Customer Reviews

Streets of Laredo

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

This strong and complex characther from Lonesome Dove is distorted into a shallow, confused, and broken down bum. An unimaginative twist is to be found here: Woodrow Call consents to having an appendage amputated (Unlike Gus in Lonesome Dove his vanity does not prevail) and he winds up an inept and crippled beggar who lives only for a childs attention. Please!

The Lorena and Pea Eye romance is an unlikely concept that feels about as realistic as a 1950's Soap opera. the Mexican bandit and his on going hatred for his mother is a confusing theme which, rather than compelling, comes across as humorous and silly.

Woodrow Call, unlike his frontier competence in Lonesome Dove, is often confused, frightened and tentative in this cartoonish scenario that we the reader find ourselves drawn into. I had trouble getting into the paper mache' characthers we meet through his travels.

Woodrow and Lorena are two boring sticks in the mud being chased by a host of cartoons through a poorly painted background. This is a lousy book.

Maybe it's just me but, it seems Mr. McMurtry might have been a little bit ticked by the movie "Return to Lonesome Dove" and "Lonesome Dove: The Series/The Outlaw Years". The sequel kills off almost everyone from "Lonesome Dove," so there can be no TRUE Lonesome Dove Part II.

Its a good book and a great story but keep in mind that unfortunately many of your favorite characters from L.D. no longer around.

Certainly not one of McMurtrys better works. A far cry from Lonesome Dove

Streets of Laredo is a great book. McMurtry shows, from the first page, something few writers ever show: His characters are human. They die. Gus died in Lonesome Dove, and Newt and July also died at the beginning of Streets of Laredo. Now besides Call, these two were my favorite characters, and when I read that they died on the same page, I neraly put the book in the trash. Then I realized something: McMurtry is honest. He doens't care if we want Call to claim Newt, or July to live happily ever after with his son Martin, or for people to understand the pain and sorrow Call keeps hidden from the world (my own personal opinions) He shows us that life is violent, sad, and ironic. The biggest irony is that the very horse Call gave his son (come on, we all know he is by now) is what killed him. McMurtry makes us realize that no one ever lives happily ever after the way they want to. Just a quick note: Although I love the series of Lonesome Dove and rather frantically read through every book numerous times, sometimes I wish McMurtry had just left it at Lonesome Dove. At least then everyone could pretend that maybe, just maybe, someone in the book could live happily ever after.

The aimless wanderings of Call mirror the writer, who apparently knew he needed alot of violence, but couldn't quite string the segments together.

Streets of Laredo is an interesting and engaging book, but too long. McMurtry repeats himself such as the times when Joey Garza keeps thinking that he is going to his mother's house to ahve his wounds cleaned. Other characters' thoughts are also repeated unnecessarily. This makes a long story even longer.

Yet the characters of this novel are interesting. Joey Garza's hatred of Maria, his mother, is left unfinished. The reader knows his attiude is inocrrect, but Joey never realizes it. Also how he became bad is left to the reader's imagination.

Minor characters appear in this book, who require circumstances. Doobie Plunkert appears as a rash, immature girl. Yet she will have some relationship to the story toward the end as her husband Deputy Plunkert roams Texas with Woodrow Call and his posse. The story of this couple and that of the accountant Brookshire and his wife Katie seem to serve as reminders that people live and die and are promptly forgotten. Perhaps also this is McMurtry's way of showing how relentless the brutality was in the developing west.

The impact of all these deaths was depressing.

Despite some of these problems Streets of Laredo continued where Lonesome Dove left off. I wish McMurtry had not killed all those people in the former book. It would have been nice to have seen Newt again.

No author quite like McMurphy has dealt such memorable characters that you enjoy following them book after book. With Lonesome Dove, his well-deserved Pulitzer Prizer winning novel, he introduced us to an outfit in the West who, in nine-hundred pages, are planning to ranch cattle in Montana (was it Montana, though? I forget). We were introduced to the whole Hat Creek Outfit and fell into understanding w/ the old yet undiminished friendship between Gus McCrae and Woodrow Call. A lot happened in the novel and I was left w/ that rush, a rush that only comes when I complete a novel so grand and so moving that I'm almost regretful to place it on my finished list. Well, I was left w/ the same feeling after this novel. The characters, man, are excellent. The book is not as long as its predecessor, you should know, yet McMurtry boasts such lively, illuminating scenes, and harbors equally lively, illuminating characters within its pages. Joey Garza and his mother Maria alone are reason enough to read this novel. Call, Lorena, and Pea Eye return and it makes you feel sad yet proud at how they turned out (Call's now an old man, fight is almost out of him; Pea Eye realizes he can't keep going out to help the Captain because he now has a family with Lorena; and Lorena is now an educated, strong mother and wife... reminds you of Clara Allen). What I really love about McMurtry's novel is that it doesn't always end happily... a lot of death, a lot of violence, a lot of unresolved matters. I won't say what they are because I think Lonesome Dove fans should give it a chance... it's a prize!!!

Well, this is supposedly the end of the Western tetralogy that started with "Dead Man's Walk". The human side of the characters is here- the ability McMurtry has of creating characters readers care about, is here. This book differs from the others in the fact that it is much more heavily accented with a brutal, dramatic tone. Yet that does not suggest this book should be tossed aside as trivial trash that glorifies in graphic violence and blood and guts flying everywhere. Violent people like Joey Garza, Wesley John Hardin and Mox Mox exist unfortunately, and their creation in these pages is simply McMurtry's attempt to recreate the brutality of that kind of life. The graphic violence is what adds the color to the book, I would say, and it proves indispensable to make this a book as good as I herald it. Yet... I finished it, and I did so with a feeling of "is that it?" The future of certain characters was left still to be decided. Does that mean a fifth book in the series is in the making, perhaps? It would certainly be nice if such an idea was considered, maybe it wouldn't do McMurtry any harm if he sat back and thought about that for a while. Summing up, these four books really were pretty much very interesting and I'd recommend them to anyone who isn't intimidated by lengthy novels.

This was a GREAT book! Some parts of it were a little boring, but, so were some parts of Lonesome Dove, or any other great book. Some of the reviews for this book make me sick. In my opinion they liked Lonesome Dove so much, they're reluctent to admit that a book can be every bit as damn good as Lonesome Dove. Larry McMurtry creates the most vivid charactors, such as Famous Shoes, the Kickapoo Indian tracker, or Call in his old age. It didn't have a happy ending, because I doubt events in the old west ever had happy endings, or one that gave you a sense of resolvement. I've loved every single one of the Lonesome Dove saga, and every other one of Larry McMurtry's work is superb!!! I would stronly reccomend it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Reading and hearing the criticism of this book, it seems obvious that the naysayers read Lonesome Dove with a romantic's eye. Don't.

As other well-written works repeatedly demonstrate -- contemporary novels, such as The Last Picture Show, and historical ones such as Buffalo Girls and Anything for Billy -- McMurtry is anything but rosy-eyed about his characters. Like George Bernard Shaw, McMurtry creates stories that are interesting and valuable, but also realistic.

People seem to disappointed with the content of Streets of Laredo, but the reality of the West is that it was a brutal, violent place. Viewed through the eyes of an aging denizen like Woodrow F. Call, it would naturally seem even more so, particularly viewed against the rather cold backdrop of encroaching modern civilization.

The actions and reactions of a Call, Lorena, even PeaEye Parker, all make perfect sense in this book. Would you expect the practical Woodrow to suddenly become a dashing hero with a sunset in the background? Of course not. Thus, an old Call finds himself bedeviled by a young, clever, ruthless killer. It wouldn't happen any other way. Would a mature Lorena do anything that wasn't practical, or at least deeply personal? Not in the least. So she's married to someone who is predictable, but also extremely reliable. And so on.

The new characters introduced in the Streets of Laredo are as well developed and interesting as we've come to expect from McMurtry. He even manages to make a Brooklyn accountant seem intriguing -- no mean feat, if you think about it.

And for all of the complaints about the graphic nature of some of the action in Laredo, no one can reasonably argue that McMurtry has lost his facility with words. As always with McMurtry, the prose flows lyrically; he remains one of the most underrated craftsmen of the novel.