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PETEY, the sensitive twin, aged one year and a half, began to sneeze and couldn't stop, giving Petal her chance: she at once seized a stuffed blue rooster the two had been fighting over and slipped behind her mother, waiting to see what her twin would do when he stopped sneezing and discovered the theft. Read the first page
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Try Lonesome Dove, Terms of Endearment, The Last Picture Show , Paradise ,Books etc. etc. Try his western histories, his biographies or his travel writing. Try anything else by him, but not the Berrybender narratives.
In FOLLY AND GLORY, it's now three books and almost 4 years later into the saga, and what remains of the Berrybender party is under house arrest by the Mexican government in Santa Fe, now having been there for more than one and a half years. It's been time enough for Tasmin to give birth to twins, Petey and Petal, Bess to deliver Elphinstone, and Vicky to give Lord Albany another son, Randall. But Mexico is expecting trouble in its Texas province, so the central government decides to transfer the troublesome Americans and English in its New Mexico territory overland to Veracruz - a long and dangerous journey, and an opportunity for author Larry McMurtry to kill off superfluous characters so there are fewer lose ends to tie up at the series conclusion. Of the four books, FOLLY AND GLORY is the bloodiest and, if you've grown to care about the central characters, perhaps the most distressing.
I'd finally come to be absorbed in the serialized plot by the end of Book Three (BY SORROW'S RIVER), and I was hoping for at least a four-star finish. But, it wasn't to be. After a spasm of death and killing - separating the wheat from the chafe - the final sixty pages straggle to a contrived and, for me, unsatisfying conclusion. Perhaps McMurtry had a publisher's deadline to meet, or maybe he just started out with too many characters. I mean, Lord Berrybender dying gloriously with Davy Crockett at the Alamo? Oh, puhleeze!
The most interesting persona to be introduced at this late stage is Petal, Tasmin's extraordinarily willful and difficult daughter. It would be amusing to see McMurtry build a new series around her, but I doubt that Larry has that left in him at this point in his writing career, of which LONESOME DOVE is perhaps the undisputed high water mark.
The entirety of the Berrybender series was, in retrospect, mildly engaging at best. After giving it spasmodic attention over three years, I can now move on.
Should you read this series? Had I known how bloody, painful and unpleasant the details would be, I wouldn't have started.
Since Lord Albany Berrybender first arrived in the United States with a major part of his family (at least the legitimate children) and a small army of servants, he's been looking forward to shooting everything in sight. In this installment (the last) of the four-part series, Lord Berrybender gets a chance to shoot at the most dangerous game of all . . . but rues that he missed a chance to kill a grizzly bear.
This story is not for those who are easily depressed. The book opens with Tasmin Berrybender totally distraught by the murder of her beloved Pomp Charbonneau. To make matters worse, she's pregnant . . . and not sure whether the father is her husband Jim Snow or Pomp. After giving birth, she's still depressed and sends Jim away.
The Berrybenders find themselves under arrest in Santa Fe for two years . . . both to line the government's pocket and to entertain the governor's wife. Lord Albany finds himself smitten with a teenage mistress . . . a liaison that has dangerous consequences for the party. While in Santa Fe, we learn about how the Mexicans liked to deal with Native American outlaws and pursue their private pleasures.
But all is thrown into disarray when the governor is dismissed and a troop comes to march the Berrybenders to Vera Cruz in anticipation of war with the United States. Jim Snow escapes and tracks the group to rescue the Berrybenders. But before he can do that, he has to rescue the Mexican army. The march becomes a death trek like those in many of the earlier books . . . as cholera and slavers take their toll. Jim Snow had been a captive slave, and he takes the slaver attack very personally . . . which leads to a remarkable confrontation in which Jim has the epiphany of his life.
The Berrybenders end up in Texas just in time for the war for independence.
Tasmin and Jim come to a final understanding about their marriage and everyone who has survived has to scope out a new plan for the rest of their lives as they limp into St. Louis.
For those who like exciting action, this book has one spell-binding sequence as Jim Snow becomes a one-man army. If it hadn't been for that portion of the book, I would have rated the book at two stars.
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