All the Pretty Horses: Border Trilogy 1 (National Book Award Winner)

This is the second time I've read "All the Pretty Horses," the previous time being eleven years ago. Now as then, I found it superb, as many others have done. McCarthy's prose is stunning. I could wish he used quotation marks and a few more speech tags, but he writes so well he gets away with it. Many of the paragraphs are poetry. Even the occasional Spanish dialogue -- which I don't speak -- is mostly intelligible. The book opens in Texas in 1949, then moves to Mexico. The main character, John Grady Cole, rode into my heart. As did the landscape and the horses. I don't intend to describe the plot, nor to say much more. It's not a soft book, nor a beach-read, but it is, to me, very fine indeed. About my reviews: I try to review every book I read, including those that I don't end up enjoying. The reviews are not scholarly, but just indicate my reaction as a reader, reading being my addiction. I am miserly with 5-star reviews; 4 stars means I liked a book very much; 3 stars means I liked it; 2 stars means I didn't like it (though often the 2-star books are very popular with other readers and/or are by authors whose other work I've loved).

There are many good reviews here about the plot and the character development, read them. I'm only going to mention why I took one star off. McCarthy has a unique style that can be hard to follow. I frequently had to re-read passages to be sure I understood them. Particularly the dialog sections can be difficult to know which character is speaking. He also throws in frequent sections in Spanish. When it's just a phrase or two I try to figure it out but when it's most of a page I just skip down. Someone said that doesn't matter but as carefully as McCarthy has chosen his words I have to think they all matter. So this is no throw away romance or crime thriller. This is a book that you have to think about what you are reading. Probably the closest thing to Moby Dick that I've read in a long time. Overall I greatly enjoyed this book and I've already ordered books 2 & 3 of the trilogy. I'll probably watch the movie too.

To say that Cormac McCarthy has a unique writing style would be a seriously gross understatement, bordering on defamatory untruth. To say that when he writes, he single handedly redefines (and improves) the English language, would be closer to the mark, and a much more worthy compliment to a man blessed with so much talent. Book one of the Border Trilogy - All The Pretty Horses - is at times hysterically funny, incredibly profound, relatively violent, moving (of course), and at times, tragic. Small parts of the book are incomprehensible, unless the reader knows native Mexican, but no large part of the story is lost or wasted on the reader who fails this particular general knowledge assessment. Two young boys (John Grady Cole and his BFF Master Lacey Rawlins) decide to leave the family land they were brought up on in search of the quintessential life for a cowboy. Along the way, they meet trouble in the shape of sixteen year old loner Blevins; trouble in the shape of a beautiful young woman looking for love; and trouble in the shape of said beautiful young woman’s very wealthy and very powerful father. Having said all of that, the story opens with a funeral. Cole’s grandfather has passed away before the story even commences, and the opening paragraph will tell the reader if they are destined to be McCarthy fans, or not. I was hooked with the opening sentence. And yes, I am a fan. This is not the first McCarthy book I have read, and I am happy to announce it wont be the last. Not by a long shot. There is beauty aplenty to be found in this book, too. You should not be surprised by that, but as an example, given the context of the story at this point (pages 72 and 73) makes this particular achievement even more remarkable. McCarthy begins here by talking about the rain, and thunder, and finishes the section off by discussing how a horse would interpret the sound of two humans retching (yes, I said, retching!) Truly brilliant stuff. So what happens to the story's principle characters? Do Cole and Lacey ride off into the sunset, hand in hand with their respective girlfriends? McCarthy books aren’t that simple. There are lessons to be learnt here, not just for the characters in the story, but for the readers, too. Reading a book crafted by this truly great individual is like blessing yourself with a college degree, majoring in nothing less than art, beauty, love, loss, hurt, death and of course, life itself. The classic saying about life’s most important lesson being the journey, not the destination, can very much be applied to this book. I think, therefore I am. I read, therefore I live. Cormac McCarthy, may your books be remembered forever.

In some respects, all epic stories owe a debt to the Odyssey. Done right, the value is in the telling, not the tale. McCarthy upholds this tradition admirably in All the Pretty Horses. John Grady and Rawlings embark on an adventure that is exciting, romantic, grueling, perplexing, tragic, poignant, and heroic. But it's not the tidal swells of this quest that makes this novel such a rewarding read. It's the minute sensations and observations that McCarthy conveys that make it such a transcendent book. "Nightfall found them in the foothills of the Sierra Encantada. They followed a dry watercourse up under a dark rincon in the rocks and picked their way over a flood barricade of boulders tumbled in the floor of the wash and emerged upon a stone tinaja in the center of which lay a shallow basin of water, perfectly round, perfectly black, where the night stars were lensed in perfect stillness." The protagonists are teenagers, so it's tempting to view this as a coming of age story, but they are already mature beyond their years. Indeed it is their mature virtues, or at least John Grady's virtues, that propel the story forward. He seems to have burst from the womb fully formed as an adult who is capable of shouldering responsibilities and hardships. Does he grow as a result of his adventure? He emerges unsullied by the pessimism born of experience, so it's hard to say what change he undergoes. And that's the conceit of McCarthy's style. The story is told almost entirely from the perspective of an outside observer. We watch John Grady and Rawlings from afar. McCarthy almost never reveals their thoughts or feelings. The reader is an objective party in this story and it is your responsibility to piece together the characters' reactions and emotions. It's an odd viewpoint, but one that is deeply satisfying if only because that objective perspective is conveyed so skillfully by McCarthy. A towering achievement in western literature.

"All the Pretty Horses" is one of the most beautifully told stories I've ever read. Not only is the writing here packed with imagery, but the textures of the words used to describe the images are as lush and as enfolding as anything F. Scott Fitzgerald ever wrote--even when McCarthy's describing the driest of desert plains, the most desolate of ruins, or the emptiest of lives. The book tells the story of two young friends who leave home in 1948 Texas to ride south into northern Mexico in search of something. What happens along the way is tragic and amusing, lovely and gripping, real and amazing. McCarthy seems to paint every scene perfectly, yet he does so using the fewest amount of words possible, and the simplest of details. "The gray and malignant dawn." "Stars falling down the long black slope of the firmament." "The shelving clouds." "Their windtattered fire." "Narrow spires of smoke standing vertically into the windless dawn so still the village seemed to hang by threads from the darkness." I often judge great ideas and great writing by the amount of envy I feel when reading them--as in the feeling of, "Man, I'd wish I'd thought of that!" Using that system of judgement, this book is one of the best I've ever read: it crippled me with jealousy. Paralyzed me. Long sentences shroud the reader in the events of every scene, and the author's trademark quote-sign-less dialogue gives every conversation a very biblical feel. I read this book out loud to my wife, and was tickled at how often she'd want to drop everything just to hear what happened next. This is the second Cormac McCarthy book I've read after the very violent "Blood Meridian," and where that book was night, this one was day. This even has a love story. If you read it though, be prepared for occasional bursts of writing so good it feels as if you've been punched in the stomach and can't speak or breathe...writing so good you'll fumble for a pen to underline words and sentences and paragraphs...writing so good you'll scan the room for anyone to read it to out loud...writing so good your own will seem forever inadequate...writing so good it will haunt you forever.

The author is good at describing a scene or a landscape, but I could have done with less of that and a little more plot.

I love McCarthy, but this book was just ok.

This was my first experience with Cormac McCarthy, and I have decided commas are in fact useless. I will no longer use them. I will also no longer worry about run-on sentences. McCarthy has freed me. I found All the Pretty Horses to be very well paced. The time period is especially compelling. The frontier is closed in America but still very much alive in Mexico. McCarthy captures Mexico beautifully, both the landscape and the people, while never flinching from the darker realities that were as present at the end of the Revolution as they are today. Corruption. Impunity. A justice system that does not pretend to be gentle. I especially liked how he highlighted the Criollo class and their descendants, particularly the large landowners in northern Mexico who were allowed to keep their land. That historical tension runs quietly under the entire novel and gives it real weight. The ending works far better than I expected. The way McCarthy ties things together, especially through the conversation with the judge, feels earned and unsettling in exactly the right way. This lands firmly in my top five favorite books. I will absolutely read more McCarthy. I will probably still misuse commas.