But while Terms of Endearment makes a play at literature – its opening line imitates Jane Austen's famous opening line, and the book tries for an observant, high-society comic tone akin to 19th-century European literature – it doesn't achieve literary status. Now, characters in books don't have to be likeable – in fact, it's a bit of a crutch that too many self-styled 'bookworms' rely on – and that's certainly the case when it comes to assessing a piece of genuine literature. 43)), it's like a dinner party with 'friends' you secretly hate. With her daughter Emma and the others ( "it's not my place to say … If you really care, then it's your place to find things out" (pg. 59) "it was her habit, on occasion, to toss out nets of accusation just to see what she could drag in" (pg.
With the dominant Aurora, it's like a weekend with the most clichéd mother-in-law ( "on the whole, men who stood in awe of her were even worse than men who didn't" (pg. The book is a parade of WASP wankery: the characters spend all their time belittling each other or cheating on each other, and, with no self-awareness, criticise others for doing the same to them. They are all well-drawn, and McMurtry can't help but write well (for one thing, the book's too easy to read to ever become boring), but the reader is not in pleasant company here. McMurtry has proved, in much better books, that he can truly inhabit his characters – young, old, male, female, 19th-century or contemporary – which is why it's a shame that in Terms of Endearment none of them are likeable (with the exception of Rosie, though I hated that she so easily allows herself to become a doormat). She keeps Larry McMurtry's miscalculated whirligig spinning through sheer force of will. Aurora grates on the reader for the longest time, until the penny drops about halfway through the book that everyone else is just as wretched, self-centred, tawdry, obnoxious and arrogant as she is, and then you begin to enjoy her ruthless dismissals of them. 6), the novel is oriented around the overbearing, outspoken Aurora and her relationship with her adult daughter Emma and a circle of rather pathetic male suitors. Described in the author's somewhat defensive preface – never a good sign – as a 'social comedy' (pg. Trust Aurora Greenway, who speaks the line quoted above, to cut the slightly silly and superfluous Terms of Endearment to its core. "Relations on this block are certainly getting soap-opera-ish." (pg.
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