I have been a fan of McMurtry ever since reading Leaving Cheyenne and The Last Picture Show back in the early 1970s. And then, of course, I read Lonesome Dove, probably my all-time favorite novel. Moving On has been on my shelf for years and I know I started reading it back in the 70s or 80s but for some reason never finished. The copy I have now is one I picked up at a thrift store a couple of years ago -- not sure what happened to my original AVON paperback. Anyway, this was a long rather daunting novel and probably its length was the reason I put it aside years ago. It tells the story of Patsy Carpenter, her husband, Jim and their life during the late 1960s. It starts out with the couple following the rodeo circuit through the Southwest because Jim has decided he wants to be a photographer and he decided to use rodeos as his subject matter. Along the way they meet a variety of interesting and memorable characters including Sonny Shanks, a rodeo star who wants to get it on with Patsy, Pete Tatum, a rodeo clown, and others. These characters pop up along the way in this immense story. But the bulk of the story takes place in Houston as Jim decides to pursue his graduate degree at Rice University. One of Patsy's good friends in Houston, Emma Horton, later turns up in McMurtry's Terms of Endearment, another novel of his I need to get to. Anyway, the bulk of this novel is just telling about the day-to-day life of Patsy and her acquaintances including their infidelities and insecurities. A lot of this was very familiar. Overall, I would recommend this but it did take me a few weeks to get through it.
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