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The Crossing (The Border Trilogy #2)

4.07 of 5 stars 4.07 · rating details · 12,755 ratings · 945 reviews

Following All the Pretty Horses in Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy is a novel whose force of language is matched only by its breadth of experience and depth of thought.

In the bootheel of New Mexico hard on the frontier, Billy and Boyd Parham are just boys in the years before the Second World War, but on the cusp of unimaginable events. First comes a trespassing Indian and...more

Hardcover, 426 pages

Published June 7th 1994 by Knopf

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Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West by Cormac McCarthy

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown

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Sep 21, 2011 Marco Tamborrino rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

È il dolore ad addolcire ogni dono.

Grazie, Cormac McCarthy. Grazie all'infinito. Hai scritto il libro della mia vita. E ti chiedo scusa se lo chiamo libro. Ti chiedo scusa per quelli che lo hanno disprezzato e lo disprezzeranno. Perdonali, perché non sanno quello che fanno. Io non posso fare altro che inchinarmi davanti a tanta capacità letteraria. Non posso far altro che piangere sapendo che un autore ancora vivente ha prodotto questo libro. Sapendo che ha scritto queste pagine, che non è stato...more

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Nov 30, 2009 Jonathan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2009

For fans of McCarthy's earlier work, All The Pretty Horses is something of a shock. That novel is named after a lullaby and that's essentially what it is for most of the novel, soothing and calming compared to the black views of his previous work. It presents a life lived in a straight line by someone who, if he doesn't have everything figured out, is at least at peace with what he thinks he knows and is confident in how to live his life, and while the novel ends with some disappointments for Jo...more For fans of McCarthy's earlier work, All The Pretty Horses is something of a shock. That novel is named after a lullaby and that's essentially what it is for most of the novel, soothing and calming compared to the black views of his previous work. It presents a life lived in a straight line by someone who, if he doesn't have everything figured out, is at least at peace with what he thinks he knows and is confident in how to live his life, and while the novel ends with some disappointments for John Grady Cole, he is still a man far from anxiety or despair.

All The Pretty Horses is presented very straightforwardly, mirroring Cole's view of his own life. It's no surprise it won the National Book Award, had a large readership, and went on to be filmed. It's exciting, romantic, beautiful and its success is well deserved.

While I hardly think anyone is misreading All The Pretty Horses by reading McCarthy in the same way as one would read McMurtry, The Crossing complicates the previous novel considerably. The novel follows protagonist Billy Parham as he makes various border crossings (US-Mexico) for purpose, for revenge, for tasks he feels he just must do. McCarthy starts many potentially straightforward plots for Billy, but all of them lead to wandering and despair. The Crossing, more so than the previous novel in the Border Trilogy, is about how we make stories out of our lives, and not just to forget, to ignore, to skew or to give false hope (see mostly anything by Ishiguro for excellent novels pertaining to these themes more particularly) but every single day as the world is made new and we have to make stories for any sense of continuity in our lives. John Grady Cole's story was grand because he thought of himself as in a love story, as a white hat, as a do-gooder outlaw. He had constant faith in God and in the reality of his world.

Billy Parham, granted, has less to romanticize in his life, less to make him believe in some order. Though he tries. He gives himself up to a self-spun plot to return a she-wolf to the mountains of Mexio. He gives himself up to a revenge plot. He even tries to join World War II. Yet Billy can find no comforting narrative. The novel is made up of these disappointments, this more 'naturally' unfolding raw lifestuff, but even that 'real' story, while perhaps not conventional is ultimately found to be just as far from truth as Cole's story, just as written by Billy's heart. In Billy's wanderings, Mexicans and gypsies spin tale after tale about the way the world is made, fate contrived, reason thwarted. Their tales are many, but there thesis are similar if not the same: "To even see aright is effort...It is the history that each man makes alone out of what is left to him. Bits of wreckage. Some bones. The words of the dead. How make a world of this? How live in that world once made?".

The novel is amazing and while not everyone who loved All The Pretty Horses should continue on to The Crossing, they can expect the same gorgeous writing (McCarthy's prose style alone would force me to read all of his books even if he had nothing to say), and the same simple thrill of 'what happens'. There is the added bonus of more philosophizing and an increased presence of 'Weird Mexico' for the lack of a better term. If you have read Under the Volcano you know just what I'm talking about, if not, think manic carnival callers, and traveling opera singers, and tarantulas, and blind men whose eyes have been sucked out in prison. Do not expect such a straightforward story or anything approaching a happy ending. The Crossing is perhaps my favorite McCarthy novel to date. I'm taking a very short McCarthy break but hope to delve into Cities of the Plain very shortly. (less)

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Aug 06, 2007 Joe Briggs rated it 5 of 5 stars

The Crossing is an astonishing book, more downbeat than All the Pretty Horses, yet not as bleak as the likes of Blood Meridian, it is a sprawling coming-of-age tale filled with moments of beauty and sorrow. The descriptions are as beautiful as anything Cormac McCarthy writes, the action is sparse but nailbiting when it comes and the characters are brilliantly realised. There are moments when the book lags but whenever this happens you can be assured that within a couple of pages McCarthy will co...more

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Sep 02, 2012 Sandra aka Sleo rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: ebook, historical

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Jul 25, 2008 Ava rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: people that like westerns or just like simple, uncluttered story-telling

Recommended to Ava by: no one - i found it on a bookshelf on deployment

this book has some of my favorite qualities: written in simple prose the way people (in that time and setting) would really think and speak, the characters are multi-layered and complex - like real people (not all good or all bad - so it's an "adult" book - not a children's book), the situations are easy to relate to for the most part (even if your not a white cowboy from the southwest), everything doesn't turn out rosey and happy - there's good and bad, happy and sad and what i like most: there...more

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Dec 15, 2007 Daryn rated it 3 of 5 stars

Of the three McCarthy novels I've read so far, this is my favorite. The story is more compelling than in Blood Meridian and there are none of the purple passages that I recall from my reading of All the Pretty Horses years ago. With this book, McCarthy's fictional world becomes more complex in terms of the balance of good and evil. Yes, there are cold-blooded killers and thieves who commit gruesome acts of violence, but there are also numerous characters--many of them poor gypsies and Mexican In...more

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Jun 08, 2008 Frank rated it 2 of 5 stars

Alice Munro said in an interview that our lives begin as straightforward stories with the typical arc of fiction, but that as we go on living they become strange, experimental narratives, convoluted and difficult to interpret. It seems to me that's what's happening in this second volume of the Border Trilogy. Volume One was pretty straightforward, taut and clear in its construction. It told a story of a young man's searing introduction to the adult world. Volume Two does the same--with a differe...more

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Oct 14, 2010 Jeremy added it

Shelves: american-fiction, cormac-mccarthy

Comparisons between this and All the Pretty Horses seem inevitable. Here we have another buldingsroman: a teenage cowboy who rides south into the Mexican frontier, coming of age through scenes of privation and violence. But Billy Parham's journey has a a peculiarly mystical quality all its own. He keeps meeting these extremely odd people out in the wilderness who feel the need to explain to him, in deliriously long, wide-ranging monologues, their gnostically inclined ideas of God, History, Man,...more

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Jul 05, 2011 Sarah rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: western, great-american-novel

It makes me a little sad to rate this so low, because there are certain parts of the book that I loved ... certain passages that were so breathtaking, I've already reread them a few times over. While part 1 was really excellent, especially the ending, I mostly found this book a chore to read. Not a whole lot of plot, more of a meandering journey meeting random people who give soliloquies lasting several pages. A lot of philosophizing, which fortunately was often not so esoteric and could be pers...more

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Jun 24, 2012 Claire McAlpine rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

With Cormac McCarthy its always a case of I liked the story and I really liked the language, I like the way he writes but it is true he has a pessimistic nature and so its difficult to be much more exuberant about a novel whose major theme is futility. But I do love to read his stories - although I'm not tempted by 'Blood Meridian' due to the violence (and the recurring comments that agree they couldn't make sense of that aspect). Since I'm an optimist and theres no half star option I'm going to...more

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Mar 29, 2013 Mike rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites

Cormac McCarthy writes perfectly, and given the nature of his works and the arguments they put forth about transience and the worlds as they cohere between the dead and the living, I cannot imagine a form or delivery more in unity with its message than his immediate description void of punctuation as told in the past tense. What better mode could there be to emphasize that which is always passing, always ephemeral and beyond us, than by eschewing the internal monologues of the characters and ins...more Cormac McCarthy writes perfectly, and given the nature of his works and the arguments they put forth about transience and the worlds as they cohere between the dead and the living, I cannot imagine a form or delivery more in unity with its message than his immediate description void of punctuation as told in the past tense. What better mode could there be to emphasize that which is always passing, always ephemeral and beyond us, than by eschewing the internal monologues of the characters and instead showing us who they are by what they do - in detail - in between the passing days and nights, in between the moments in the country where they mount a horse and gaze up at the array of colors passing in the firmament. What better way to crush the arrogant presumption of permanence than to more or less walk away from the internal monologue of the character? Such expository ticker-tape is not warranted here, and certainly out of place.

This is not to say Billy Parham and Boyd do not have rich, internal lives. They do, and we know that they do. While McCarthy does not dwell terribly much on their thoughts, there is empathy, sympathy, recognition. When Billy says to Boyd that he's all he's got, it's completely gut-wrenching and powerful. It is told without the ceremony of elaborating on Billy's internal turmoil. It is told without long dramatic ellipses as if to emphasize Billy's stammering over his feelings. It is given to us in words, and it passes, yet it illuminates so much of his being. Billy and Boyd's pasts and presents are so thoughtfully drawn and conveyed by the timing and means by which they perform the actions they perform, the deeds they choose (or not choose) to oblige, and in the manner in which they converse about plans. Their rich lives are not spoon-fed to us at length. They are subliminally granted through action; we know them by watching them as we watch others, and when there is a moment with an emotional core, the connection and identifying bond is much stronger and more beautiful than the mourning of any character in a Franzen novel. The Crossing makes any dallying in the over-elaborate cerebral neuroses of people as jumping-off points for connection and rationale seem downright amateur. An immense amount of empathy and understanding is cultivated - impossibly - by studying Billy's means of tying together the hindlegs of a wolf.

When the characters ride through the country, McCarthy puts them within a greater context, always ensuring that their loci is not within their relationship with the world as if at odds, but that they are integrated into the great pattern. They are migrating north and south under the passing suns and many moons. They dream, they wake, they have meticulously deliberated rituals for their horses. The hackamores, the ropes, the Spanish. It is meant to emphasize that the world asserts itself more broadly beyond the people that cross through it. Internal rumination - and conflicting with it - seems to pit itself against the crux of much of literature's point: that we are all ephemeral beings participating in a deeper inclusive core that we only seem to live as if it were caricatured in our hearts. We cannot bear witness to the world; we can only editorialize on some of the phantasmagoria of it all. McCarthy's execution here makes multitudes of other similar-thinking fiction seem downright hypocritical.

The lack of punctuation in McCarthy's contractions blur the demarcation between the language - the idol, the representation - and the principal thing which has occurred. This is a theme that preoccupies him to the point of having Billy Parham look at a gypsy's daguerrotypes near the narrative's end. It gives it a cinematic immediacy and rushes the principle of the thing forward rather than trying to capture the world within the ceremonies of language. The form and content are so philosophically unified and well-stratified that I am ill-advised to hear out those skeptical of McCarthy's masterfulness.

And yet it is the present, immediate tense - as leaves change and the onslaught of "and" sentences gives the story a procedural flow - that pushes it all forward. It keeps things going, riveting, and makes it difficult to pace one's self against the flow. Again, pacing oneself with the molly-coddling of other tales is not a luxury that can be thematically afforded here. This is a book that deals with the absolute and momentary changes of the world that passes us by beyond our control; it is required that this feeling be embedded somehow into the means by which that message is delivered. What better way to propel the reader forward by removing the markings of pause, and pushing the action through a simultaneously present-past paradigm. These are events that have transpired, but were moments before. They are bits and bones of a world that no longer remains; ephemeral, immediate moments gone, but lived. So it is all bristling, and alive, but the moment is over and past immediately. This is the nature of life: present and past are virtually concurrent as we live it.

The Crossing is certainly the greatest at something, but I'm not sure what yet. If it's the greatest Cormac McCarthy novel, or simply just the greatest...it's not really fleshing out, but it is a form of greatness that pushes forward and pushes forward. Its pages are saturated, teeming with its own effortless transcendence. McCarthy is not strictly a descendant of Faulkner by any means. This is a man who can call the most elaborate notions of descent to severe scrutiny. A masterpiece.(less)

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Oct 12, 2012 Ginny rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: america, romanzi

Se ci si pensa, gli strumenti a disposizione di uno scrittore, o aspirante tale, si possono essenzialmente schematizzare in una prosa fluente e una storia da raccontare; e, come complemento, dialoghi credibili e ambientazioni suggestive, attenzione ai particolari e precisa caratterizzazione dei personaggi.
Il grande scrittore, però, possiede un’arma in più, ricevuta in dono da madre natura o, se si preferisce, per intercessione divina, ovvero una sorta di “fiammella” capace di imprimere animazio...more

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Nov 22, 2011 Simona Bartolotta rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: narrativa-contemporanea

Se la gente conoscesse la storia della propria vita, quanti sceglierebbero di viverla?

Ad essere sincera, fino a tre secondi fa non ero neppure convinta sul voto da dare a questo Oltre il confine.
Ad essere anzi sincera proprio fino in fondo, non se sono certa neppure ora. Ragion per cui urge un'analisi dei sì e dei no:

Perché dare tre stelline:
- E' lento, non cattura;
- Quando ti fermi a riflettere sulla storia non puoi fare a meno di pensare che 1) il protagonista va a culo incontrando ogni tre passi persone magnificamente buone che lo ospitano, lo sfamano, e gli raccontano storie di cui a lui non frega nulla; 2) il protagonista ha una sfiga pazzesca perché fatti altri tre passi si imbatte in un inconveniente rappresentato nella maggior parte dei casi da banditi di vario genere, la qual cosa lo spinge a cercare di nuovo ospitalità preso sante persone varie ed eventuali.
Ovvio che queste due impressioni di annullano a vicenda rendendoti più confuso di quanto tu già non sia;
- L'infinita distanza che il lettore avverte durante la lettura. Veramente, specie dalla metà in poi, mi ha trasmesso poco o nulla. E' un freddezza che in un certo senso ferisce, una freddezza che sfiora quasi -non so come chiamarlo- lo snobbismo? E' come se l'autore ti presentasse la sua storia, con tutti questi avvenimenti ricchi di significati eccetera eccetera, e ti dicesse "Senti gioiellino, qua c'è la mia storia dall'elevatissimo contenuto morale-spirituale. Se non capisci che vuol dire sei un idiota." Perché forse è stato questo, non l'ho capito. Mi pento e mi dolgo. Perdonatemi, io e McCarthy non andiamo d'accordo.

Passiamo ora alle cosine belle. Motivi per puntare al quattro:
- L'infinita bellezza della prima parte. E' qualcosa di bellissimo. I ragazzo e la lupa, la lupa e il ragazzo. Se McCarty si fosse fermato l' sarebbe stato un cinque assicurato:
- La grande raffinatezza e il grande fascino di certune descrizioni;
- L'immediatezza e a forza che l'autore riesce ad imprimere a ciò che narra (quando si impegna). Cioé, non so se mi spiego, ci sono scene di una bellezza e di una tristezza incredibili. La maggior parte della prima parte, vabbé e quello l'abbiamo detto. Ma poi, la scena finale. Signori miei, quanto ho amato la scena finale. Le ultime tre pagine mi hanno fatto un po' ricredere su tutto il libro, lo ammetto.

Tiriamo le somme: McCarthy, non è che tu mi abbia convinto tanto. Il distacco e la freddezza del tuo libro mi hanno fatto male. Duro come il ghiaccio. Impenetrabile.
Facciamo quattro sulla fiducia.(less)

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May 16, 2011 Kathryn rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: historical-fiction, western

The second novel in McCarthy’s Border Trilogy is not a sequel to All the Pretty Horses, but rather a parallel coming-of-age story. Billy Parham is a sixteen year old boy living on a ranch in New Mexico. When a wolf suddenly begins killing his family’s cattle, Billy’s father sets him with the task of trapping the wolf. A game of wits between boy and beast ensues, as the wolf repeatedly digs up the traps that have been set for her. When Billy finally outsmarts the wolf and catches her, he feels su...more

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Jul 14, 2011 James rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, lincoln-park-group, u-of-chicago, trilogy

"He turned the horse and set out along the road south, shadowless in the gray day, riding with the shotgun unscabbarded across the bow of the saddle. For the enmity of the world was newly plain to him that day and cold and inameliorate as it must be to all who have no longer cause except themselves to stand against it. (p 331)

The Crossing is filled with moments like that described above telling of Billy Parham's movements south and north through a country that seems to be perpetually gray, with...more "He turned the horse and set out along the road south, shadowless in the gray day, riding with the shotgun unscabbarded across the bow of the saddle. For the enmity of the world was newly plain to him that day and cold and inameliorate as it must be to all who have no longer cause except themselves to stand against it. (p 331)

The Crossing is filled with moments like that described above telling of Billy Parham's movements south and north through a country that seems to be perpetually gray, with little room for the sun. This is the second novel of The Border Trilogy. In it we are introduced to Billy Parham who is sixteen years old as the story begins, recently moved to New Mexico and fated to travel to Mexico and back - it follows Billy's travels and travails as he crosses and recrosses the border. These begin with Billy and his father setting traps for a she-wolf which has been marauding and killing their sheep. Billy is able to catch it in one of his traps, however instead of killing it he decides to take it to Mexico presumably to let it loose. It is with this act that his adventures begin and, operating without any apparent overarching aim, Billy who is later joined by his younger brother Boyd, set out on a series of quests, all of which are doomed to failure. While the travels of Billy make up the action of the novel, like All the Pretty Horses, the first novel in the trilogy, this novel is more about larger themes of good and evil, fate and responsibility, and the nature of friendship and relationships in this gray and desolate world. Related to these themes permeating the novel is the characters' ability or inability to see the world around them.

"Between their acts and their ceremonies lies the world and in this world the storms blow and the trees twist in the wind and all the animals that God has made go to and fro yet this world men do not see. They see the acts of their own hands or they see that which they name and call out to one another but the world between is invisible to them." (p 46)

This was related by an "old man" that Billy met as he was headed to Mexico on his first trip. Their are several characters like this whom Billy meets on his travels who relay stories and make important-sounding pronouncements. These along with the narrator raise issues that Billy may or may not understand. Among these comments are those about story-telling itself which may be key to understanding Billy's world and ours. McCarthy's odd narrational devices, his inimitable use of metaphor set against a background of realistic detail makes this volume the equal of the first in the trilogy. The story is bleak and narrates a tale of preservation in a world filled with enmity, yet it is a world that has many kind people and one in which Billy survives to see visions of unusual days and nights and perhaps a future.
(less)

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Feb 09, 2008 Jenny rated it 3 of 5 stars

Recommended to Jenny by: Pete and the book club!

This was a fairly bleak read, the story of this boy's life as he journeys in and out of Mexico and New Mexico. But I walked away with a pretty Zen feeling, reminded that life has ups and downs and all sorts of surprise consequences, some good and some bad. It reminded me of my favorite quote from the Tao te Ching, "Things arise and she lets them come, things disappear and she lets them go." As he travels, he listens to older people share their thoughts on life, and here's my favorite part of the...more

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Dec 16, 2007 Peter Stocker rated it 5 of 5 stars

On par with Coetzee’s Dusklands and Life and Times of Michael K. And that’s about the highest compliment a book can get from me. Although he probably leaves us with as little tangible hope as Coetzee, the sense of gentle desolation McCarthy conveys gives the loss that permeates the book an intangibly beauty. (In fact it’s largely about living with the intangibility of lost beauty.) At the same time it’s nothing less than devastating, all the more so because he never loses his steadfast commitmen...more

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Sep 28, 2007 MikeS rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: mimetic-fiction, literary

After finishing All the Pretty Horses, I felt (maybe somewhat unjustly) that the bar of expectation had been set extremely high. I realize that some (most?) people have a particular favorite part of McCarthy’s Border Trilogy, but I’d be hard-pressed to choose one after reading The Crossing. However, the change was noticeable and I was relieved that the second book wasn’t just a rehashing of the first in theme and tone. The Crossing does maintain the elegant, sprawling prose contrasted by McCarth...more

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May 23, 2010 Katy rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Everyone

Shelves: fiction

If you enjoyed ALL THE PRETTY HORSES which is the first book in Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy, you will be equally enchanted by THE CROSSING.
The first time I tried this, 10 years ago, I couldn't get into it, but inspired by THE ROAD which I read this summer, I decided to try again and have been amply rewarded.
McCarthy is an eloquent writer. This is the story of a young American boy and his brother, who go to Mexico in an attempt to find the horses stolen from their ranch. They do find th...more

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Nov 26, 2007 Lara rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: own, 2007

My impression of this one mirrors many of the reviews I've read:

The first section with Billy and the wolf is stunning and surely among the best descriptions of man's relationship with the wild in literature.

The middle section meanders. I felt I needed a map to keep track of the brothers' wanderings in and out of Mexico, and many of their encounters with minor characters were unsatisfying. It was difficult to believe Boyd's connection with "the girl" when she wasn't even given a name.

The final t...more

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May 29, 2012 Betty rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012

I really loved parts of this, but long sections of it meandered without any sense of direction, and maybe it was too long a book period to sustain that kind of meandering. I've also been distracted lately, and it's very likely I didn't give those long passages the attention they deserved. In pieces, it's beautiful and heartbreaking, and a tragic bildungsroman where coming-of-age means losing everything that might be a connection to humanity or to the self. As a whole I struggled with it, but I f...more

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Apr 20, 2010 Matt rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites, west

Absolutely wonderful. McCarthy at his best. Billy is a well-rounded character, capable, restrained, loving and sympathetic. The land, as always, is a character of its own, the US/Mexico border specifically. Mexico is another world, a no-mans-land, an alien land. Billy and Boyd are met with constant challenges and difficulty, and characters that come in and out and philosophize and advise with their tales-within-a-tale. The prose is characteristically inventive, fluid, pointedly descriptive. Prob...more

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Jun 20, 2012 Jonathan Loja added it

Although I have never touched anything by Hubert Selby Jr., this is by far the most depressing book I've ever read.
And it was a challenging one, at 400+ pages, the novel drawls on with all the elements for excitement but McCarthy ultimately allows the majority of them to fizzle out. Despite the length and the frustrating amount of untranslated spanish dialogue, I still enjoyed the novel quite a bit.
The reward is truly in the loneliness endured by Billy Parham.
The Crossing takes place over thre...more

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Apr 09, 2013 Amy rated it 4 of 5 stars

I was first introduced to Cormac McCarthy via a summer assignment for my AP English class. Most of my fellow classmates hated "The Road", but I personally loved it. It took me a while, but I decided to read some of his other works, and I'm very glad I did. "All The Pretty Horses" is an excellent novel, but "The Crossing" takes on a life of its own beyond the story itself.

To be honest, I found myself drifting off while reading this book, but I think it actually contributed to my reading of it. M...more

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Mar 28, 2013 Paul Clayton rated it 5 of 5 stars

I came back to this nightly, enjoyed it very much. It is moving and vivid. Given all the changes the Nanny State is institutionalizing -- rubberizing playgrounds, outlawing dodge ball because some kid might get hurt, giving the whole team a trophy so as not to hurt any one kid's feelings -- it's hard to believe there was a time when young Americans midway through their teens were so... mature, I can't think of any other word that applies, and ballsy, yeah, young American males with balls. Surfin...more

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Mar 07, 2013 Joabany Carreto rated it 3 of 5 stars

I read this book called "The Crossing" by Cormac McCarthy this book is about this sixteen year old teen named Billy Parham who likes trapping wolfs because he likes animals that come form across the Mexican border. One day he decides to release the wolf but instead of just letting it go he goes with it and takes the wolf by himself to his home and leaves without telling his parents. After he took the wolf and went home he realized that he has been gone for a couple of months then he does not fin...more

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Feb 14, 2013 Jadi Campbell rated it 5 of 5 stars

Some books transcend their genres, and this is one of them. I don't usually read what I'd loosely call Westerns; The Crossing was a gift from a friend. The style is so unusual and unique that I found myself appreciating the book simply for McCarthy's spare writing. And the story is so sad and so truly realized that halfway through I had to put it down and just think about what he'd written. That night at dinner I began to tell my husband about The Crossing. "I'm reading an amazing book now," I s...more

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Feb 08, 2013 Marit rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: modern-fiction

I liked this book less than the first because of its disjointed story-telling and the long, long, long end of the book. McCarthy likes to sink into the detail of the present moment of his stories but often that makes for either long-winded segments or repetitive moments. So much of the novel is given to Billy Parham's wanderings and like any wanderer, he loops, backtracks, meanders, etc. Especially toward the end, there is no straight shot for Parham and McCarthy's storytelling meanders as much...more

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Jan 27, 2013 Bonnie rated it 5 of 5 stars

Jesse finished the last two pages of The Crossing the morning we left Barcelona and placed the book in my hands. I read nonstop on the ten hour flight from Barcelona to Miami.

This book raises the bar on all subsequent reading. The tone is powerful, the language stunning. Moving doesn’t begin to touch the lingering impressions. I yearned to have an English dictionary by my side as I continually encountered words I’d never seen before. Conversations in Spanish abound and the interplay of the two l...more

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Jan 03, 2013 C.w. Smith rated it 5 of 5 stars

All the Pretty Horses is a better book if you're asking me which was a more entertaining book. But if that's not your question, and yours is instead which is a more profound book, then the answer too changes.

Like all great McCarthy novels, The Crossing forces you to come to your own conclusions about the specious "Why" and "What" questions. If you ask me why this is a better book than All the Pretty Horses, I'd say that it's because that book was something like a romance that met a Bildungsroma...more All the Pretty Horses is a better book if you're asking me which was a more entertaining book. But if that's not your question, and yours is instead which is a more profound book, then the answer too changes.

Like all great McCarthy novels, The Crossing forces you to come to your own conclusions about the specious "Why" and "What" questions. If you ask me why this is a better book than All the Pretty Horses, I'd say that it's because that book was something like a romance that met a Bildungsroman on the road and tried to strike up a friendship. It was a great friendship, but tragedy won out, as it always does eventually. That book kept me up late to see what would happen next.

What The Crossing did was not that, because I rarely cared what happened next. There's a plot, and characters, and things change for both. They didn't keep me up though. The Crossing kept me up because it tackled big ideas I like to see tackled. I read this novel to be a prolonged study of self and other. McCarthy took a number of angles and, fitting to the subject, never took too direct an approach. Part of what makes the idea so big is that is instructs everything we say, think, and do. And since there's no out from the condition we exist in, i.e., the condition of existing as solitary selves that experience others as extensions of ourselves or as nothing at all...

...Nah, I won't continue that thought. Unlike McCarthy, I can't handle these topics as gracefully as they deserve. That's why we read McCarthy. He is without doubt the greatest living writer, if not for his use of language and imagery than for his power to render spiritual/inner vistas. For that reason alone, even if he wasn't so talented in so many other ways.

Some of the conversations in this book bent my brain over and peeked into the Yekhidah hiding underneath. That's what it felt like anyway. Maybe I just need to read more philosophy, I dunno. But either way, this book did it for me. I'll need to take a breather before I hit the last installment of the trilogy, but once I gain my bearings, maybe read a graphic novel or two, I'll be back. (less)

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About Cormac McCarthy

Cormac McCarthy is an American novelist and playwright. He has written ten novels in the Southern Gothic, western, and post-apocalyptic genres and has also written plays and screenplays. He received the Pulitzer Prize in 2007 for The Road, and his 2005 novel No Country for Old Men was adapted as a 2007 film of the same name, which won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

His earlier Blood M...more

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Books by Cormac McCarthy

All the Pretty Horses (The Border Trilogy, #1)

Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West

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Quotes from The Crossing

“Deep in each man is the knowledge that something knows of his existence. Something knows, and cannot be fled nor hid from.” — 133 people liked it

“Nor does God whisper through the trees. His voice is not to be mistaken. When men hear it they fall to their knees and their souls are riven and they cry out to Him and there is no fear but only wildness of heart that springs from such longing...” — 50 people liked it

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The Crossing (The Border Trilogy #2)

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