The Wandering Hill

March 31, 2003
This is the second volume in McMurtry's four-book series the Berrybender Narratives, following last year's Sin Killer. Set in 1833 along the banks of the Yellowstone River, the comedic melodrama mixes unwashed mountain men with an arrogant, obnoxious and uncouth family of English aristocrats in a saga of high violence, low morals and lusty copulation. Lord Berrybender and his brood of selfish bumbling children, servants and mistress are touring the American West, shooting every animal in sight. The lord is a one-legged, drunken satyr who cares only for his own pleasure, and pokes his son's eye out with a fork. The rest of the family is just as self-centered and irresponsible. Eldest daughter Tasmin, a vulgar, opinionated woman, is married to enigmatic mountain man Jim Snow, known as the Sin Killer for his fervent brutality in the punishment of sin (not his own, of course). He cannot understand why Tasmin willfully refuses to be more like his two Indian wives, silent, obedient and submissive. Still, their love is passionate and so are their fistfights. The English group and a bunch of smelly, hairy mountain men winter over at a trading post through months of quarrels, meanness and downright coarse behavior, while marauding Sioux under the command of a white man–hating war chief called the Partezon gruesomely torture and slaughter any white they can catch. McMurtry tosses in famous hunters and mountain men like Hugh Glass, Kit Carson and Tom Fitzpatrick, plus a buffalo stampede, grizzly bears and an Indian ambush, but these are just props to support the soap-opera antics of the Berrybender clan. A few folks manage to get themselves killed, but there are plenty of annoying Englishmen left to people the next two volumes.

Starred review from August 4, 2003
HFans of Molina's reading of Sin Killer, the first volume in McMurtry's over-the-top Berrybender Narratives, will be pleased to find that he has lent his considerable talents to this second volume. Again, the marriage of McMurty's capable storytelling and Molina's dramatic reading gifts create a sum that is greater than its parts. The Berrybenders are a noble English family bent on exploring the Wild West in the 1830s. Just as the West holds no sympathy for its inhabitants, so it is with the Berrybenders, whose lives are rife with dark wit and unexpected (and often strangely humorous) violence, as when Lord Berrybender, himself "whittled down" by a leg, seven toes and three fingers, pokes out his son Bobbety's eye with a carving fork. As with all their hardships—stampedes, murderous Indians, grizzly bears, etc.—the victim as well as his family take this in stride. "You've made Bobbety a Cyclops, Papa," says young Mary Berrybender, "only his one eye is not quite in the middle of his head as it should be in a proper Cyclops." Listening to Molina capture the comic subtleties of every character—from the shy young Kit Carson to the Berrybenders' pet parrot—is to experience the art of the audiobook at its very best. Simultaneous release with the Simon & Schuster hardcover (Forecasts, Mar. 31).