Rating: 
Summary: Life in small Texas town.
Review: This book along with the other two in the trilogy will be studied for their Texas landscape and natural history content at the new Larry McMurty Book Club in Blanco, Texas. This is in celebration of Mr. McMurtrys having been chosen honored author of the year by TEXAS WRITERS PROJECT. Texas Writers Month is May, 1999. contact: texanbooks.com or me for your collector's poster of Larrry McMurtry available end of March.
Rating: 
Summary: Did McMurtry have a sex obsession?
Review: This book by Larry McMurtry is well written but loaded with gratuitous sex, including teenage boys screwing a "blind heifer" for fun on a Saturday night. The main female character, Jacy, has intercourse with three men, the last act occurring on a pool table. The main male character, Sonny, has an affair with the wife of his football coach, flings with a couple prostitutes and a quickie with Jacy's mother. I'm not sure what the ending is all about. I guess it's a "great" book that begs analysis. One wonders if McMurtry isn't the one who needed analysis.
Rating: 
Summary: The Book Portrays Trash
Review: This book disgusted me. When people choose to glorify meaningless sex and acts of bestiality, we as a society must reexamine our morals as a whole. Moral degradation has reached it's pinnacle in popular life. However, sex as a topic must be discussed; when discussed though it needs to be addressed with a degree of formality. This book has been called a classic, I question on what ground. It is apparent that people become confused when the definition classic is thrown around. A classic is a book that changes society in which we live, this book does not do that. It is apparent that McMutry breaks all of the rules of quality novel writing: he rambles on aimlessly, his plot vanishes in certain places and he is bluntly vulgar. Quality authors such as Dickens or Hugo used sex in a masterful way. No graphic nature, no directness: they alluded to it. They are called classics because it is timeless literature that appeals to all generations. By reading works such as The Last Picture Show a reader is not left filled with hope but left in a complete pit of sadness.
Rating:
Summary: Great characters!
Review: This book does an incredible job of capturing the hopeless feeling that living a small town can bring on.
Rating:
Summary: A classic tale of a small town losing it's innocence.
Review: This book should be read only in winter. It is not uplifting
, but rather an interesting story of two friends that as they
grow older as teens grow further apart. The book is a study in
the futility of life and it's ups and downs. Larry McMurtry
is at his best at character development in this book and the
book is well enough written to warent several readings.
Rating: 
Summary: Unrealized potential.
Review: This book started off well, but, unfortunately, it ended up leaving me cold. As set of intermingled character studies, this was a good piece of work. As a complete novel, I found it lacking. The whole was less than the sum of its parts.The characters were as flat and unchanging as the Texas landscape that surrounded them. Yes, some of them changed locations and entered different situations, but the attitudes of the individual players left me wondering, "What was the point of this story being told?" However, the conflict shifted around almost as often as the the ominscient, omnipresent narrator switched between character viewpoints. While the characters introduced in this book were interesting for a while, McMurtry never really seemed to take off with any point he was trying to make aside from "Everyone in Thalia is miserable." Vast swaths of the middle of the book appeared to be pulled from Hustler's "Barely Legal" magazine, though without the anatomical detail. Unfortunately, this section didn't seem to have any point for the purpose of either plot or character development. None of the major characters involved were permanently changed by any of it. At best, it was titillating filler. The book was simply depressing without being tragic. However, the book would be very good for anybody under the perception that Texans are a bunch of rednecks that live for nothing other than drinking, fighting, tent revivals and, of course, screwing any and all prostitutes and farm animals they can either afford or chase down. This book is more than happy to accept those stereotypes as correct.
Rating:
Summary: just read it
Review: This is the first book I ever read that I could not put down. I have read it about five times and just reviewing it makes me want to read it again. McMurtry is one of my favorite authors and at this point in my life Lonesome dove is in my top five favorite books of all time and this book is in my top ten.texasville would have to be in my top twenty as well. I want to read duane is depressed and see if it lives up to the first two books. well bye read on my friends.
Rating:
Summary: Great book about teenage disaffection
Review: Undoubtably, one of the best books I've read this year. A story about two dispossed high school seniors in a small Texas town during the 1950's. Sonny and Duane, the main characters find entering the adult world is a major transistion. The town itself is also changing. The leading business man, Sam the Lion, who is friends with all the players in the story, dies in the story, affecting changes throughout. This book is highly prurient and not for the timid. The story follows the boys as they visit brothels, watch their friends take part in bestiality, and Sonny is involved with a woman who is in a sad and loveless marriage. Despite the above topics, the characters appear very real and I felt very much attached to them. There were many sad moments in the book where the character's ultimate fate was shown.
Rating: 
Summary: 1950s Texas setting; universal small-town themes abound
Review: Wow. Like the movie that was based on it, this book is one of those almost-forgotten gems of modern art. Other folks here have outlined the plot--such as it is--and the characters. I am just here to add my own endorsing reflections, for what they're worth.
Larry McMurtry really nailed it on the head where small-town America is concerned. The ties that bind, the price you pay for being different in ANY way, and how, in Lois' words, "anything gets old if you do it often enough." (I grew up in a town that had a "show" that didn't get movies until a year or two after they'd played in the big cities. And I had a teacher or two as lazy as Coach Popper (none as chauvinistic, however). People who went to "off" to college were the exeption rather than the rule--much as it was in Thalia. We had boys and girls like Duane, Sonny, and Jacy, too--though I don't remember hearing of any were close to their livestock. . .if you know what I mean:)) At least two of the characters here had married young--because that's what you did and what else was there to do, really--and settled into lives of boredom and routine. While I can't say I thought all the actions of the young and not-so-young characters here were necessarily smart or well-thought-out, there was never a moment that I didn't understand what they were thinking.
Much has been written about Sonny, Duane, Sam the Lion, and the other menfolk here, but I also thought McMurtry did an especially good job of developing all four of the main female characters here--especially Lois, and secondly Jacy--both of whom had spirit and passion much too large for the time and place of their lives. I liked these women in spite of myself! I will now have to read Texasville to find out what happens to them and everyone else.
I recommend this to anyone who enjoys character studies or stories about small-town living (though you might enjoy this more if you left the small town like I did).
Very well-written. This did whet my appetite for more of Larry's work!
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