Average Customer Review: 4.0
Total Customer Reviews: 15
0 out of 0 people found this review helpful:
Rating: 5
Summary: Prose - Not Plot - is Why I like it
The best thing about this book is not the plot but the language Waller uses to describe the thoughts of the characters. I felt that I was reading F. Scott Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald's plots were fairly simple but his descriptive prose and making the reader get inside the characters was his specialty. Waller does the same thing. You can feel what the lonely housewife was feeling in the BRIDGES and you can identify with Linda and Jack and all the other characters in this novel. You know what they are thinking and you can understand their internal strife. It reminds me of Jack Kerouac or even Steinbeck in TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY. The uncle and his sojourn in New Orleans was classic. He was truly a Walter Mitty but unlike Mitty he followed his instincts and headed for Mexico. This may have been a sub plot but it all tied together. A really good book if you look beyond the plot and concentrate on character development and the way Waller writes.
0 out of 0 people found this review helpful:
Rating: 4
Summary: Border Music, a review
Robert James Waller is also the author of "The Bridges of Madison County", of which nearly everyone has heard. I haven't read that one or any of his other books, but this one caught my eye. When I picked it up and flipped through it, I saw references to Alpine, TX (the seat of the county Terlingua is in) and the Holland Hotel (wherein lies the brewpub where I had lunch, on my first visit to Alpine). At that point, I had to read it.
I guess a given book can have different meanings to different people, depending upon their viewpoint, interests and experiences in life. The official description on the inside jacket has "Texas" Jack Carmine and Linda Lobo, two complete strangers, heading out the back door of a bar in Dillon, Minnesota; bound for wherever the road takes them, but eventually to Southwest Texas and the ranch Jack has called home since boyhood.
I can't disagree with that version, but to me that is but a part of the larger story; a Skeeter Skelton-esque story of a man hanging onto the modest ranch his father left him, living in the small ranch house with his dog and his best friend, the Mexican hired hand who has worked for Jack's father and then for Jack for over 50 years. Living in that simple but safe harbor, and going out every summer to lay pipe or work with a traveling combine crew in the Midwest during the wheat harvest for some operating capital, and also to experience life in the wider world for awhile before retreating to the ranch again for the winter.
The story is about that, and about some of the more important people Jack has known in his life; and about how those people feel about Jack.
Here is an excerpt from the book that somewhat describes what sort of person is Jack Carmine: "Few months before his thirtieth birthday, in that ol' Jack Carmine way of his, he just drove over to El Paso and enlisted. That was in the summer of '69. I dunno how he ever got through basic trainin'. Jack never has done well with orders. What was it he used to say?...said he had a built-in taste for anarchy of all kinds. I asked him what he meant by that, and he said he liked situations where the borders weren't in sight and you had to go out and find 'em or make 'em up yourself." That quote is from page 183.
Did I like the book? I think that's pretty obvious.
0 out of 0 people found this review helpful:
Rating: 1
Summary: photocopy of waller's ealier works
Waller should win an award for the most times reprocessing the same book and making money from it. Come on. Show some imagination!
5 out of 5 people found this review helpful:
Rating: 4
Summary: A Nice Flow
I found this book in a bargain bin a few years back and finally got around to reading it only recently. Fortunately, I was glad I did, as it was diversely interesting, different from what I expected, too. No big surprises or stunning twists, but a nice flow all the same. Waller has a style of writing that fits the characters in his story; he writes from the angle of a Texas cowboy or other southern rugged, feral type, raw and unrefined.
'Border Music' is the story of untamed love, of romance initiated on a whim. It is the story of Jack Carmine and Linda Lobo, a drifter in a pickup truck and a sexy barroom dancer, who meet by chance, and decide to take a chance with each other. Sometimes a man will simply be a man, a drifter always a drifter as well; love dwindles and fades, and events become uncontrollable; fate takes control. Life gets on in years and the past appears as a dream. We know, ourselves, how much we'd love to try and grasp it and hold onto it just one more time, but always find it gone forever, leaving only faded memories. Country singer, Bobby McGregor, Jack's close friend, eventually realizes that his memories make him smile and reminisce, as he longs for the good ol' days to re-emerge. Uncle Vaughn Rhomer leaves in search of a dream, too, yearning for the experience himself, in search of his nephew also.
Maybe it's Jack who has the right idea, God's freeborn soul, for even though he longs for Linda, his true love, his heart calls on him to constantly wander ... keeping life fresh, free, and unpredictable.
Don't look back, Jack Carmine.
Though a novel for women also, this is a love story for men, which is somewhat rare.
Waller pulled it off nicely.
4 out of 5 people found this review helpful:
Rating: 3
Summary: Not Music to my ears
I expected more from the author of Bridges of Madison County, but I was disappointed. I found the alternating timelines confusing also. I didn't think the Uncle's adventures and thoughts added anything to the story. Someone who listened to this book on tape said they fast forwarded, so did I reading it. There was lots of meandering thoughts and quotes from other writers that I just skimmed over. Didn't particularly dislike this book but can't say it was really good either.
