I slogged through most of Larry McMurtry's book LOOP GROUP. I don't understand why this writer has the reputation of creating good female characters. I found the book lifeless, despite a more or less endless series of outrageous events. The older women characters are bawdy, yet somehow without humor, and utterly without an inner landscape I could relate to, and which I think of as the essence of women's fiction. Every female character was as randy as some creature out of a Playboy cartoon, but still the book lacked any real sensuality. At the end, I was left with a sense of ennui that was exaggerated by a bad taste in my mouth.
Gee, can you guess I didn't like the book? On my recent trip to New York, my editor at Ace gave me a book to read on the train, and that one I couldn't put down until it was finished. It wasn't matron lit, because the characters were younger, but it was clearly women's fiction, and it was lively and funny and telling. The book is THROUGH THICK AND THIN, by a fairly new writer named Alison Pace, a quick read, but a book that has something to say about women in contemporary America.
Okay, on to the next! And I'd be interested to hear if someone feels differently about LOOP GROUP.
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