The Cadence of Grass [Hardcover]

Thomas McGuane (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 30, 2002

In his first novel since his best-selling Nothing but Blue Skies, and thirty-three years after The Sporting Club established his reputation, Thomas McGuane’s trademark combination of high wit, low behavior, and hard-won wisdom has never been on sharper—or, ultimately, more moving—display. This is the story of the Whitelaws, a family whose values are as far-flung as the territory they helped settle, and whose most recent generations have pioneered the landscape of dysfunction.

The patriarch, Sunny Jim, exerts his perverse control even posthumously, by means of a last will and testament that binds the family fortune (a bottling franchise) to a marriage that ought, by general assent, to be rent asunder. The charms of this particular son-in-law, lately released from prison, are potent if short-lived; Evelyn Whitelaw, his estranged wife, is quite literally bedeviled by them. And as her mother and sister court this twisted inheritance, her own yearnings point toward a way of life once habitual on these western plains but now embodied only by Bill Champion, the family’s ranch foreman and Evelyn’s one true compass.

A novel charged with the relentless and often contradictory claims of blood, money, history, and love, The Cadence of Grass is at once a masterpiece of savage comedy and an elegy for what has been lost. Long one of our most compelling novelists, Thomas McGuane has written the most ambitious book of his singularly distinguished career.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Thomas McGuane's The Cadence of Grass is a brawling, barrel-chested novel full of irreverent humor and outrageous characters and situations. Set in Montana, the story begins with the funeral of Jim Whitelaw, the family patriarch, who has cunningly crafted a will that ties up the assets of his bottling company until his older daughter reconciles with her estranged rogue of a husband. With Jim's ditzy yet determined widow; his wild younger daughter and her sweet but unbalanced husband; a cross-dressing rancher; a missing kidney; and a mysterious Bengali, it all adds up to a wild ride. But it's Bill Champion, Jim Whitelaw's old ranching partner, who wins our hearts. A throwback to the old days, Bill is full of Western wisdom and pungent sayings--he defines a "coyote breakfast" as "a piss and a look around." Eventually, Bill reveals a surprising secret as well as the identity of Red Wolf. Like his previous novels, including Nothing but Blue Skies, Panama, Ninety-Two in the Shade, and The Bushwhacked Piano, McGuane's The Cadence of Grass is a ripsnorting read indeed. --Susan Biskeborn

From Publishers Weekly

McGuane has gone from Florida to Montana novelist, but his most famous novels still date from the beginning of his career. His latest has the hip feel of Panama, without the drugs and hallucinations. Sunny Jim Whitelaw is dead, but he continues to cast a shadow over his family's life. His will requires that his daughter Evelyn patch up her relationship with her no-good husband, Paul¢if she doesn't, the ownership and profits of Sunny Jim's Montana bottling plant will be lost. Though Evelyn's sister, Natalie, has had quality sex with Paul, she urges her sister to stay married for the good of the family; she herself is itching to divorce her dull husband Stuart. Handsome, treacherous Paul, ( infernal, as his parole officer/lover thinks of him) is barely a year out of prison when Sunny Jim dies and the Whitelaw family and all its wealth seems about to wind up in his lap. The prospect of this is bad enough, but Evelyn and Natalie also have to deal with the revelation that Bill Champion, Sunny Jim's old rancher/partner, means more to their mother, Alice, than they ever suspected. As a friend of Natalie's puts it, the times had turned against good-hearted party girls. The times have changed for small Montana ranchers like Bill Champion, too, whose involvement in one of Paul's deals is, predictably, a recipe for disaster. McGuane tells this story of the fall, or at least slump, of the house of Whitelaw in his trademark style, a balladic ramble through the consciousnesses of Evelyn, Natalie, Stuart and Paul. On the surface, McGuane's prose is all moral unflappability, but underneath there's clearly a nostalgia for a less self-indulgent culture, one in which people kept to their (preferably stoic) codes.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1st edition (April 30, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679446745
• ISBN-13: 978-0679446743
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.7 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,897,672 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars More Fun in the New West, June 10, 2002

By 

Arch Stanton (Bondurant, WY USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Cadence of Grass (Hardcover)

McGuane is my favorite novelist, mining territory that hits uncomfortably close to my own ranching, adulterous bones. Setting aside Larry McMurtry's dissipated and puzzling "review" of this book in a recent NY Review of Books, this is one of McGuane's more problematic novels. It is also his most interesting work in 12 years. It does not rival his best (Nobody's Angel) in either grim power or wit. Nevertheless, all the familiar ingredients are there - New West profiteers, doomed marriages, snowstorms on the Absarokas, suicides, revenge, the dead father figure with the endless shadow, and the tiring intra-family struggle for power with a capital "P." Maybe because these ingredients are ever-present we are starting to take McGuane's bleak elegance for granted.

The novel sputters a bit in the thoroughly rendered but self-indulgent hardcore cowboy scenes where the dignified old hand culls sick cows and tends to the calfing and generally displays a wealth of ranching motherwit that the average reader will find indecipherable. Hell, I run cattle and I found it distracting! What more than makes up for it are the razor-sharp exchanges between the characters and the sharply drawn quiet moments that fill the book.

My Uncle Wade loved this book. Not that my Uncle Wade is particularly well-read - and when I was a kid he took me to the Wyoming - Colorado State game and made me wet myself at the Circle K as a distraction to the clerk while he shoplifted beef jerky and tobacco. But my Uncle Wade knows Western Gothic. For my own self, I will just say that if you've ever spent a few fevered hours with your brother's wife at a Super 8, inoculated livestock on a Friday night, or hit someone with a pool cue, you will like this book.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Becoming Unbottled, September 15, 2003

By 

Natalie Harwood (Oxford, OH USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Cadence of Grass (Paperback)

Becoming Unbottled

THE CADENCE OF GRASS moves through the lives of the Whitelaw family who own a bottling company in Montana. After the death of the patriarch, Sunny Jim (who never smiled), the lives of the rest of the family shift as unpredictably as prairie grass in the wind. The uneven beat of the action and the jarring, Kafkaesque characters contribute to the uniqueness of the book. The characters are both weirder than life yet touchingly real, and McGuane is often laugh-out-loud funny. Stuart, the disparaged and underestimated son-in-law is described as "simple enough to hide his own Easter eggs."
For a person who has been on a horse three times in her life and who has stood in a working barn once for five minutes (phew) the descriptions of such are a delight. I loved reading about draft horse stanchions, snaffles, Kelly Brothers grazers, offside billet straps and coppermouth John Israels, even though I have only the haziest idea as to what they are. And reading how Evelyn maneuvers her pony to work the cattle is as good as watching a gold medal figure skater.
McGuane is a first rate writer, a keen observer of humankind, and lover of the Montana country. THE CADENCE OF GRASS: a memorable read.

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars The Cadence of Confusion, July 2, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Cadence of Grass (Hardcover)

Having heard a review of this book on NPR I eagerly looked for it's arrival via post. Oh, the intrigue, conflict and ripe character development described on the radio...I could hardly wait. What I found was a disjointed story line about morally bankrupt individuals, save Evelyn, Bill & Stuart. What was McGuane trying to tell us? I am still trying to figure that one out.