Loop Group

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing, disingenuous.
Review: "Loop Group" is not simply a sub-par book in the McMurtry collection. It is an awful book. Beginning to end. It is as if he phoned it in, literally, from a Hollywood street corner.

Ill-conceived plot, paper-thin characters, sloppy if not disinterested writing.

A literary shot to the head for both readers and McMurtry's reputation.







Rating:
Summary: Boring as Waiting for Water to Boil
Review: At least the water eventually boils.

I too count Lonesome Dove, Last Picture Show, and Terms of Endearment as amongst my favorite books. I have tried and tried to find that spark in McMurtry's later books. However I can't help but believe that McMurtry wakes up each morning with no idea what his characters will do next, so he just sits down and starts typing.

This newest novel features Maggie Clary, who can only be described as a bitch in search of a plot. Her friend Connie is a whiner and complainer. Both of them are over-the-hill sluts who have no qualms about sleeping with other women's husbands. They count amongst their friends an aging child molester. Whoever wrote on the back of the dust jacket that this road trip novel is 'reminiscent of Thelma and Louise' should be sued, fired, or tarred and feathered. And someone needs to explain to McMurtry that outspoken characters who have fallen upon misfortune (or simply lack of fortune) are not necessarily endearing or interesting.

Rating:
Summary: I want my time back!
Review: First off, I have never been inspired to write a review, good or bad, of any book, and books are my passion, my addiction.
I really want the time I wasted on this book back! I tried to give no stars in my rating, but the system wouldn't let me.

Lonesome Dove and Last Picture Show are two of my favorite books of all time; in fact I've given probably 20 copies of Lonesome Dove through the years and reread it periodically and always hate to come to the end. I wish Gus lived next door and we could have coffee in the mornings.
I'd been disappointed with McMurtry's later work when I read a good review of Loop Group. Excited, I bought it that day.
Ugh! Shallow, unbelievable characters (in 60 years neither Maggie nor Connie had ever been out of LA? Come on.) Everyone was a cartoon. Everything was random, everything was about sex. I like sex as much as the next person, but even I thought this was obsessive and gratuitous. Characters were introduced and never seen again. There was no reason for the ones who did reappear. Nothing made any sense. No continuity. It almost seemed to be an Elizabeth Wurtzel novel written in her ritalin days.
The only thing that did resonate was the relationship between Maggie and her daughters, but even that was eclipsed by the whole stupid mass son-in-law defection. As other events, cartoonish.
I'm so glad I didn't recommend it to my book group before reading it.
Entirely wasted time, which I am now realizing is more important than money.


Rating:
Summary: Laugh While McMurtry Does a Different Hollywood
Review: For those who worry about their imminent retirement and bank account in a bottom-line world, Larry McMurtry offers 60-year-old Maggie Clary and best friend Connie as anecdotes to being buried before actually dying. The two battle life's considerable requirements with a kind of swinging swagger, developed in a lifetime of residency in Hollywood, where lovers, alcohol and zany solutions are keystones to getting through the day. Maggie's hysterectomy leaves her psyche with overwhelming emptiness, despite an army of eccentrics who fill her days: her three children, who take after mom in varying degrees; their husbands and grandchildren; her movie loop group, which gives McMurtry free reign in unique character creation; former lovers; her shrink; and Connie, who can match Maggie drink for drink, joint for joint. McMurtry sends the two on a trip to Texas in Maggie's Loop Group van where their Hollywood parochialism causes riotous dysfunction, but this is not a book with a destination. Nor is it Thelma and Louise. You'll laugh out loud for sure, but McMurtry's description of Maggie's journey through depression will be the lasting memory. She discovers she's been doing okay in overcoming her emptiness, going from everyone's touchstone to allowing herself to being taken care of, back to herding the Loop Group. Membership in the AARP is unlikely anytime soon.

Rating:
Summary: Loop Group
Review: I could only read a few pages of this book. Is this the same author who wrote the magnificent Lonesome Dove? (One of my favorite books of all time.) I have a real affection for Larry McMurtry because of this one book---hard to believe the same author came up with Loop Group.

Rating:
Summary: Very disappointing
Review: I received a copy of this novel as a Christmas present from my son. He recently saw me reading and enjoying Mr. McMurtry's magnificent western, "Lonesome Dove", and thought I would enjoy his latest book as well. While I knew from the outset that this novel was not in the same league as some of his earlier bestsellers, I was still completely unprepared to dislike the book as much as I did. The author is obviously an accomplished and talented writer but unfortunately his gifts are not on display here.

Maggie Clary is a sixty year old widow who has recently undergone a hysterectomy and as a result is now experiencing something of a midlife crisis. After having broken up with her twenty-four year old lover, she is feeling a bit depressed and out of sorts and is tired of cultivating what she feels are dependent relationships. Her three grown and married daughters along with their assorted troubles are a constant fixture in her life, as are the members of her actors voice-over business, Loop Group. Maggie feels the need to get away from it all and decides to head out to Texas with her close friend and employee, Connie, to visit an elderly aunt whom she has not seen in years. Along the way they have a few adventures and run into some interesting characters but on the whole the trip is completely unfulfilling. The novel comes to a close with a hurried and oversimplified ending and frankly, I was just very relieved when I discovered that I had overestimated the length of the novel by ten pages.

I sincerely regret having to give an author of Mr. McMurtry's caliber a two star rating but this book just isn't good. The dialogue is at times absolutely absurd. Both Maggie and Connie are portrayed more as teenagers or young women in their twenties rather than mature women of sixty. They act immaturely, they talk immaturely and I didn't particularly like them or any of their supporting characters. Mr. McMurtry may have been attempting to cast these characters in a humorous light but in my opinion he failed dismally. I don't recommend this book at all.




Rating:
Summary: A hoot
Review: Larry McMurtry -- God bless him -- has given us a wealth of great books, near-great books and, yes, a few duds. Thankfully, this joyride falls into the near-great category, and most every page is pure pleasure. Yet I think some people will dislike it because of what it isn't more than what it is. This is not another western or one of his Archer City-based autobiographical tales. It's a woman's story and falls into the realm of "Moving On," "Terms of Endearment" and the underrated "The Desert Child." The dust jacket offers too much of a plot synopsis to repeat here, but plot isn't what makes McMurtry worth reading. The characters are all important, and he creates another memorable gallery of folks who will stay with us long after the final page.


Rating:
Summary: This light read commands one's attention until the end
Review: Long well-known for his magnetic historical stories, Larry McMurtry shows in LOOP GROUP a flair for the modern. His female lead is Maggie Clary, a sixty-year-old southern California woman who is in a deeply depressed mental state. Nothing her three grown daughters can say or do will bring her out of it. She relies on the nineteen-year-long advisement of her Sicilian shrink, Dr. Tom, with whom she schedules a weekly appointment. She has had a crush on him for years but never crosses the patient-doctor relationship line, however much she hungers for a sexual one with him.

Maggie's Loop Group is her stability. The group is a crazy mixture of personalities she gathers daily in her van and drives to the Hollywood studio where they will perform for that day. Maggie's job is to "loop" for the movie industry. Her company, Prime Loops, specializes primarily in Westerns, action movies and comedies. Maggie loves her Hollywood home and everything about the bungalow where she has lived most of her life. The current dilemma with her psyche stems from a recent hysterectomy. Maggie is depressed, disconnected and down on her life.

Connie, her best friend from childhood, works in the loop group and remains Maggie's steadfast ally, giving advice, taking comfort and occasionally moving in with Maggie. Both women are sexual amazons for their ages, having craved multiple liaisons through the years of their friendship. Maggie's solution for her funky mental state is to embark on a trip across America, in her van, to Electric City, Texas. Joined by Connie, she'll visit old Aunt Cooney, her mother's sister. LOOP GROUP is not only a vehicular journey across the southwestern desert land but a mind trip as well.

From her first step on the gas pedal, Maggie rides a roller-coaster of emotion on the road to Texas. The girls carry a .38-caliber pistol in the glove compartment for protection. Members of Prime Loops, however strange, appear normal --- even sane --- in comparison to personalities they meet on the road. Sometimes hilarious, sometimes pathetic and always emotional, the friends discover unknown truths about themselves by the time the trip has looped them back to Hollywood.

McMurtry writes the female mind with ease, one of the best in the business of the feminine mystique. Despite the fact that sexuality is the redundant theme in LOOP GROUP, the story does not lack taste. A few sexual boundaries are maintained. If one expects a McMurtry western saga, about a way of life long past, this is not the book of choice. However, if a light read about mixed-up personalities will please for an afternoon with teacup in hand, LOOP GROUP will do it. My one wish is that the characters would have engineered their own solutions to their problems. Still, LOOP GROUP commands one's attention until the end.

--- Reviewed by Judy Gigstad

Rating:
Summary: 242 Pages of Apathy!
Review: McMurtry begins with two 60 year old women who are nowhere and ends...yep, you got it - nowhere. How boring! I never cared about the characters and more importantly they didn't do anything interesting if I had. There is NOTHING at stake in this novel. I think this is primarily because the main character doesn't really care about ANYTHING. [...]. The clerk at Books-a-million warned me and said, "he just didn't seem to take his time with it". I think she was right. Either McMurtry is over the hill or he just cranked this out to meet a deadline, in either case I feel like I was cheated out of my time and my money.

Rating:
Summary: Raunchy Cal-Tex slapstick. Hot stuff.
Review: _____________________________________________
McMurtry's latest is the story of two sixtyish Hollywood gals, their
strange environment, and their stranger friends and associates. Maggie
Clary, the protagonist, has just had a hysterectomy and is feeling
pretty low. To cheer herself up, she plans a road trip to see her Aunt
Cooney, who lives in Electric City, Texas with two million chickens.
Hijinks ensue.

This is California/Texas slapstick. *Good*, raunchy slapstick.
McMurtry's characters are so outre', LOOP GROUP might as well be SF. The
book made me laugh out loud.

The best review I saw online was at the New York Times (Google, worthwhile)

'I'll tell you what,' Connie tells Maggie during one of their midnight
rambles, 'I'd rather be promiscuous than be a matron.' 'I'll second
that,' Maggie responds.

There's really no way to capture the loopy silliness of LG, but I'll
try.
[caution:*SPOILERS*]

Maggie and Connie get a flat tire at Canyon de Chelly. They get help
from Jiminy, a small Indian man who says he "knows a man in Teec Nos Pos
who'll fix your flat for one dollar." Off they go, Jiminy in tow, to Big
Lewis's garage. Enroute, they make a disquieting discovery: "After
strictly promising her daughters not to pick up hitchikers, [Maggie] had
immediately picked up a murderer.

"Don't tattle," she mouthed to Connie..."

Maggie and Connie hide out in Big Lewis's filthy ladies room, "trying to
figure out a smooth and foolproof way to get rid of Jiminy."
Not a problem, it turns out, as Jiminy steals the girl's van...

This episode (chapter 13, pp 149-158) is more-or-less self-contained. Read it -- If that doesn't
ring your chimes, don't bother trying the book.

Let's see if I can slip in the urls for the excerpt here (dumb Amazon)
tinyurl(dot)com/54amg
tinyurl(dot)com/6jdul
tinyurl(dot)com/69rwf
tinyurl(dot)com/4s6pq
[This horsing around is because Amazon, in their wisdom, will only let you look at 3 pages at a time! Sigh.]

Oh, a "loop group" dubs in crowd sounds and such for low-budget movies
and reissues.

As always with humor, YMMV. I was taken aback how many readers here
*hated* LG. Peasants.

Take it from me, this is hot stuff. If you like raunchy slapstick.

Happy reading--
Pete Tillman