Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #198303 in Books
• Published on: 2003-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 352 pages

Customer Reviews

Archetypes of the Old World and New Meet in the Frontier for Unexpected Frolics
For some years, Larry McMurtry has been fascinated by how he can take the Old West and transform it into something more understandable than the idealistic heroic images of those who played important roles in the Continental expansion from the Eastern seaboard. In the Berrybender Narrative, he's found a potent way to get his points across.

During the 19th century, the English aristocracy liked nothing better than to find new hunting grounds where they could slaughter thousands of animals and feel manlier. But it was an effete aristocracy that lived off its wealth and reputation rather than on its skill and knowledge. McMurty imagines such a family in the form of Lord Albany Berrybender who has merrily been producing legitimate and illegitimate offspring for decades with any women who will lie still for a bit. He has so many children that after awhile he stopped giving them Christian names and simply calls them by number. Berrybender hires a steamship to take his family and entourage (valet, coachman, gun bearer, laundress, tutors for the children, painters, etc.), up the Missouri to the Great Plains hunting grounds with enough claret to keep everyone bibulous for years.

What Lord Berrybender has in mind is a variation on the Maharaja's hunt in India. But the Old West is more dangerous than that. And the Berrybenders also prove to be dangerous to each other.

The story moves out of its hilarious satire long enough for Lord Berrybender's independent daughter to sneak off for a good night's sleep in a pirogue that gets left behind by the steamship. When she awakes, she decides she might as well bathe before trying to find the steamship again. As she does, she encounters a handsome young man also bathing. He turns out to be a wilderness trapper who had been raised by Native Americans, one James Snow, also known as the Sin Killer. Snow feels that he has a responsibility to get her safely back to the boat, and a tumultuous relationship begins between two opposites (he -- quiet, pious and focused . . . she -- voluble, on the prowl for romance and easily distracted). Before long, she's cooking up schemes to keep them together.

Soon, it becomes clear that such travel is serious business . . . and if any are to survive, it will be because of the Sin Killer's skill and bravery.

The book is great fun, but it's written in a style much like what a 19th century novelist might have used. As such, it's simple, exaggerated and languid . . . obviously imitating Huckleberry Finn in its style.

If you like strong women, Lady Tasmin Berrybender will be your favorite character in the series.

But there are lots of honest depictions of plains experiences and challenges that will add to your knowledge of the West. Despite his need to go too far over the top with the story, there's lot of factual substance here to chew on.

If you have the choice of reading a non-fiction account of the same era, pick the non-fiction account. This book tries too hard to be entertaining.

A green parrot and a boatload of Brits
It's 1832, and Lord Albany Berrybender has chartered a steamboat to take him up the Missouri River on a hunting expedition. Albany is one of the richest aristocrats in England, and also a dissolute, selfish, old fool. Along for the ride are his wife Constance, six of their fourteen spoiled children, fifteen of nineteen servants, an aging parrot named Prince Talleyrand, the staghound Tintamarre, and a gaggle of American talent hired to ease their way, including Toussaint Charbonneau, the guide for the Lewis and Clark Expedition many years previous.

The first noticeable feature of SIN KILLER, the start of a four-book series, is the lengthy cast of players requiring a two-page character list. In addition to all those on the boat, there's a couple dozen ashore - Indians, trappers, and such - to provide local color. Chief among these is the SIN KILLER, a young trapper named Jim Snow, who has an exaggerated sense of God-fearing righteousness and an awkward way with women.

Since McMurtry's tales of the Old West are, for its characters, affairs perilous to life and limb, I immediately expected some of the English crowd to soon become victims of misadventure. (After all, such a large number is a heavy load to carry.) I wasn't disappointed.

It's apparent early on that the main protagonist of the book, and I suspect the series, is Tasmine, Lord Berrybender's independent and willful oldest daughter. Nothing scares her, not even her Old Man. And I expect the villain of the piece, the cruel, old Aleut-Russian squaw Draga, who passes herself off as a sorceress, won't scare Tasmine either if and when their paths cross. (Draga is a psycho in the grand tradition of other McMurtry psychos such as Blue Duck and Mox Mox. Remember them?)

Judging from this first installment, there are a couple of reasons I don't think the Berrybender saga will be the author's best work. First of all, crucial events happen relatively quickly without too much plot or character development. Perhaps, as McMurtry gets older, he's driven to get it written and published faster. (You never know when you're going to be ambushed and scalped by savages.) Secondly, a lot of the action and dialogue has a slapstick quality about it that seems forced. However, at 300 pages, SIN KILLER is a quick, engaging read.

I loved McMurtry's LONESOME DOVE trilogy. (The 1989 miniseries adaptation of that title starring Robert Duvall is my favorite western of all time.) While perhaps not presaging such excellence, this first volume of the Berrybender epic left me looking forward to the next. Oh, and I hope Prince Talleyrand continues to survive. Like Gus's pigs in LD, he's very cool.