Book Review - Something to be Desired

Another day another Thomas McGuane book. I didn't have as much time yesterday at the hospital as I have had other days recently, but I still had time to get through most of Something to be Desired (173 pages, 1984), and finished it last night before bed.

This is the story of Lucien Taylor, a Montana native who moves away, gets a job with the state department working in various Latin American and Caribbean countries, gets married, has a son, and then decides that he needs a change and leaves both his job and his family. Part of the impetus for leaving things is the siren call of an old girlfriend in trouble back in Montana. He bails her out of jail (murder charges), she puts up a ranch she owns as collateral, and when she skips bail and flees, Lucien ends up owning the ranch. He begins to understand what he has given up and begins working to try to get his family back. Turning a hot spring on his new property into a successful spa, he tries to use his success to win back his family, and ultimately we are left unsure as to whether he will be able to succeed or not.

This is a shorter work than any of his later novels and is a little bit more plot driven, but is ultimately a character study of what is turning out to be a very typical McGuane hero/anti-hero. A man and his relationship to the land, fathers and sons, women, the consequences of our actions, and the inability to stop from doing that which you know is probably the wrong thing. Emily, the old girlfriend character, is strongly symbolic of the lure of temptation, while Suzanne, the estranged wife, represents the wholesome side of life. In that sense, this novel is much more straightforward than some of his later ones, where everything has become a gray area, but for that reason perhaps has left me a little ambivalent about the story. I found it a less compelling story to have someone who had something good and ruined it, rather than someone who was struggling to determine what they wanted in the first place. Like the title says, this book left something to be desired.

3.5 stars out of 5. A good book, but not great.

Books read this year: 30 [totalling 6,877 pages]
Published in 2010: still 17
New authors: still 16
Classics: still 3

I'm not sure if I will read the next McGuane novel going back in time or not at this point. While it has been a fascinating experience thus far, I might be getting a little weary of reading very similar books over and over again.