Customer Reviews

Anything For Billy

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

What a wonderful read! If you are a fan of any of the McMurtry Lonesome Dove series, pick up this book. Although it involves none of the same characters it spins a tale in a similar gritty, adventurous vein. Anything for Billy rivals Lonesome Dove for heart pounding excitement and gut wrenching sorrow.

Meet Billy the Kid,(Or McMurtry's version, anyway) an inexperienced young drifter with a lucky streak a mile wide, an all consuming desire to make a name for himself, and a tragic taste for violence.

Watch the sparks fly when Billy meets Katerina, the beautiful leader of her own band of Mexican outlaws. See Billy tangle with the largest land owner in the west, deadly hired gun men, and vengeful indians, all while he tries to survive his most destructive foe: himself.

Although the book involves a number of colorful characters, Billy is what makes this book so interesting. He is more than just a one dimensional shoot 'em up gunfighter. He's an ambitious kid with his own fears and loves and some very dark problems. He's someone you can root for even if you're not sure why.

Unlike many of McMurtry's other books this one is narrated in first person perspective. The narrator, Sippy, one of Billy's companions, is an east coast, old society gentleman with a penchant for western dime novels. The contrast between the refined narrator and his crude western companions lends a touch of humor to the tale.

Give this book a try. Whether you're a McMurtry western fan or not, this one is hard to put down.

This book was so wonderful I doubt I can decribe it. It's about Billy the Kid, Benjamen Sippy and Joe Lovelady. Sippy and Joe are Billy's proctectors and companions. My favorite charictor is Katie Garza. Billy was a little rough for me, but, then again, he was a bit diffrent when he died. Billy's death shocked me, and not all deaths do. What shocked me was not that he died, as anyone who has read the book will know, but HOW he died. This is a great book, that no one should pass up.
-A McMurtry Fan

I'm only 12 years old, and I've already read almost all of Larry McMurtrys stuff. People think I'm a little "underaged" to be reading this stuff. I don't care, I love his books, so oh well (I don't give a damn what they say). I would DEFINATELY recommend this book, becasue it was interesting, but not always proper like the real world.

I am not a big Larry McMurtry fan, but this book really pulled me. It uses very stylistic prose, reminiscent of the 19th century dime novels that made cowboys into myth. It is, in fact, fun to read. The persona is very present and we enjoy his use of language that is at once both cliche yet sounds original. In this world of the book, there are three types of people in the untamed West: gunfighters, cowboys and buffalo hunters. I suppose there are bar tenders to serve these three as well.

Far from being a dime novel, however, is the darker side of the work, beginning at about the last third or so. Billy's penchance for unthinking violence catches up with him and with the alert reader as well. This is a novel about life in America today. Or about life anywhere where individuals become icons instead of people. It is easy, McMurtry seems to assert, to kill an generalization. It is more difficult to kill a person. The whole novel sets up contrasts between generalizations of people (as if they were computer icons in a war game) and individuals. So while folks are getting killed and hurt throughout the book, it is only the Romanticized wild West until a main character that we all have learned to love gets killed. Suddenly the book is about something far beyond a recreation of a cowboy dime novel. And it hurts.

So while it is a delightful and fun romp through a Romanticized West, the undertones of the book hit hard. Read it and laugh, then weep.

Although not in the same category as the Lonesome Dove series, the book is still an interesting and entertaining read. It attempts to portray Billy Bone as both a pathetic and compelling person. As far as western historical novels go, the book is quite good.

I'll make this nice and quick, I've read many of Larry's books, but this one....oh man where to begin? There is no character you could care anything about, I've read 130 and then threw the book away, I was forcing myself to read this dreadful book. If your looking for something captivating in the likes of Gus and Call, this ain't it. Do yourself a favor and just read the lonesome dove series, this is just trash or a writer meeting his quota.

I'm surprised at some of the negative posts. I found this a fun and casual look at Billy The Kid. Easy to read with its smooth, casual, 1st person narrative. McMurtry creates vivid realistic characters without making them resemble the silly wooden, macho characters that fill most Louis L'Amour novels.

This book introduces the reader to Real Life Outlaw of The Wild West Billy The Kid. The reader soon learns that Billy was not the Hardened Cold Killer that he is often seen as but rather a wide eyed young man with an unhealthy taste for violence. Mr. McMurtry has spent a lot of time in his writing career debunking the Myths and Legends of The Old West and this book is no exception and is exceptional reading.I loved this book and I hope you will too!!!

It may be an ode to dime novels, the story is epic drama in the style of Sergio Leone, or possibly Bud Spencer and Terrence Hill, with a touch of distance and humour provided by the narrator, writing down the story in a dry voice. Mr. Benjamin Sippy from Philadelphia is a big fan of Western dime novels. When his supply slows down, he first starts cranking them out himself - then, when it stops completely, he jumps on the first train west and falls in with a young kid named Billy Bone. Along for the ride, he witnesses and documents Billy's short but wild career in fame, love and death. Many colourful characters complete the setting - Joe Lovelady, the cowboy; Katie Garza, the Mexican bandit; gunslingers, buffalo hunters and more. There may be little in the way of character development, but they all come to brilliant (if usually short) life. And there was certainly a development in the way I saw Billy. So put on that Ennio Morricone CD, grab a bottle of cheap bourbon and dig in.

Anything For Billy is a fictional account of the final months in the life of Billy The Kid, i.e. it is not true historical fiction, but then it never claims to be. The story is told by a well to do Philadelphian, Benjamin Sippy, in very short chapters, a la James Patterson. "Sippy", after becoming obsessed with "Wild West" dime-novels, becomes the very successful author of such books and one day - bored with his life and wife - heads out West, meets up with "The Kid", and begins traveling with him. So begins our story and, at least initially, has the potential to be a good one. Unfortunately the book falls flat with a thud about 100 or so pages in.

The set-up to this story is an engaging one - Sippy the Greenhorn "joining" up with one of the West's most infamous outlaws with our narrator "learning the ropes" of being a true cowboy. And through Sippy the reader meets up with a fascinating cast of characters, all intertwined through ancestry, revenge and romance. There are also some laugh out loud moments, including Sippy's 10-day stagecoach journey and his comedic attempts at robbing trains.

But then once this stage is set the story-line falters, at least for this reader, badly. Sippy's "city-mouse" wide-eyed perspective of the Wild West becomes repetitive. Billy's brash behavior, at first unpredictable, quickly becomes just the opposite. The impending confrontations, once they finally do occur, are anti-climactic. It almost seemed as if the author was deliberately taking the "wild" out of the Wild West. The violence and gun-play is here, but none of the adrenaline.

Anything For Billy has an interesting premise with interesting characters that loses its way in the telling.