Gusher of water right in front of the equally splendid Warwick Hotel." (When the abandoned wife goes to a dance with Gen. Sometimes the novel swerves into pure slapstick comedy, as, for instance, when Aurora's housekeeper's husband runs off with a woman whose dream it is to have sexual relations with "Houston's new Mecom fountain, a splendid It continues, on the one hand, with the farcical story of how grandmother Aurora shrewdly avoids getting a "somebody" (i.e., any one of her manifold and unlikely suitors), and, on the other hand, with the more realistic story ofĮmma and her domestic trials with her ineffectual scholar-husband, Thomas (Flap) Horton, who does everything too slowly, except sex, which he does too quickly. Which news Aurora burst into tears because "What man would want a grandmother? If you could.have waited.then I might have.got somebody." It starts off a drawing-room farce, with Aurora's ungainly daughter, Emma, informing her mother that she is pregnant, at The novel can't seem to make up its mind what it wants to be when it grows up. It has to be something, and something fairly powerful at that, for looked at objectively "Terms of Endearment" ought Or maybe what keeps one entertained is the sympathy with which Mr. Is too much of a realist to imagine a machine in which to climb to her bedroom and Vernon Dalhart, a shy Texas oil millionaire who lives in his white Lincoln Continental and spends his most creative hours on the top floor of his 24-story Hector Scott, a retired armored corps commander who dreams of assaulting Aurora's home with tanks but whose dreams end in frustration because he Older men aren't up to me, and younger men aren't interested.") Or is it Aurora's several "suitors," as she insists on calling them:Įdward Johnson, a normally urbane bank executive who gets so rattled by Aurora that he addresses lunch orders to busboys Alberto, a retired opera singer who once knew that what worked with women was "the direct approach" but withĪurora "could no longer find the direct approach to the direct approach" Gen. ("Only a saint could live with me, and I can't live with a saint. Partly, it's the star of the story, Aurora Greenway of Houston by way of New Haven, an impossibly self- centered widow with the redeeming virtue of knowing how difficult she is. Last Picture Show"-has never been less than winning.
McMurtry, who in his five previous novels-among them "Horseman, Pass By" (out of which the movie "Hud" was made) and "The Partly, I suppose, it's simply trust in Mr. Here is something very winning about Larry McMurtry's latest novel, "Terms of Endearment"-something that makes one keep reading alongĭespite the book's many obvious faults. Books of The Times By CHRISTOPHER LEHMANN-HAUPT
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