Customer Reviews

Late Child

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

 

 

A nice sequel to The Desert Rose. In Harmony, the central character, McMurtry reveals someone who is so full of warmth, so open with her fears and misgivings and just so real that I found myself missing her when I finished the book. Of course, that's frequently effect that his main characters have upon me. I did feel, however, that he tried to juggle a few too many characters -- some of them were pretty lame. On the whole though, it is an enjoyable story with creative plot twists

Once again, Larry McMurtry writes with such unabashed compassion for people, warts and all, that I came away uplifted. This book is a perfect example of how McMurtry is the antidote to the Dr. Laura-style judgementalism which permeates our culture. In this book, McMurtry collects flawed folks, eloquently and humorously describes their mistakes and insecurities, then loves them anyway. When I'm in an over-critical mood, reading a McMurtry book is just the attitude adjustment I need.

This book is different from McMurtry's other work. Accept it, and enjoy it for what it is. Some of the characters Harmony meets in her travels are hilarious. The three "ragheads" she meets in New York are adorable. In the past, you just couldn't trust McMurtry. You form a relationship with his characters, and he knocks them off. Not this time. Take it to the beach; you can't put it down. Sections are laugh-out-loud funny.

Some may be disppointed by the differences between this and some older McMurtry books, but I found a couple important things in common:
- the book drew me in, kept my attention, and was entertaining throughout
- there were some great characters (Harmony, her son Eddie, and her father) along with some other unusual but mostly interesting ones
I had really liked The Desert Rose (the first of this 2 book series) but I even enjoyed this book more. At the end I hated to be done reading about these characters.

This is a sequel to DESERT ROSE. Harmony's daughter Pepper has just died of AIDS in NYC, and she (Harmony) and her 5-year-old son Eddie drive cross country from Las Vegas to retrieve her. Typically off-the-wall McMurtrian adventures occur - all their belongings go over a cliff at the Grand Canyon, Eddie gets to meet Pres. Clinton and also get on the Letterman show because of his dog, they befriend people who live in a dumpster. But the characters are just strange and out of touch and hard for us to relate to. Children are not usually portrayed very well by McMurtry, and Eddie is no exception: he acts and talks like an old man, which becomes unbelievable and very annoying after a while. There are contrivances in all of McMurtry's books, but they are too heavy-handed here. Not one of his better novels.

As far as McMurtry sequels go, I'd rank this novel beneath "Texasville," "The Evening Star," and "Streets of Laredo," but ahead of most of the others. It exhibits McMurtry's excellent command of the English language; his voice, particularly in writing dialogue, is a compelling one. The reason I don't rate this book a bit higher is that it is almost totally plotless, and by the end seems sort of pointless. The idea is to show Harmony learning to make her own way in life, and more than that, learning that that is the right decision to make. But to me, that theme only becomes evident late in the novel, and the fact that it is Pepper's death that brings this process about for Harmony weakens her as a character, rather than strengthening her. That may only be my resentment of McMurtry's killing off Pepper, who in "The Desert Rose" was a particularly vivid character. He's sort of had the tendency in the later part of his career to kill of characters I like for no particularly good reason -- Newt Dobbs, anyone? -- so I've got to dock him a couple of points for that. Still, if you are a McMurtry fan, I recommend this novel.

McMurtry's sequel to "The Desert Rose", which introduced the romantic, optimistic Harmony, ex Las Vegas showgirl, and her arid, glittering environment, deals with the death of the child she agonized over in "Desert Rose."

In the first book Harmony coped with her difficult daughter, Pepper, and truggled to come to terms with aging. Now Harmony copes with the sudden news that Pepper, who she hasn't seen since Pepper left for New York at 17, six years before, is dead.

In her late 40s, Harmony has settled into a routine. She has a job in a recycling plant and an adored 5-year-old son named Eddie. Her current boyfriend, the latest in a long line of losers, runs off rather than deal with her grief. "She was not the same cheerful woman he had left only eight hours before."

Grief overwhelms Harmony, but Eddie keeps her tethered. "Eddie was the one person left that she absolutely had to think about."

Meeting her Oklahoma sisters at the airport, Harmony finally finishes the letter from Pepper's roomate. They were lovers as well as roomates, it seems, and Pepper died of AIDS.

A few days later Harmony sets off on a cross-country Odyssey with her sisters and Eddie. Harmony is looking for a new life and hungers for family solidarity back in Oklahoma. But even as their trip begins the two older sisters bicker constantly and the details of their lives begin to emerge in patterns of ragged desperation.

Harmony, bouts of disconnection alternating with her responsibility and love for Eddie, decides to go to New York and meet Laurie, the roomate. She must learn about Pepper's life and try and understand her death.

Eddie, a precocious and delightful child, with just enough brattiness to make him human, collects a family along the way - an abandoned dog, a teenage New Jersey prostitute and her sorry husband, three Indian entrepreneurs and Laurie.

While Laurie and Harmony try to join the pieces of the Pepper they knew, Eddie and his dog become celebrities and are invited to the White House. As Washington is on the way to Oklahoma, they get a school bus and the whole enthusiastic clan goes along. But slowly they begin to drop off - they cannot escape their lives by joining Harmony and Eddie's.

And in Oklahoma Harmony realizes that she did the right thing years ago - when she left her dead-end hometown and her negative, impossible-to-please mother.

McMurtry's portrayal of the grief of a mother for her child is clear-eyed and unsentimental. The zany characters and incidents along the way are humorous, jarring, irritating - visiting on the reader the same displacement life is visiting on Harmony.

While the zany happenings and heart-of-gold eccentrics sometime seem too Disneyish, only one aspect of Harmony's grief doesn't ring true. Although Pepper's death was sudden, for AIDS, only eight weeks, Harmony never asks why she wasn't told earlier, when she might still have seen her daughter alive. She doesn't agonize or even reflect over this, although she lingers over regrets about not visiting her daughter when it seemed they had all the time in the world.

I usually have big fun reading LMcM's novels, but this one fell far short of the mark. I guess I really prefer his novels set in the old West and other action fare.

Most of the characters just wore me out. Sort of wanted to slap them. Pretty silly in spots. And, how can a bunch of adults be bossed around by a five year of kid. The dog jumping off the Statue of Liberty and living was another aspect that was hard to accept. Thinking back, it's hard to come up with a character I could really care about.

On the plus side, it was a fast read and the usual interesting McMurtry dialog was always present.

Mr. McMurtry has given me so much reading pleasure in the past that I will still await his future offerings. No one bats 1.000, so he's entitled to a miss.

"Desert Rose" is one of my favorite books and I really loved the device of having a chapter from Harmony's voice and then a chapter from Pepper. I was happy to find a sequel and couldn't wait to read it. What a disappointment! I got through about a fifth of the book and stopped. Just got tired of Harmony and the cast of characters, as well as their adventures. The kid, Eddie, was particularly annoying.

While the premise of the story, the death of an older child, is certainly sad and the typical McMurtry style of exploiting people's character flaws could lead to a book of emotional anguish and despair, somehow The Late Child, instead, is light, humorous, and oddly uplifting in its overall presentation. A precocious 5 year old boy continually interjects a positive spin and an indomitable optimism that is contagious to the characters in the story as well as the reader. Like many of McMurtry's stories, The Late Child provides a look at a slice of life through the journey of a family and friends. Using hilarious situations, comical personalities, and human complexity, McMurtry demonstrates the poor judgment of people and the consequences of those decisions. But unlike some of his darker books, The Late Child leaves the reader with a sense of hope and improvement.

I was entranced with the beginning, the development, and the travels through New York City. But I was disappointed with the arrival of the people in Oklahoma and the events of the ending. I felt that the focus moved away from the boy and to the problems of the adults. This caused the story to fizzle and to emphasize the minor characters too much and took away some of the power of journey.

Still, aside from the problems of the ending, a very enjoyable read that ranks among his finer books in my estimation.