Loop Group [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Larry McMurtry (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 7, 2004

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 oftheir 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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

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.
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From Bookmarks Magazine

Oddball characters aren’t necessarily a death knell to a novel, particularly when they come from McMurtry’s pen. In Loop Group, his sheer wealth of personalities, which encompasses everyone from sons-in-law to a local trooper who walks into the story only for a line or two, continues to entertain. But critics weren’t moved by what they saw as unrealistic dialogue, hackneyed characters, and a tired and predictable plot riddled with inaccuracies that don’t reflect modern Hollywood. In the end, readers crave an answer to life that goes deeper than a trip to Nordstrom’s, and they expect wiser council from the 60-something bunch.

Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; 3rd edition (December 7, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743250796
• ISBN-13: 978-0739449691
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 1.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (40 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #132,728 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

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. His most recent novel, When the Light Goes, is available from Simon & Schuster. He lives in Archer City, Texas.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Where do I go to get my time back?, January 28, 2006

By 

Fredly19 (Coopersville, MI) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Loop Group (Hardcover)

I am really angry with myself for actually finishing this book. It was so bad, I kept thinking, "But this is Larry McMurtry - he'll tie it all up and salvage something out of this mess!"

He doesn't. From the first sentence to the last, this is the most empty, vapid, uninspiring, inane book I've ever read. This is my first review, and I was not happy to find that I had to give it at least 1 star.

I love kooky, unconventional characters. But there has to be some reason for them, and some imagination used in writing them. The "Zany characters" you meet in this book are empty and uninteresting. Every single character in this book is driven solely by their basest instincts. There's even a determined and relentless child molester, who is treated as just another zany character. The main characters can't manage to summon so much as a whiff of disapproval for their pederastic friend, and no sympathy is to be found for his 9-year-old victim.

There is no pacing to the plot. Once the big road trip finally started, I kept thinking that something worth writing about will happen any time now... instead, suddenly the trip is over. Then, after the return... nothing happens.

Character development? Maggie and Connie are the two most self-centered, vacuous, clueless old ladies you'll eve meet - and just as much so at the end of the book as they are at the beginning.

I have reached a whole new level of respect for professional book reviewers... zero. Seeing the glowing reviews of this steaming heap of feces is just pathetic. There. I think I'm done now. I felt I had to redeem my time, if even a little, by doing what I can to help steer as many people as I can away from this book.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars I have an excuse for finishing this book..., February 26, 2006

By 

Denise Brown (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Loop Group (Hardcover)

...I was stuck on a long international flight with a flight magazine that hadn't been changed since my flight out, a movie I'd already seen (twice), and a dead battery on my mp3 player.
Otherwise, after the first chapter I'd have used it to wipe down the basin as a courtesy to the next passenger, then watched it disappear in a rush of blue water.

I don't know who these people who write the cover blurbs are, but I suspect that the publisher knows some very embarrassing secrets about them. And I know for sure that the reviewer who had the nerve to say this is McMurtry's best book since "Terms of Endearment" has never read that book, though he may have seen the pale shadow of a (critically acclaimed -hello-) movie that was made from it.

I'm thinkin' that Larry is dead and whomever found the body put together this book from the gleanings of his old notebooks and wastebasket contents.
Because that's what it seems like - a collection of vague ideas, impotent plot outlines, and blurry sketches of characters either too similar to ones used in previous novels (the chicken farmer aunt,for instance, is archetypical of McMurtry's crazy-like-foxes old codger Texans), or characters not fully fleshed out. The protagonist Maggie herself, never does get colored all the way in, so that you end the book with a "yeah, so?" feeling. You don't know or care any more about her by the last sentence than you did in the first. Too, the text is afflicted with cliche and overused adjectives. "Vast" is a favorite- it describes everything from pots of pasta to areas of desert. And there are many little inconsistences of the type that make me wonder if the editors were illiterate or apathetic. Probably both.

"Loop Group" is a huge disappointment. Please, if you want to read a McMurty book, try another: "All My Friends are Going to Be Strangers," "Lonesome Dove," or "Anything for Billy", or any of the other westerns. Perhaps "Terms of Endearment." Those are books that can change your life just because they make you know things you didn't know before.

Maybe the existence of this book is a perfect example of why creativity can't be motivated by contract obligations.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars That's why they make chocolate and vanilla, March 8, 2005

By 

Cathy In MS (MS USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Loop Group (Hardcover)

To each their own, but you do have to wonder.... all of the good reviews here come across as professional writing. Like professional payback or something. When you get down to regular people telling what they think of the story of depressed Maggie taking her wacky best friend Connie on a fun filled trip across California to Texas, it hits the mark.

If you had taken Larry McMurtry's name off of this book you would not have been able to convince me he actually wrote this drivel. You want to whack Maggie across the head and tell her to act her age or even like a mature 25 year old and get a life. Connie is so disagreeable I couldn't see how someone could be around her for two minutes much less be friends since sixth grade. This is a childish book about childish grown-ups and the only emotion it stirred up in me was the regret I wasted my time reading about two 60 year old wasting theirs.