Customer Reviews

By Sorrow's River (UNABRIDGED)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Many people ask me just what it is I see in the works of Larry McMurtry. After all, if taken at face value, McMurtry's stories sometimes seem to be dominated by earthy, carnal themes and the trashy characters involved in them.

My response to such queries is simple. As with all good literary works, I believe that one needs to look beyond McMurtry's stories and characters to the foundational dynamics that are there.

"By Sorrow's River" invites the thoughtful reader to do just that. Yes there is the willful,[...]Tasmin, along with the rest of the Berrybender entourage, but there is also the innocent, constant, strong and noble Jim Snow, who, despite Tasmin's best efforts, remains his own person, living by his own creed and is never pulled down to her level. McMurtry's juxtaposition of the tawdry and the timeless explores that which is fleeting and that which is firm. Inevitably the firm and constant wins out and, like the meeting of frontier flint and steel, sparks fly. The warmth generated by such meetings is compelling and brings me back to McMurtry's work again and again and again.

"By Sorrow's River", along with "Sin Killer" and "The Wandering Hill", taken at face value by western "purists" (or perhaps "delusionists" might be a better description--and there is certainly nothing wrong with the delusion of the west) are likely very frustrating. But when read like all other great literature--panning through the slime and silt in search of the nuggets that are invariably there--the results can be extremely rewarding and yes, I believe that "By Sorrow's River has gold there in abundance.

Those interested in western stories for the sake of western stories, in the stereotypical west where everything falls into its proper and probable place, should stick with Louis L'Amour. Nothing against L'Amour, mind you. Let's just see, accept and appreciate the differences.

Douglas McAllister

In 1832, Lord Albany Berrybender chartered a steamboat to take him up the Missouri River on a hunting expedition. Albany is one of the richest aristocrats in England, and also a dissolute, selfish, old fool. Along for the ride are his wife Constance, six of their fourteen spoiled children, fifteen of nineteen servants, including a cellist and a botanist, an aging parrot named Prince Talleyrand, the staghound Tintamarre, and a gaggle of American talent hired to ease their way, including Toussaint Charbonneau, the guide for the Lewis and Clark Expedition many years previous.

In BY SORROW'S RIVER, a year and two books later, Lord Berrybender has since lost a leg; his wife, two children, assorted servants, Prince Talleyrand, and Tintamarre are dead. Berrybender's eldest daughter, Tasmin has borne a child to her mountain man husband, Jim "Sin Killer" Snow, and is now pregnant with a second. Another daughter, Bess, takes up with a Ute brave, High Shoulders, and a third daughter, Mary, loses her virginity to the botanist, Piet Van Wely. Berrybender himself marries the cellist, Vicky Kennet, and gets her with child. And finally, after much aimless wandering in the second book of the series, THE WANDERING HILL, the fecund group is off to Santa Fe accompanied by a ragtag group of mountain men and hangers-on.

It's only in this book that the series really takes off for me, mostly due to the fact that its chief protagonist, Tasmin, is becoming engagingly difficult. Increasingly disenchanted with her husband, Tasmin casts lustful looks at Jean Baptiste "Pomp" Charbonneau, the son of Toussaint Charbonneau and Sacagawea born on Lewis and Clark's epic trek to the Pacific. Moreover, Tasmin has a soft spot in her heart for the young Kit Carson. Trouble is, Pomp has barely a prurient thought in his head, and Kit is too busy becoming a famous scout.

What makes BY SORROW'S RIVER particularly interesting are the historical characters that sprinkle the narrative: Carson, the elder and younger Charbonneaus, mountain men Jim Bridger, Hugh Glass, and Tom Fitzpatrick, and traders William and Charles Bent, who established Bent's Fort in present-day Colorado. Having said that, it's because author Larry McMurtry occasionally plays fast and loose with the historical record that I found this fictional narrative unreasonably irritating at times. When reading this book, keep in mind that Carson didn't marry (his third wife) Josefina Jaramillo until 1843, and Pomp Charbonneau died in 1866 at Innskip Station, OR. Does Larry's version represent careless research, or just unconscionable literary license?

With this third book in the series, the Berrybender saga is finally attaining some of those qualities of excellence that characterized, McMurtry's classic, LONESOME DOVE. Despite my reservations regarding the glaring historical inaccuracies, I just may immediately begin the fourth and final installment, FOLLY AND GLORY, without stopping to vary my reading fare. For the moment, I'm hooked.

As the third installment of Larry McMurtry's four-part frontier epic -- "a story of love, passion and death" -- hits stands, many readers are wondering if the Berrybender Narratives are really Old World farces wrapped in a buffalo robe, or merely a confabulation of odd characters acting out an exceedingly long matinee on the vast stage of the West.

To be honest, it's not easy to tell. While some scenes in "By Sorrow's River" -- part three in the tetralogy that started with "Sin Killer" and "The Wandering Hill" -- are occasionally absurd and hilarious, others are grisly and exceedingly violent. So maybe it's unwise to pigeon-hole these three books as simply "farce" or "western epic." Nor is it clear if McMurtry is pushing the limits of modern commercial storytelling, or just churning out a long story filled with an extraordinary collection of characters who don't intimately engage.

Nonetheless, "By Sorrow's River," continues the saga of the assertive and independent Lady Tasmin Berrybender as her peculiar British family continues on a western expedition in the 1830s, the days of trappers, scalpers and traders. In this segment, the action all takes place between a Green River rendezvous in the Rockies and Mexico.

Still, while the character elements of a first-class farce are in place, the story simply doesn't unfold farcically. It's not even a very good western saga, when one considers its author previously told the greatest western epic ever in "Lonesome Dove." The simultaneous beauty and menace of the western landscape is not as integral, for one. How awful for an artist to have set the bar too high too soon!

So if book reviews are essential consumer advocacy, a conclusion is not difficult: If you liked "Sin Killer" and "The Wandering Hill," you'll find "By Sorrow's River" as delightful as a third helping of dessert. If you didn't, you'll likely not find anything to kindle your interest here. And if you haven't read any of them, don't start with the third installment, for heaven's sake.

This book's strength is in its rapidly unfolding action, but its characters are nowhere near as deftly drawn nor as sympathetic -- nor even as entertaining -- as such icons as Gus McCrae, Aurora Greenway or Sonny Crawford. Tasmin Berrybender is the most fully developed, but remains less engaging. An author's characters needn't supercede their forebears, but it's difficult to explain if a consummate character-builder like McMurtry suddenly isn't turning out legendary characters any more.

O. K., I'm a sucker for Larry M. and I enjoy MOST of what he creates. We must remember that ; 1) Everything L.M. does is eventually (and unfairly) compared to his masterwork, "L.D." Well, this Berrybender series is NOT L.D., nor is it supposed to be. Yeah, it takes place in the wild west. Yeah, it's got about a million characters. Yeah, yeah yeah! We like that! But why? Well, that takes us to ; 2) L.M. has a way of creating characters and situations that are absolutely ridiculous, horribly brutal, toe tinglingly entertaining and in the final tally, endearing and compelling to the extreme. The B-bender books follow in this thread. The books are demanding because almost everbody in them would, in "real life", be insufferable (yet we keep wanting to know more about them). Also, in the classic L.M. style we are used to, characters are painstakingly developed over hundreds of pages... just to die in nightmarish ways under savage circumstances! Hey, the B-bender books are, if nothing else, entertaining. If they want to make a mini-series, they better put it on HBO 'cause the sex just won't quit!

Well, I must concur that this the third of the Berrybender Narratives may not be the best of the three, but I still find the farcical characters and the historical characters who are woven throughout all three books memorable and generally fun. I guess you can't top Lonesome Dove in some folks eyes, but I will remember Tasmin and her scout husband for a long time as they are larger than life, just like the whole crew that travels those primitive 1830's Indian "infested" trails of the Berrybender entourage's pilgrimmage.

If western fiction that contains larger than life situations and dilemmas fascinates you, this McMurtry is a suitable final installation for you. If you like to read books in a series, you must read this one to finish off this set.

Again, there are gorey parts and reprehensible actions by fantastical inhumane seeming humans. But there is also solid entertainment. Dispel the winter doldrums and polish off a great writer's latest effort.

The Berrybender Narratives is a story of English people traveling in the "wild west." Sometimes the whole story seems a bit implausible, but somehow it draws the reader along, wanting to know more about what happens to the characters. It is easy reading, good summer reading, not too deep, but an interesting story. I never intended to read all 3 books, but in the end I did. I assume Larry McMurtry is working on the 4th.

By Sorrow's River is the third of four novels in a series detailing the adventures of the rich, aristocratic, and eccentric Berrybender family--terribly out of place in the raw American West--traveling up the Missouri River and then across the endless Great Plains toward Santa Fe. The time is the early 1830s, and the rugged frontier they have come to see is in turn magnificent and brutally hostile. The naive English troup encounters numerous memorable characters, such as the trappers Jim Bridger, Tom Fitzpatrick, and Kit Carson, the painter George Catlin, a fearsome Sioux war chief named Partezon, and an assortment of other quirky adventurers. The story is part unromanticized view of old West and part satire of the English class system, with the pompous Lord Berrybender dragging his family and retainers through one dangerous situation after another while doggedly seeking out more game to hunt and kill. At once epic, comic, and tragic, the Berrybender narrative represents a pivotal decade in which the West was both won and lost and when random violence and natural disasters awaited all those who insisted on pushing west of the Missouri River.

At the core of the novels is the love triangle between beautiful, blunt, brash Tasmin Berrybender, her husband the ferocious frontiersman, Jim Snow, and the fur trapper Pomp Charbonneau. Tasmin is one of McMurtry's most memorable female characters, and her stormy relationship with her wandering husband is part bittersweet romance, part soap opera. I saw some similarities with the love triangle in Gone With the Wind: Tasmin is reminiscent of the feisty Scarlet O'Hara, Jim Snow shares Rhett Butler's sexual appeal and hint of danger, and Pomp-like the cerebral Ashley Wilkes-is a man of cool temperament that our heroine has difficulty rousing to passion.

McMurtry knows how to spin a great yarn, although I felt the characters in this series were more shalowly drawn than in some of his other novels. Nevertheless, I couldn't stop reading because I wanted to know what became of them. (And in typical McMurtry style, many of their fates are bizarre.) Many secondary characters are recognizable historical figures, but it's sometimes frustrating to not know where fact leaves off and fiction begins. I'm not sure why McMurtry didn't simply create some fictional names, rather than have real-world people meet historically inaccurate fates. For example, it's interesting to note that the real Scotsman, William Drummond Stewart, actually returned home (with a small herd of buffalo) in the late 1830s to be laird of his manor. He died in 1871, leaving the family estates to an illegitimate son whose mother was a Dallas saloon keeper. As for Pomp Charbonneau, who for a time is the focus of Tasmin's determined love, in real life he ended his days searching for gold in California, dying at age 61 en route to Montana.

Now that I,ve just completed the 3rd book in the series,'By Sorrow's River',I am more convinced than ever that one benefits by getting these books together and reading them all,one right after another.Tonight is Christmas Eve and a little Elf told me that 'Folly and Glory' is awaiting under the Christmas Tree.
'By Sorrow's River' was a fascinating continuation of the spellbinding saga of the Berrybender expedition in the early West.
Every page produced another glimpse of this most unusual adventure.McMurtry continues to come up with fantastic lines ,observations and soul-searching thoughts.I guess this is what makes him one of the great writers around today.
A few of my favourites:
"Life was never so good or so bad as one thought-"

"These damnable American freedoms-this democracy!-were clearly
inimicable to sound British order.Democracy could ruin a good
servant faster than gin."

"What a pity there are no stocks anymore."

"There's no calm like the calm of a battlefield,once the
killing's over."

"We'll all leave husks someday,somewhere.Let's just bury them
and go along."

"I don't even feel that I'm in a place anymore.Places have boundaries or borders,and this goddamn place has neither."

"I like to think of Eternity as having a constant temperature,
though.In the great peace of infinity there should be neither
hot nor cold-one can't say that of Neuvo Mexico."

A great read;can't wait to read the finale!

4. By Sorrows River by Larry McMurtry
Third book in the Berrybinder series, this carries the menagerie to Santa Fe, MN. The book is an easy and interesting read because McMurtry creates such vivid characters and incidents. Unfortunately, he does not have a compelling driving force for the narrative; the characters carry it along in picaresque style. It is rather like being on a raft with them as they flow aimlessly down the river of life. Still, can't wait for the next in the series. As long as Larry churns them out, I'll read. Still looking for the heart of Lonesome Dove.

The settling of the United States by European interests has within the past 100 years swung radically between glorification and vilification in the telling. Larry McMurty's Berrybender Narratives, now in its third volume with the publication of BY SORROW'S RIVER, takes a middle, and more realistic, course. One comes away from the pages of each volume wondering how the genetic strain of the pioneers endured. Mutilation, and likely death, came suddenly and without warning from multiple sources, whether by animal, nature or fellow human beings.

BY SORROW'S RIVER follows the narrative thread of its two predecessors, SIN KILLER and THE WANDERING HILL, in that it follows what is left of the Berrybender family on their ill-fated trek through the unsettled Western frontier. Lord Berrybender, the besotted, irredeemable family patriarch, is the catalyst for this journey. He is determined to hunt more and more buffalo, even as his family members and his bodily appendages are whittled away by accident and hostile design. It is Tasmin Berrybender, the Lord's irrepressible daughter, who remains the focus of the narrative. Married to Jim Snow, the Sin Killer in the first novel, and yet almost desperately in love with the (almost) non-responsive Pomp Charbonneau, Tasmin is a fish out of water in the American West but seems to be the only crew member capable of dealing with her surroundings.

BY SORROW'S RIVER chronicles the Berrybender trek across the Great Plains toward Santa Fe. It is by far the most interesting and fastest-moving of the Berrybender volumes to date. This is not to slight its predecessors; it is simply an acknowledgment that McMurtry, having ensconced the nucleus of his characters in place, can now introduce new characters and situations at will. And what a motley, entertaining group he introduces! There are a pair of journalists --- one British, one French --- who are set on crossing the Plains via a hot air balloon. Their appearance is at once uproarious and poignant, for Le Partezon, a legendary and feared Sioux war chief, sees the end of his people foretold in the presence of this rudimentary but still revolutionary air travel. There is The Ear Taker, an Indian whose specialty is creeping up on his victims while they sleep and slicing a trophy ear off with a razor-sharp knife. He cannot be caught because he has never been seen. There are hardships to be endured, and death is an ever-present companion.

McMurtry keeps his narrative lively and unpredictable. One never knows when a dialogue between characters will be interrupted by sudden and irrevocable violence --- which, by the way, is a mainstay of the book. McMurtry does not shrink from graphic descriptions; if you've been tempted to switch to a vegan diet, but you've never had the impetus to make the jump, some of the descriptions of cattle slaughtering in this book may be enough to help you break your meat-eating habits. BY SORROW'S RIVER is not for the faint of heart or, for that matter, the weak of gag reflex.

You can heighten your enjoyment of BY SORROW'S RIVER by reading SIN KILLER and THE WANDERING HILL first, if only to gain a feel and familiarity for each of the characters and their situations. Don't get too attached to anyone, however. McMurtry won't hesitate to kill off a sympathetic character, though he does not do so gratuitously. Practically every word of BY SORROW'S RIVER serves to advance the plot along in some way. The only downside to this fine saga is that a year will be too long to wait for the final volume.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub