Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtryMy rating: 1 of 5 stars
Lonesome Dove is a gritty, realistic depiction of life on the old frontier, where death is random and swift and brutal, and so is life. This book does a very good job at taking you there and forcing you to experience every ugly aspect of the old West, which is probably why it has such high ratings and won a Pulitzer Prize.
For me, however, these types of books are not enjoyable, especially when the point seems to be to show the capricious nature of life and death. I didn't like any of the characters, but the ones I sort of liked a little bit mostly got killed off completely senselessly. This is one of those books I would have thrown at a couple points if I still read paper books. That's one aspect of hard copies that I truly miss. I had to internalize my outrage, and it will probably give me an ulcer.
I kept hoping that in the end there would be a point of redemption for any single character that would make it all worthwhile, but the ending left me feeling unsatisfied for pretty much every character that was left alive (not many). I didn't like any of them, and they all ended up worse than they were when they started. The bottom line is that this was just too realistic for me - so depressing. This is officially my reading feat of 2015 - to make it through all 1100 pages of this heavy piece of work.
