Reading Order
Terms of Endearment Reading Order
Terms of Endearment (1975) by Larry McMurtry is one of the great American novels about mothers and daughters — the story of Aurora Greenway, a Boston-born widow living in Houston, and her daughter Emma, who marries a junior English professor and moves to Kearney, Nebraska. Aurora is vain, controlling, funny, charming, impossible to resist, and completely unable to accept that Emma has chosen a life that is not Aurora's idea of a life. The novel traces Emma's marriage, her children, her affair, her illness, and Aurora's relationships with a series of suitors, particularly Garrett Breedlove, a hard-drinking retired astronaut who is the only man who has ever told Aurora no. Terms of Endearment is McMurtry's most emotional novel and the one that surprised readers who knew him only as a Western writer — it is set largely in Houston and Nebraska, it is about women's lives and female friendship and the complicated love between mothers and daughters, and it has a central emotional directness that his other novels approach obliquely. The novel was adapted into a hugely popular 1983 film with Shirley MacLaine and Debra Winger that won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture — one of the most successful literary adaptations in American film history.
Where to start
Terms of Endearment — any Simon & Schuster or Pocket Books paperback. The companion novel The Evening Star (1992) continues Aurora and the family's story after Terms ends; read Terms first.
Complete Terms of Endearment Book List
- 1Buy
Terms of Endearment
Larry McMurtry·1975·The novel — Aurora Greenway and Emma's relationship; Houston, Nebraska, suitors, marriage, illness; McMurtry's most emotional novel and the definitive mother-daughter story in American popular fiction. - 2Buy
The Evening Star
Larry McMurtry·1992·The companion sequel — Aurora in old age, raising Emma's children, a new suitor; the essential continuation for readers who want to know what becomes of Aurora after the events of Terms of Endearment. - 3Buy
The Last Picture Show
Larry McMurtry·1966·McMurtry's breakout novel — the companion in his Texas fiction; where Terms of Endearment is Houston and the domestic present, The Last Picture Show is small-town Texas and the Texas past. - 4Buy
Lonesome Dove
Larry McMurtry·1985·McMurtry's Pulitzer Prize-winning masterpiece — the companion in his full range; the epic Western is the opposite pole from Terms of Endearment's domestic focus, showing the scope of McMurtry's Texas world. - 5Buy
The Corrections
Jonathan Franzen·2001·Franzen's National Book Award-winning novel — the companion in American fiction about difficult family relationships; the Lambert family's dysfunction is the contemporary, more extreme version of the Aurora-Emma dynamic. - 6Buy
The Hours
Michael Cunningham·1998·Cunningham's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel — the companion in literary fiction about women's lives and the different forms female aspiration and constraint take; the three women's stories are formally and thematically parallel to McMurtry's portrait of Aurora and Emma. - 7Buy
White Noise
Don DeLillo·1985·DeLillo's National Book Award-winning novel — the companion in American fiction about domestic life, illness, and the peculiar texture of American consumer culture in the 1970s–80s; the Gladney family's suburban anxiety is the academic, paranoid version of what Terms of Endearment treats in the domestic mode. - 8Buy
Ordinary People
Judith Guest·1976·Guest's debut novel — the companion in American fiction about families under the pressure of grief and loss; the Jarrett family's breakdown after a son's death is the Midwestern version of the emotional pressure that drives the Aurora-Emma story.
Terms of Endearment — Frequently Asked Questions
What is Terms of Endearment about?
Terms of Endearment follows Aurora Greenway, a charming, impossible, funny widow living in Houston in a Victorian house full of her possessions, and her daughter Emma, who marries Flap Horton (a junior English professor whom Aurora cannot stand) and moves to Kearney, Nebraska. The novel traces Emma's marriage — Flap's affair, Emma's affair (with Sam Burns, a mild-mannered banker), Emma's children (Tommy, Danny, and Melanie), and eventually Emma's diagnosis with cancer. It also traces Aurora's relationships: she has a series of suitors, including a general, an oil man, and eventually Garrett Breedlove, a hard-drinking, womanizing retired astronaut next door who is the only man who has ever refused to be controlled by Aurora.
What is Aurora Greenway like?
Aurora Greenway is one of American fiction's great comic characters — a woman of tremendous energy, charm, and ego who uses her beauty and her formidable personality to control everyone around her. She is vain (she has mirrors everywhere and looks at herself constantly), controlling (she cannot accept that Emma has chosen a life different from what Aurora would have chosen for her), theatrical (everything that happens to her becomes a performance), and absolutely irresistible. She is also, beneath the performance, genuinely loving — her love for Emma, however expressed in maddening ways, is the novel's emotional center. McMurtry has said that Aurora is based in part on women he knew in Houston, and she has the specificity of a person who existed rather than an invented character.
Why did the film adaptation become so successful?
The 1983 film adaptation, directed by James L. Brooks and starring Shirley MacLaine (Aurora) and Debra Winger (Emma), won five Academy Awards including Best Picture and is one of the most successful literary adaptations in American film history. The film succeeded because MacLaine and Winger created a mother-daughter dynamic that was both genuinely funny (the Aurora-Garrett scenes with Jack Nicholson are among the great comic scenes in American film) and genuinely devastating when Emma's illness takes hold. The adaptation compressed and clarified the novel's sprawling domestic portrait into a more focused dramatic arc — one of the cases where the film is different from the novel in important ways but comparable in quality.
Is Terms of Endearment a comedy or a tragedy?
Terms of Endearment is both — which is why it has been so widely read and why the film adaptation succeeded so completely. The novel's first three-quarters are genuinely funny: Aurora's suitors, her relationship with Garrett, her impossible management of everyone around her, and Emma's wry commentary on her life are the comedy of a woman with too much personality for one person to contain. But the last portion, when Emma's cancer is diagnosed and progresses, is one of the most emotionally direct things McMurtry ever wrote — and the comedy and the tragedy are not separate sections but continuous, because Aurora does not become less herself when faced with Emma's illness; she becomes more herself, which is both funny and devastating.
What should I read after Terms of Endearment?
After Terms of Endearment, The Evening Star (1992) is the direct sequel, following Aurora in old age as she raises Emma's children. For McMurtry's other work, Lonesome Dove is the masterpiece and The Last Picture Show is the other essential Texas novel. For the mother-daughter tradition in American fiction, Anna Quindlen's One True Thing and Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kitteridge are important companions. For the James L. Brooks film tradition, other 1980s family dramas (Ordinary People, Kramer vs. Kramer) are important context.
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