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A spectacular novel, an epic journey through relationships that are hundreds of pages in the making (and breaking). Patsy Carpenter and her husband Jim flit between the worlds of rodeo, grad school, Texas ranches, and Hollywood, and we see their Ill-suited dynamic evolve over the course of the book. It’s easy to want to shout at McMurtry’s vivid, life-like, complex characters when they make self-destructive decisions, and sometimes painful to watch them go through difficult changes. They evolve over the novel’s 800 pages, but there’s no doubt that I felt a very real connection to them by the end. McMurtry’s prose is really spectacular generally, and there are some particular knock-out passages here (a car crash towards the end of the book comes to mind). While the book can fall into the “everyone cheats on everyone eventually� trope so prevalent in 70s literature, it doesn’t matter here because you feel like you’re watching real people make these choices, and these ARE the choices these people would make. Their motivations are so complex, it’s the kind of book you need to discuss with someone as you read. A really great novel, and a world I didn’t want to leave.