THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, May 24, 1995 TAG: 9505240049
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E3 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: BOOK REVIEW
SOURCE: BY DAVE PATON, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 86 lines
LARRY McMURTRY doesn't fool around in establishing the plot and tone of ``The Late Child'' (Simon & Schuster, 461 pp., $25). In the novel's first sentence we learn that Pepper, daughter of Vegas showgirl Harmony, is dead.
Harmony reads no further, stuffing the letter into a glass and throwing it out her door. It takes a few chapters and the arrival of Harmony's sisters from Oklahoma to learn that Pepper, a beautiful and talented dancer, died of AIDS in New York.
The hurt and shock of a mother's loss pervade ``The Late Child,'' McMurtry's update of ``The Desert Rose,'' set 10 to 15 years later. Harmony's dancing days are over; Pepper was grown up and gone years ago. The many-time Showgirl of the Year now works at a North Vegas recycling plant.
The central tragedy of Pepper's death creates a darker, more realistic mood than is present in most of McMurtry's work. His characters usually can laugh at their troubles, but that's not the case here.
As Harmony is packed up and driven east by her sisters, Neddie and Pat, to meet the woman who lived with Pepper and wrote the letter telling of her death, she fades in and out of the ``bombs of grief'' that assail her. It is likely that she would have faded out completely if not for her surviving child, 5-year-old Eddie.
This lad, Harmony's child by a different father than Pepper's, is the comic force of ``The Late Child'' - upbeat, articulate, in possession of every fact ever broadcast on The Discovery Channel. Perhaps he, not Pepper, is the title character.
On the road in Arizona's Hopi country, Eddie is given the puppy he's wanted for years. Then he asks that his box of stuffed animals be transferred from Harmony's U-Haul trailer to the trunk. Good thing - not long after, the trailer detaches from the car and plunges into New Mexico's Canyon de Chelly.
Harmony watches it fall, diverted from a meditation of the canyon and her troubles. Before the trailer goes over the edge and spills her bras and dishes for all to see, she thinks:
``If she could just look at the Canyon de Chelly for a few days, her spirit might recover. All her life, despite what bad things might happen, she had started her days with an optimistic feeling. . . . Pepper's death was different, though. It was final. There wasn't going to be a better daughter out there for her, ever. There wasn't going to be any daughter.''
Harmony plods on, letting the tide of events carry her. That tide does begin to move, reducing the focus on Harmony's narration and thus lightening the mood to a level more characteristic of McMurtry.
When the car dies in New Mexico, the group takes a plane to New York, where Eddie, with Iggy the dog, is determined to visit the Statue of Liberty. All fall into the hands of a gang of Indian taxi drivers, who take them from LaGuardia Airport to the No-Tel Motel in Jersey City, while arguing over Harmony.
From there, the novel's entertainment is provided by Eddie. He strikes up friendships with Pepper's bereaved companion, Laurie, and Sheba and Otis, a dumpster-dwelling couple. In a grimy white school bus owned by one of the Indians, everyone heads to the statue, where Iggy becomes famous by falling from the top and surviving unhurt.
In the ensuing hubbub, the unlikely group of Oklahoma country folk, Vegas expatriates, Indian hustlers and Jersey dumpsterites form a sort of family, their home Laurie's Lower East Side apartment.
Soon, in response to an invite from the president and first lady, it's into the bus, bound for Oklahoma via Washington, but the wheels of McMurtry's magical mystery tour become unhinged. The makeshift family finds it can't hold together.
McMurtry's talent for character and narrative and his ear for dialogue remain as strong as ever. He is under no requirement to make readers laugh, and from the start, his work has borne plenty of realistic, even tragic elements.
But given the comic grace that hued later sequels such as ``Texasville'' (updating ``The Last Picture Show'') and ``The Evening Star'' (after ``Terms of Endearment''), there is a hard-to-avoid, and unmet, expectation for fun in ``The Late Child.''
If McMurtry, by taking one of his most upbeat and lovable characters and plunging her into sadness, is trying to make a point about the decay of the American family, well, he's made it very well. Read this chapter about his menage for its skill, but expect it to be more bitter than sweet. ILLUSTRATION: DIANA OSSANA
Larry McMurtry's ``The Late Child'' is a sequel to ``The Desert
Rose.''
by CNB