Patrick Fitzpatrick is a former army Captain, a tank commander, recently returned to the family farm. He gets tossed in jail a bit for fighting when he’s not breaking horses. It’s not certain which he’s talking about when he thinks “By your late thirties the ground has begun to grow hard. It grows harder and harder until the day that it admits you.” Perhaps life itself.

Patrick’s pessimism is confirmed by his sister’s suicide on the day their estranged mother visits with her new family. He falls into a tragic relationship with the wife of a blustery Oklahoma oil tycoon who is actually financed by her. It ends badly.

I’ve never sensed nihilism in McGuane’s writing but it’s here, along with a touch of pessimism. It’s still a great novel. ( )

McGuane's books remind me of Hemingway, if Hemingway wrote primarily about Cowboys, men have trouble growing old,much less growing up, and Montana. For me at least his books remain readable in the 21st century unlike much of Hemingway. ( )

When a new New Yorker magazine comes in and I see it has a story in it by [[Thomas McGuane]] I think "Yay!" I know I will read it with fascination and not be disappointed. McGuane's territory is ranch country in the northwest of the US, rural folk who maybe have become suburbanites a little unwillingly or vice versa and small town life and people who have somehow lost the thread and drink more than they should. There's an authenticity, and a stubborn and eccentric intelligence and wit in the writing and in the people he writes about that makes all of his work intriguing and rich for me. The main character in [Nobody's Angel] is Captain Patrick Fitzpatrick, 4th generation ranch family in Montana recently in charge of minding a tank on a US base in Germany, now home again, somewhere in his very early 30's I'm guessing and clearly lost. A beautiful woman, smart about horses, turns up with her oil rich and very strange husband on a nearby ranch and the fun begins. The plot is really just a device to hang character revelation and gorgeous description of the ranch, horses and the like. Sad things happen, terrible choices get made, it becomes apparent that the Fitzpatrick ranch is in its last days..... Someone asks Patrick "What about running your beautiful ranch?" and he replies, Got my doubts there, too. I'd like to just see to the horses, but it ought to be farmed up quite a bit more. I always thought farming was a highly evolved form of mowing the lawn." For all the family has been in the area for a hundred years and more, they have always stayed apart and different: Catholic and smart, very good-looking (that's a guess) and wild, they have never achieved respectability or the status of steady responsible work, even though it is clearly recognized that they are great horse trainers. Patrick loves the ranch, loves horses, is competent but there is too much history, and worse, no structure, too much here that fatally distracts him from his good intentions and his own wild perverse streak and he yearns for the comfort, routine and safety of his tank, and the regular habits of Europeans; it is a matter of how matters will play out, and affection for this mixed up person that keeps your reading. **** 1/2 ( )

Former tank captain Patrick Fitzpatrick returns from Germany to run the family ranch with his grandfather. His father is dead, and his sister is a victim of the family's apparent hereditary mental illness. Fitzpatrick himself is an alcoholic who suffers from "sadness for no reason." He seems to have no raison d'etre, until he falls in love -- but the object of his affection just happens to be married.

The first of McGuane's novels set in Montana, Nobody's Angel is quieter and more rueful than anything that preceded it. His prose fireworks aren't entirely gone, but they're much diminished. Gone is the comedy. Nobody's Angel is perhaps his bleakest work.

It also stands as one of his best. Although some readers will be put off by the novel's pessimistic tone, Fitzpatrick emerges as a sympathetic figure. The characters are sharply drawn, the writing is flawless, and the conclusion devastating -- McGuane's writing here has, for the first time, real emotional depth. This remains among my favourite McGuane novels, even if it is his least optimistic.