The only spark of excitement is the appearance of Old Pinto (a.k.a. Jiminy), a Native American car thief. Even that fizzles. The geezer attempts to make off with Maggie's van, only to be captured instantly by the police. The scene ends anticlimactically, with Old Pinto's daughter-in-law on her way to pick him up.
At the beginning of the novel, we find Maggie filled with despair and on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Not much changes. By the end of the story, McMurtry describes Maggie as spiraling out of control, flying apart and descending into panic all in one paragraph. Maggie covers a lot of miles on her journey. But, the truth is, neither she nor the reader gets very far." Reviewed by Deborah M. Prum, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)
Review
"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
Review
"Fun and sex-obsessed, McMurtry's latest...will find an audience." Library Journal
Review
"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
Synopsis
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.