RARA-AVIS: Cimarron Rose

James & Livia Reasoner (liviajames@itexas.net)
Thu, 9 Oct 1997 22:09:45 -0500 Having read several good comments on this list and elsewhere about James
Lee Burke's latest novel _Cimarron Rose_, I decided to give it a try. I
made it about 50 pages before I gave up. Where exactly in Texas is this
book supposed to be set? Sometimes the descriptions read like East Texas,
sometimes like West Texas. Dallas is close by, but so is the Pecos River.
It seems to me that Burke has fallen victim to what I used to call the
Dodge City Syndrome: on episodes of "Gunsmoke", Matt Dillon could ride for
one day from Dodge City and visit every different sort of terrain west of
the Mississippi. And never, ever, in 44 years of living in Texas have I
heard anyone refer to the thing built onto the front of their house as a
"gallery". It's a porch, dammit, and for that matter it's either a front
porch, a back porch, or, rarely, a side porch. Besides (and this is a
legitimate complain, not just geographical carping), I got very tired of
Burke building up a scene until something interesting was about to happen,
then cutting away to a different scene and having the narrator explain what
happened during that section break. I had high hopes for this book but was
very disappointed.

James Reasoner

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