Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, August 13, 1995 TAG: 9508140001
SECTION: BOOK PAGE: F4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: REVIEWED BY MARY ANN JOHNSON
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
\ Larry McMurtry's novels are rich in sense of place, color characterizations, humor and pathos.
His newest, "The Late Child," remains true to form, but the distinctive bittersweet tang he adroitly injects is here more persistent. A sequel to "Desert Rose," it brings back the irrepressible and irresistible Las Vegas showgirl, Harmony. By the time of this novel, she is retired from the stage and has a 5-year-old son, Eddie.
The usual array of bizarre characters gathers around Harmony, but Eddie is the star. With a view of life shaped by the Discovery Channel, and the brazen openness of the young and innocent, Eddie leads Harmony into unconventional alliances and improbable situations. For instance, at a truck stop in Colorado, Eddie is annoyed that truckers have left their engines running.
"`Stop those motors!' he said loudly, the minute he got inside the cafe. `They're making exhaust and exhaust is bad for the Earth.'
"Several of the truckers looked startled; they had not expected to be yelled at by a five-year-old boy while eating their ham and eggs.
"Harmony smiled at the men, to let them know she wasn't quite as strict about the planet as her son was."
At the novel's opening, Harmony receives word that her grown daughter, Pepper, is dead, and the news leaves her unable to cope with life. Eddie is Harmony's only reason for living, and even so, she teeters on the brink of suicide and insanity. Her sisters arrive from Oklahoma, ostensibly to help, and they all take off for New York.
Their trip provides the backdrop for a miscellany of adventures as they cross the country to visit Pepper's lesbian lover and then to make their way to Harmony's parents in Oklahoma. Even Harmony acknowledges the peculiarity of their exploits.
"Harmony thought how strange life was. Her son, who was only five, had just talked to the President and now was talking to the First Lady. Her sister Neddie had just refused to eat any food whose name started with a `k.' She herself had just told her oldest friend, who was gay, that she wished he wasn't, so they could marry. Four men with turbans were there, and two black teenagers who lived in a Dumpster in New Jersey. She herself had no job and no prospects and her brother was in jail in Tarwater for making obscene phone calls. Pepper, her daughter, was dead of AIDS.
"It was a lot to adjust to, if adjust was the right word."
Throughout McMurtry's collection of characters and happenings it is not certain whether Harmony indeed will adjust, and the novel's tension is derived from this question. As a result of Eddie's gregariousness, Harmony is so embroiled in bringing comfort to troubled others that she is unable to resolve her own grief.
Finally she escapes her unusual entourage and returns to Las Vegas, to Gary and his purple Cadillac, to the cosmos of lights, where she is able to tend to her own needs, where she can re-enter the mainstream of life.
Harmony's trip east and back, to the edge and then away from it, is an Americana of places to go, people to see. Despite some bumps on the road - Harmony's despair is overworked and a facile sense of political correctness adheres to the touch-all-bases approach - McMurtry fans, and others too, will enjoy the ride.
Mary Ann Johnson teaches at Roanoke College.
by CNB