21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Part II of the Berrybender's Western Travels, August 6, 2003
This book picks up right where "Sin Killer" left off. Literally. I read these books consecutively and they could easily had been packaged as one six hundred pager.
This is not "Lonesome Dove" in several ways. Where any of the four Lonesome Dove books could be read as a stand-alone, I don't think The "Wandering Hill" would make any sense to someone who had not first read Sin Killer. McMurtry is also writing this series as a sort of Black Comedy. The characters are less well developed, the plot just conveniently happens and there is scant background or development. Just action and happenings.
As for the Black Comedy, think of an R-rated version of the old TV show "The Adams Family." Quirky characters abound, led by a loony father, unreal supporting characters and a strong female who by far possesses the most intense drive and assertiveness of any of the lot.
In this book, the Berrybenders and hangers-on -- reduced by Indian attacks, self-inflicted wounds, attempted familycide and the elements -- winter on the Yellowstone River before heading South toward Santa Fe.
Various Indians come into play and the fearsome "The Partezon" looms on the edge of the story, ready to strike havoc like Blue Duck or Mox Mox in McMurtry's other stories. Historical figures are also woven into the plot from Lewes and Clark's French guide Charbonneau to Kit Carson and other mountain men. The central part of the story remains the wily Tasmine, oldest of the Berrybender children and Jim Snow, aka "The Sin Killer" an American mountain man who alternates between remaining the wild loner of the range and Mr. Tasmine Berrybender now that he has fathered a child by his amazing English bride - a woman he can't begin to fathom and who astounds him at every turn.
This series remains quite a ride. The action -- much of involving fornication or rutting (as the characters put it) -- comes quickly and certainly page after page. Although thin with somewhat weakly drawn characters, McMurtry can still tell a good story.
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
McMurtry's Berrybender novels becoming epic classics, May 27, 2003
Larry McMurtry's The Wandering Hill is the second installment of his proposed tetralogy following a wealthy English family and their trek to the west in the 1830's. Whereas the first novel, Sin Killer, started slow and revealed a zany, action-packed tone, Hill charges straight out of the gates but mellows eventually to attach the reader closer to the glorious characters. This tetralogy is essentially one giant novel that will equal Lonesome Dove in characters and story. The writing combines subtle humor, fast-paced action, and startling violence that brings the reader directly into the savage world. If you have read Sin Killer, pick up The Wandering Hill immediately. If you haven't read Sin Killer, pick up both books and lose yourself in the exciting yet tragic world McMurtry has created.
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16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Less than "Lonesome", June 1, 2003
By his own reckoning, Larry McMurtry is past his literary prime. Nearly 12 years after a heart bypass surgery plunged him into an abyss of depression, and 17 years beyond his Pulitzer Prize-winning magnum opus, Lonesome Dove, McMurtry has not evaded that single harshest criticism of his fiction: His own. He knows hes not in top form and he admits it.
In his autobiographical Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen, he revealed two things, one intentional, one not: He considers himself only a shadow of what he once was, the greatest western novelist of his generation. The second, unintentional revelation? His non-fiction of the past decade has far surpassed his fiction.
Comes now The Wandering Hill, sequel to Sin Killer and second in a four-part series about a the eccentric and dysfunctional Berrybender family and its motley coterie -- British nobles in search of adventure, big-game hunting and sex -- as they explore the virgin West of the 1830s.
For historical-fiction readers, and especially for fans of the Lewis and Clark era, McMurtry populates this book with supporting characters straight out of Western legend: real-life mountain men Kit Carson, Jim Bridger, Tom Fitzpatrick and Hugh Glass, Scottish adventurer William Drummond Stewart, frontier artists George Catlin and Karl Bodmer, trader William Ashley, and Pomp Charbonneau, the son of Sacagawea.
Partly because The Wandering Hill ends, in effect, only halfway through the saga, its denouement is underwhelming. The Berrybender adventures are plucked from various unrelated historical accounts. Considered separately, they illustrate the moments of terror the frontier likely held, but the trip often seems as aimless as the Berrybenders journey through unexplored territory.
Its difficult to know whether the Berrybenders are ultimately headed to a geographical Eden or some abstract encounter with destiny, or both. One might look at this saga as a kind of western serial, but The Wandering Hill doesnt close at the edge of a cliff, rather on less dramatic footing.
If McMurtrys tetralogy follows its pre-ordained literary path -- a tetralogy is four related literary works, traditionally three tragedies followed by a comedy -- the destination might be more interesting than the journey. Sin Killer and The Wandering Hill, with their promise of more to come, feel a lot like historical fluff floating on a wayward breeze.
Like Larry McMurtry himself, the Berrybender narratives pale by comparison to earlier greatness. Tasmin Berrybender is no Gus McCrae and Jim Snow is no Sam the Lion.
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