Books like this reveal my inadequacies as a book reviewer.

You see, there are novels, and there are romances. I’m not speaking here of love stories, but rather of romances in the classic sense of the term: a book-length tale involving imaginary characters, usually in a remote time and place, and involving adventure, heroics, or mystery. A novel, by contrast, is a book-length tale involving imaginary characters in a realistic setting. There’s another distinction I’ve found useful. A romance is about its plot: a series of events, external to the characters, and often leading up to a happy ending. A novel, by contrast, is about internals: about what’s going on inside the characters. The action may be minimal.

It’s possible, of course, to combine the two, and write a book with both significant and enjoyable externals and significant and meaningful internals, but usually one or the other predominates. When I first encountered Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin novels, for example, I was frequently non-plussed when I reached the end of a volume—he often seems to stop almost in the middle of the action. At the end of one book, for example, Aubrey, Maturin, and crew are shipwrecked in the middle South Pacific. Why stop there?

On re-reading, I discovered that each of O’Brian’s books has two stories going on: the big bold romance, usually centered on Jack Aubrey and his exploits, and the smaller, interior story, usually centered on Stephen Maturin. And it’s the latter, the interior story, that determines when the book is over. O’Brian’s novels are, in fact, novels, not romances, though they undeniably have strong romantic elements.

Now, most “novels” that I read are, in fact, romances. Most books I have reviewed over the years are, in fact, romances. I understand romances. Romances are about what they seem to be about.

And every once in a while I run into a genuine novel, and enjoy it…and when it comes time to review it, I’m not sure what to say. I can talk about the externals—the setting, the premise, the initial conflict—but I’m not generally sure that the conflict I see is the most important one. And sometimes, the plot almost seems to be beside the point.

So what does all this have to do with Lonesome Dove? Everything. McMurtry’s book is a genuine novel set in a strongly romantic locale: the wild west. How do I know it’s a novel? Because I enjoyed it, but it doesn’t make sense as a romance. That means that there’s more going on than I’m quite aware of.

The plot is remarkably simple. Two retired Texas Rangers are running a livery stable in the south Texas town of Lonesome Dove, mostly for lack of anything better to do. Looking for a change, they gather up a herd of cattle and drive them north to Montana, looking to be the first cattlemen in the territory. Along the way there’s considerable incident: cattle rustling, horse-thieving, murder, pursuit, stampedes, sandstorms, thunderstorms, grasshopper storms, love, death, birth, gentleness, brutality, horses, cowboys, prostitutes, competent men, weak men, copeless men, copeless women, competent women, villains,….I could go on and on.

But the characters don’t serve the plot; the plot serves the characters. And the characters are undeniably interesting. Some of them I liked thoroughly; others I liked despite themselves. Some of them I didn’t like at all, but then, I wasn’t supposed to.

I enjoyed it, and stayed up late a number of nights reading it (it’s a long ‘un). But still and all, I’m not sure what to make of it all. There’s a lot of incident, and considerable to-ing and fro-ing, but in a book like this the most important action is within the characters, and though I can see change within them (some of it fatal) I’m not sure what McMurtry was trying to say.

McMurtry has written a fair number of books, including three others in the “Lonesome Dove” series, one that follows Lonesome Dove and two that precede it. I’m expecting to get to them all over the next few weeks or months.