Nothing But Blue Skies

This is the funniest novel I've read since finishing Don Quixote sometime last month. I feel I ought to single out for particular notice Chapter 34, wherein a drunken Frank abducts Lucy and precipitates a riotous vehicular escapade. This episode constitutes about as polished a piece of comedy as I've ever encountered in any of the books I have read and, like I said, I've just finished Don Quixote. Ozell's revision of the translation of Peter Motteux as a matter of fact. Take my word for it, the unfairly maligned Motteux puts Tobias Smollett in the crapper. For what it's worth, Mister McGuane actually alludes to Cervantes' great masterwork twice during the course of his own inimitable relation: once a tad obliquely, when Frank briefly visits Alaska and is tossed in a blanket by a bunch of tanked-up Eskimos, recalling Sancho Panza's similar treatment outside the Inn at the hands of four Segovia Clothiers, three Cordova Point-makers, and two Seville Hucksters, all brisk, gamesome, arch fellows; and once rather more directly, when a Buick Frank had purchased from June is described as being as loose-jointed and ungainly as Rozinante. Well it's all a circle really, isn't it?

Thomas McGuane is a remarkably gifted writer and here he is at the top of his form. This book captures the beauty and the tragedy of the west, is full of characters who are real and pathetic and loveable and maddening. The territory of Western pathos and failed relationships covered briliantly by Richard Ford, but McGuane in this book brings a consistent over the top humor and sense of the ridiculous which distinguishes him sharply from Ford. Picaresque bar fights alternate with lyrical descriptions of the fishing streams of Montana, the protagonist's series of soulless affairs constrasts sharply with his desperate love for the wife who has left him. The book is fascinating, and beautiful, and terribly funny.

McGuane is easily among our most talented contemporary authors. There were times that I caught myself laughing out-loud as well as smiling at truly remarkable descriptions written with such skill that I felt as if I were standing in a river somewhere in Montana. He is able to pull the reader into his world of complex and entertaining characters that operate in an equally wonderful backdrop of Montana's ranches, rivers, and small towns. If you are a fan of other McGuane titles such as "Nobody's Angel" and "Keep the Change" you will not be disappointed with "Nothing but Blue Skies." I can't think of higher praise than to be truly sad to turn the last page and realize that such a beautifully and skillfully written story is over.

I simply can not stop reading this book. Since buying it, I have reread it so many times that I will soon need to buy a new copy. If you are looking for a novel that is funny, sad, moving, painful, unforgetable, very readable, and unbelievably enjoyable, then get this book. My only warning is that you will soon need to buy a new copy for display.

This novel would be a great read for a wide variety of men and women as it would strike a chord with anyone who has ever gone through, or even stared in the face of: a marital rift, a midlife career-setback, a quicksand relationship with a young-adult offspring (whose "significant other" is a jerk). It also will ring true to anyone who has lived in a small, slow-paced cowtown in the western US, or conversely to anyone anywhere who has only dreamed of such locales and craves to move to one or to just get fictionally involved with life in contemporary Montana; and it will appeal to those who love fly fishing, and to those who may have ever broken a few lesser laws after drinking a tad too much; and it will definitely find fans with those who have semi-humorously or semi-seriously questioned their own sanity or worth; and it will strike a familiar chord with those who have ever engaged in semi-outrageous and not-very-satisfying sexual encounters with friends and strangers; and it might bring a twinge to those readers who have ever landed in any embarrassing predicament because of their own rash behavior. It also will appeal to a few folks who can't relate personally to ANY of the above, but who love to laugh out loud. In short this is a story that will grab a wide variety of readers because of its engaging and believably-human antihero who has begun to flounder and to drag others with him into the swamp of his rather messy middle-age.