Rating: 
Summary: "People won't always die when they're supposed to."
Review:
This second book in the Berrybender Narratives is even wackier and woolier than the first book.I read Sin Killer over a year ago,see my review dated November 30,2003.
I purposedly decided to wait till I had the other three books before continuing.I am glad I made this decision because there are so many characters and stories involved ,that if too much time passes the story will get too foggy,at least for me.I strongly recommend that one reads them in order and read them as close together as you can.
Also,the multitude of characters makes it necessary to keep a "scorebook".Larry helps by giving a list of characters in the front of each book.I tagged it and added notes as I read the book.
All these characters are going to be great when the time comes,and it will,to turn the books into a movie or TV series.I am sure it will be every bit as good as Lonesome Dove.
As you read this book,never mind what's coming in the next chapter,of which there are 60,this book moves so fast,you never know what to expect in the next paragraph.It's a very fast paced read,with lots of great lines and statements.However,every so often Larry throws in some word to keep us on our toes.For instance:
lachryymose
pudendum
bastinadoed
Overall,McMurtry at his best!
Rating: 
Summary: Aimless wandering makes for indifferent reading
Review: Aimless wandering seems to be the theme of THE WANDERING HILL, and it suffers for it.First off, the "Wandering Hill" is a small, conical mound, topped by a single tree, inhabited by large-headed devils who, according to plains-Indian legend, loose deadly grass-bladed arrows at passersby. The devils have the ability to move the hill from place to place via the wind, and its appearance is Heap Bad Medicine. Yeah, ok, but it's not given such significant play that it's worth getting excited about. Trust me. This novel is the second in the Berrybender series, the first being SIN KILLER. Berrybender is Lord Albany Berrybender, an Englishmen who's come to the Great Plains of the 1830s to hunt accompanied by his wife Constance, six of their fourteen brats, the talking parrot Prince Talleyrand, and a rabble of servants, all traveling up the Yellowstone River by steamboat. By THE WANDERING HILL, Constance, one of the offspring, and several employees are dead or missing. The eldest of Berrybender's children along for the ride, daughter Tasmin, has married the Sin Killer, aka Jim Snow, a young, closed-mouthed, and excessively God-fearing trapper whose attitude towards his new wife, outside of their lovemaking, is boorish at best. The biggest problem with the Berrybender series to date, and THE WANDERING HILL in particular, is that there's no strong unifying thread to the storyline. In McMurtry's magnificent LONESOME DOVE, there were also many subplots to be sure, but all eventually tied into Gus McCrae's and Woodrow Call's cattle drive from South Texas to Montana. In the Berrybender saga, we have only the intent of Lord Albany to continue on with his hunting expedition, which is proving to be a weak nail on which to hang the continuing story. In THE WANDERING HILL, they don't get far at all. Having left the confines of the riverboat, the Berrybender party spends over half the book at an Indian trading post, where Tasmin and Venetia Kennet, the group's cellist, have babies. Then, after some aimless wandering about, they subsequently all set off to an annual trapper rendezvous in the Rocky Mountain foothills. THE WANDERING HILL even lacks a decent villain. In LONESOME DOVE, it was Blue Duck, a murderous half-breed. In SIN KILLER, it was Draga, a psychopathic, old, Aleut-Russian squaw who'd made it down to the Lower Forty-Eight. In this book, there's only relatively passing reference to The Partezon, a vicious Sioux chief on the rampage with a war party. Otherwise, the biggest danger is posed by the sudden appearance of several thousand stampeding buffalo. Yawn. Since the overall direction of storyline is unremarkable, the reader must find limited enjoyment in the depiction of the various characters. And pickings are slim when it comes to engaging personae. Tasmin, the Lord's strong-willed, resilient daughter, is the most appealing of all. Next is perhaps Kit Carson, who, at this stage of his legendary career, is a tongue-tied, shy youth prone to complaining about minor hardships. Then there's the precocious, four-year old Kate Berrybender, who manages to win the heart of Jim Snow, who is, in my opinion, too much of a jerk to be a heroic figure. Lord Berrybender himself is so disagreeable a person that I wish he'd just die off or get killed. No such luck. One newly introduced character whom I hope gets a larger role in the next book, BY SORROW'S RIVER, is the Sin Killer's inscrutable and too young Ute wife, Little Onion. Despite my ambivalent feelings towards this second volume in the series, I'm certain that I'll continue reading to the end because of the plucky Tasmin. If a film is ever made of the Berrybender narratives, then I'd recommend Cate Blanchett for the role. This series isn't Larry McMurtry at his best, but it's adequate diversion for the beach or the morning train commute.
Rating:
Summary: Aimless wandering makes for indifferent reading
Review: Aimless wandering seems to be the theme of THE WANDERING HILL, and it suffers for it. First off, the "Wandering Hill" is a small, conical mound, topped by a single tree, inhabited by large-headed devils who, according to plains-Indian legend, loose deadly grass-bladed arrows at passersby. The devils have the ability to move the hill from place to place via the wind, and its appearance is Heap Bad Medicine. Yeah, ok, but it's not given such significant play that it's worth getting excited about. Trust me. This novel is the second in the Berrybender series, the first being SIN KILLER. Berrybender is Lord Albany Berrybender, an Englishmen who's come to the Great Plains of the 1830s to hunt accompanied by his wife Constance, six of their fourteen brats, the talking parrot Prince Talleyrand, and a rabble of servants, all traveling up the Yellowstone River by steamboat. By THE WANDERING HILL, Constance, one of the offspring, and several employees are dead or missing. The eldest of Berrybender's children along for the ride, daughter Tasmin, has married the Sin Killer, aka Jim Snow, a young, closed-mouthed, and excessively God-fearing trapper whose attitude towards his new wife, outside of their lovemaking, is boorish at best. The biggest problem with the Berrybender series to date, and THE WANDERING HILL in particular, is that there's no strong unifying thread to the storyline. In McMurtry's magnificent LONESOME DOVE, there were also many subplots to be sure, but all eventually tied into Gus McCrae's and Woodrow Call's cattle drive from South Texas to Montana. In the Berrybender saga, we have only the intent of Lord Albany to continue on with his hunting expedition, which is proving to be a weak nail on which to hang the continuing story. In THE WANDERING HILL, they don't get far at all. Having left the confines of the riverboat, the Berrybender party spends over half the book at an Indian trading post, where Tasmin and Venetia Kennet, the group's cellist, have babies. Then, after some aimless wandering about, they subsequently all set off to an annual trapper rendezvous in the Rocky Mountain foothills. THE WANDERING HILL even lacks a decent villain. In LONESOME DOVE, it was Blue Duck, a murderous half-breed. In SIN KILLER, it was Draga, a psychopathic, old, Aleut-Russian squaw who'd made it down to the Lower Forty-Eight. In this book, there's only relatively passing reference to The Partezon, a vicious Sioux chief on the rampage with a war party. Otherwise, the biggest danger is posed by the sudden appearance of several thousand stampeding buffalo. Yawn. Since the overall direction of storyline is unremarkable, the reader must find limited enjoyment in the depiction of the various characters. And pickings are slim when it comes to engaging personae. Tasmin, the Lord's strong-willed, resilient daughter, is the most appealing of all. Next is perhaps Kit Carson, who, at this stage of his legendary career, is a tongue-tied, shy youth prone to complaining about minor hardships. Then there's the precocious, four-year old Kate Berrybender, who manages to win the heart of Jim Snow, who is, in my opinion, too much of a jerk to be a heroic figure. Lord Berrybender himself is so disagreeable a person that I wish he'd just die off or get killed. No such luck. One newly introduced character whom I hope gets a larger role in the next book, BY SORROW'S RIVER, is the Sin Killer's inscrutable and too young Ute wife, Little Onion. Despite my ambivalent feelings towards this second volume in the series, I'm certain that I'll continue reading to the end because of the plucky Tasmin. If a film is ever made of the Berrybender narratives, then I'd recommend Cate Blanchett for the role. This series isn't Larry McMurtry at his best, but it's adequate diversion for the beach or the morning train commute.
Rating: 
Summary: Entertaining book
Review: As entertaining as Sin Killer, I couln't put it down.
Rating:
Summary: Less than "Lonesome"
Review: 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 he's 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. It's 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' doesn't close at the edge of a cliff, rather on less dramatic footing. If McMurtry's '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.
Rating:
Summary: Berrybender Family = Wild West!
Review: I am really trying to like this trilogy--thus this was the reason I forged headlong into the second book of the Berrybender family. I was not disappointed. The Berrybender family is what made the American West WILD. This erstwhile second tome continues the wandering of the Berrybender family finding them at a trading post waiting for spring to arrive so they can again go on their trip across through the old American West (their Wild West). As usual, they are arguing with each other and with others - the others being an assorted of local fur trappers and renegades. Tasmin is waiting for her child to be born while her father, having most of his appendages shot off (except the important one) thereby becoming mad as a hatter. Along with this, Mary and Bobbety get randy in their own right continuing the insatisable sexual appetities of the Berrybender family into the next generation. This book is not at all like Lonesome Dove, but more like a farcical rendition of Lonesome Dove. Read it, and enjoy the Wild West through the eyes of the Berrybender family.
Rating:
Summary: The Best McMurtry In a While
Review: I eagerly snap up every McMurtry Western that comes out, only to be disappointed that it's not Lonesome Dove... for my money, one of the top three books of my life. I read all of the LD sequels; each diminished from the original. It was exciting, then, to read The Sin Killer, because it seemed as though McMurtry had cleared the decks, was freshly inspired and was attacking the subject of the West from a whole new vantage point. Now, with The Wandering Hill, I think he's written his best books in many years. I think he has done better than this with his dialogue and his characterizations (always his strongest suit) and the indistinguishable sprawling cast seems mainly to provide the writer with cannon fodder-people to kill to spare the main characters. (Some of the cast members remind me of red-shirted Star Trek security guys who won't survive the adventure.) Having said that, a satisfying package is here. I don't like waiting another two years for two more books, but I'll snap them up as soon as they're released. Good job to Larry McMurtry.
Rating:
Summary: worth reading
Review: I was disappointed in "Sin Killer," the first volume of the Berrybender Narratives. This volume, the second, is an improvement. The characters do not put too terrible a strain on believability, and the melodrama is not overdone. I am hopeful that the third volume will continue to improve, and that the fourth will make the series a solidly worthwhile one.
Rating:
Summary: A Western odyssey
Review: In THE WANDERING HILL,Volume Two of the four volumes of the Berrybender narratives, McMurtry begins to polish and sculpt his delicious cavalcade of characters out of the American West. (Don't start here though. Begin by reading THE SIN KILLER and continue through the 4 books in order. The story is vast as the western sky, an odyssey, and it requires the length and breadth of all four books to get "home".) The cast includes an oscillating number of the unpredictable, aristocratic Berrybender family; Jim Snow (the Sin Killer); and a thoroughly entertaining parade of European explorers, mountain men and Indians. This series is "compare and contrast" gone wild: Old World/New World, nature/civilization, human/animal, male/female, adult/child, wild/domesticated, free/enslaved, alive/dead, young/old, European/American, white/Indian, crazy/sane, servant/master, safety/danger, historical fact/myth, tragedy/comedy and so on. McMurtry has neatly sandwiched genuine historical characters (who develop quite complex fictional personalities) and events of the 1830's into this western salad. I recommend THE WANDERING HILL for its entertainment value as well as its delineation of personalities that survive and thrive (or not) in the New World. While Cormac McCarty's ALL THE PRETTY HORSES illustrates the solitary visual beauty of man and nature in the American West, McMurtry's gift in The Berrybender Narratives is the clash and complexity of colliding souls and civilizations. Enjoy!
Rating:
Summary: The Berrybenders Blurb
Review: It's no Lonesome Dove,but I need a McMurtry fix!I love all his characters,especially Pomp,and Little Onion.Read it and get a taste of LD.Can't wait for the next book!
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