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    Paradise
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    Paradise
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    Paradise
    Audiobook3 hours

    Paradise

    Written by Larry McMurtry

    Narrated by Philip Bosco

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    In 1999, Larry McMurtry, whose wanderlust had been previously restricted to the roads of America, set off for a trip to the paradise of Tahiti and the South Sea Islands in an old-fashioned tub of a cruise boat, at a time when his mother was slipping toward a paradise of her own. Opening up to her son in her final days, his mother makes a stunning revelation of a previous marriage and sends McMurtry on a journey of an entirely different kind.

    Vividly, movingly, and with infinite care, McMurtry paints a portrait of his parents' marriage against the harsh, violent landscape of west Texas. It is their roots -- laced with overtones of hard work, bitter disappointment, and the Puritan ethic -- that McMurtry challenges by traveling to Tahiti, a land of lush sensuality and easy living. With fascinating detail, shrewd observations, humorous pathos, and unforgettable characters, he begins to answer some of the questions of what paradise is, whether it exists, and how different it is from life in his hometown of Archer City, Texas.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateJun 4, 2001
    ISBN9780375418488
    Author

    Larry McMurtry

    Larry McMurtry is the author of more than thirty novels, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Lonesome Dove. He has also written memoirs and essays, and received an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for his work on Brokeback Mountain.

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    Reviews for Paradise

    3.5/5

    18 ratings1 review

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    • 4/5
      This short book, equal parts memoir and travelogue, continues the reflections by McMurtry that were earlier begun in Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen and Roads. With his mother nearing the end of her life, McMurtry travels to a culture far away and different from his childhood home on the plains of Texas. His sojourn follows that of other artists, writers, and explorers, traveling to the South Seas in search of Paradise. What McMurtry finds is a world not markedly different from the one he is more familiar with; the dying small towns and Indian reservations of the American West. A shrewd observer of culture, the author notes many parallels between these societies. McMurtry offers generally unflattering views of his travel companions, who fail to understand that by seeking out the last unspoiled places in the world, they are themselves changing them forever.While not my favorite work of non-fiction by McMurtry, this was a quick read and enjoyable.