All the Pretty Horses (Border Trilogy, Vol 1)

published	1993 by Vintage
first published	1992
binding	Paperback
isbn	0679744398 (isbn13: 9780679744399)
pages	320
literary awards	National Book Award 1992
description	Part bildungsroman, part horse opera, part meditation on courage and loyalty, this beautifully crafted novel won the National Book Award in 1992. The ...more [close] Part bildungsroman, part horse opera, part meditation on courage and loyalty, this beautifully crafted novel won the National Book Award in 1992. The plot is simple enough. John Grady Cole, a 16-year-old dispossessed Texan, crosses the Rio Grande into Mexico in 1949, accompanied by his pal Lacey Rawlins. The two precocious horsemen pick up a sidekick--a laughable but deadly marksman named Jimmy Blevins--encounter various adventures on their way south and finally arrive at a paradisiacal hacienda where Cole falls into an ill-fated romance. Readers familiar with McCarthy's Faulknerian prose will find the writing more restrained than in Suttree and Blood Meridian. Newcomers will be mesmerized by the tragic tale of John Grady Cole's coming of age.
date added	03-27-07 edit book

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yana rated it:

06/24/07

Read in January, 1999

recommended to yana by: ms. sinkler

i boycotted this book for years because of the title... it sounded too girly, and i had no desire to read a book about pretty horses, much less pretty ones. this was despite the fact that it had been first strongly recommended to me by an amazing high school english teacher who always had impeccable tastes in literature. man did i have no idea what i was missing due to my snobbish snubbery. luckily my dear friends janae and kristine mailed me a copy while i was living in Poland, in a giant birth...more i boycotted this book for years because of the title... it sounded too girly, and i had no desire to read a book about pretty horses, much less pretty ones. this was despite the fact that it had been first strongly recommended to me by an amazing high school english teacher who always had impeccable tastes in literature. man did i have no idea what i was missing due to my snobbish snubbery. luckily my dear friends janae and kristine mailed me a copy while i was living in Poland, in a giant birthday box full of top-notch used books, and i finally decided to give it a chance one cold february day when i was home sick and delirious with a 104 degree fever in the middle of the bleak polish winter. it sounds cliche but i truly think i didnt put it down from the moment i picked it up. page one pretty much tore down all my pre-conceptions about what a book could be like whose title contained the word "pretty."

Cormac McCarthy's writing is very Man-ly, with a capital M - this aint no pretty girl book. But at the same time as being incredibly Man-ly, it is unbelievably lyrical and beautiful. There were sentences that literally pained me with their beauty. The situations he describes are dark, bleak, often hopeless, yet he's able to extract gorgeousness from them and often completely knocks you down with waves of emotion. One of his greatest strengths is his ability to capture very real, raw dialogue, dialogue that never for a moment sounds like a movie script, but rather perfectly captures the minimalist grunting of men of few words. And like a fine japanese filmmaker, he captures the pauses amid the dialogue just as well. His writing reminds me most of Willam Faulkner - he'll intersperse breathless run-on sentences that take up an entire page with chapters containing a single line, and although his style mostly isnt much like Hemingway's, he does have a similar way of throwing in spanish sentences without translation - so those who dont speak the language must just assume the meaning from the context, and those who do can float almost effortlessly between the spanish and english sentences without second thought. it's one of those books that makes you want to get inside the author's head (i had a similar feeling when i read the Sound and the Fury) - who is this man? where do his thoughts come from? is this how he thinks all the time? are all this thoughts this perfectly worded and beautiful? does he have a keen understanding of the world and its minute details that the rest of us dont?
My last raving comment is that i was so affected by this book, the first in a trilogy, that i immediately set out by train to the nearest larger town to find the second installment in an english-language bookstore, and immediately devoured it once i found it, (finding it even bleaker and more depressing, if possible, yet also even more beautiful and enjoyable to read than the first), and then had someone in the States send me the third and final volume, but i was so taken by the first two, that i couldnt read the third book, being unable to accept the idea of the trilogy being over. never mind the fact that mccarthy has dozens of other books i could then enjoy - it seemed important that i save the last installment, for such a moment when i really needed to read something amazing. it gave me comfort to know that another book like these first two was out there waiting for me in the world, unread. Eight years have passed and i still havent read it. my great pleasure at this point is that once i do decide to finally read it, it's been long enough since i read the first two that really i should read them again to refresh my memory - so i'm excited to experience them all over again. but its possible i'll just never read the third, despite my intense curiosity (since in it the paths of the lead characters of the first and second finally cross). but i just like knowing it's out there, still waiting to be read. ...less

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Grant rated it:

05/19/08

Read in May, 2008

this is an instance where i wish goodreads gave rating options of half stars or quarter stars. i really liked this book, but there are parts of its makeup i feel drag the book down. this is more like a 3.75 star book for me. but anyway.

overall this is a wonderful book. the adventure is spectacular and violent and tells its story using all the senses. the plot is random and rambles from point to point, and for me it makes it more realistic. the story just moves so well. its a novel th...more this is an instance where i wish goodreads gave rating options of half stars or quarter stars. i really liked this book, but there are parts of its makeup i feel drag the book down. this is more like a 3.75 star book for me. but anyway.

overall this is a wonderful book. the adventure is spectacular and violent and tells its story using all the senses. the plot is random and rambles from point to point, and for me it makes it more realistic. the story just moves so well. its a novel that just takes you along, and you can't forsee how its going to end up. there are no neat endings to the sub plots, no real resolution to this novel. and i like that. the lives that touch the protagonists are a secret once they leave his. unlike other books, it is not about the love story between john grady and alejandra or the friendship between john grady and rawlins. or about getting in and out of mexico alive. for me its about the blind steps one takes for adventure that lead one into trouble. and how each step sets off multiple random events, events you can't control or know how they will effect you later.

mccarthy does a wonderful job writing about landscape and work: describing tools and how they feel to work with, the sound of rope and the smell of horses, and so on. and i like his limited use of punctuation. one, i think it makes the reader discern the individual voices of the characters, and therefore get to know them more. also, for me it gave the sense that there is only one voice, someone who knows john grady and rawlins or maybe is one of the two. someone is telling the reader this story, maybe over a campfire or something. and so there are no quotation marks, apostrophes, etc.

but i also found fault in the writing. at times it became too heavy, too poetic. much of the writing is slow, deliberate, and almost conservative; setting a tone that mathces the setting and mood of the characters. then at times he sticks in a few sentences or an entire paragraph of flowery, sometimes beautiful, stream of consciousness type prose. and more often than not there is no build up from the usual prose to these passages. so the flowery passages stick out awkwardly or weigh down the rest of the writing that surrounds it. in my opinion mccarthy or his editor should have struck those out first thing. hemingway said "take all your best lines out". that would have worked here. also, too much time is spent describing the main characters smoking or looking out in the distance in contemplation. now the point of view. for the most part it stays true to a distant point of view of john grady, at times zooming in more to understand his emotions. and then, when it seems to suit mccarthy to get in a detail or set up some action separate from john grady, the point of view switches to another character. the inconsistency to me would not be so great except one problem.(the rest of this will give some plot away so anyone actually awake enough to read this far might want to stop) the problem is he does not switch the point of view from john grady when the reader would most want him to, for instance when blevins is taken off alone and shot in the desert. he lets us know blevin's point of view when he is scared of the lightning, but not when he is scared shitless knowing he is being taken off alone into the desert to be shot. the pov of blevins with the lightning really doesn't add much to what john grady could ascertain from his pov. but the lack of blevin's pov at his most dramatic moment is critical, because john grady only hears it happen. if mccarthy were consistent on this point, his hand as creator would not be seen so easily. last, john grady is just too good. by the end of the book i was kind of sick of him, especially when he is talking w/ the judge at the judge's house. kind of wanted to puke.

that said, it is a good book. and the good far outweighs the bad. though i doubt i'll read the rest of the border trilogy novels, i am going to read some of his other works.
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YangYi rated it:

12/25/07

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in November, 2007

Did I tell you I read this book for high school class? After reading Anna Karenina in that same class, I still think this McCarthy book is harder to read from end to end. It’s not the Spanish conversations that get me stuck, it’s not the lack of quotations or the run-on sentences that unabashedly use “and” everywhere. It’s the absolute dryness of the narrative voice that reads like a movie script without any suggestions on emotions. The way to read this book is to have a very active ...more
Did I tell you I read this book for high school class? After reading Anna Karenina in that same class, I still think this McCarthy book is harder to read from end to end. It’s not the Spanish conversations that get me stuck, it’s not the lack of quotations or the run-on sentences that unabashedly use “and” everywhere. It’s the absolute dryness of the narrative voice that reads like a movie script without any suggestions on emotions. The way to read this book is to have a very active imagination that can conjure actors, actresses and a whole environment for them to enact on. Otherwise there is a void of mental activity. Literatures usually engage the reader’s thought process and provoke some response, to forge a relationship with the reader. McCarthy’s book does not do that. His book is a full-length self-contained statement, no expectation of convincing the reader. As if this story is an old “horseskull” …“bleached paper white” (page 6) not caring whether somebody someday would pick it up or get buried in the sand forever or get blasted by the sand into dust over eons. McCarthy therefore treats the book format not as a communication device of abstract ideas and feelings. He seems to distrust ability of word to carry any meaning beyond literal representation. For him this book is a sedentary rock layered by his mind and hardened through writing. It is a self-content existence that he wrote for people to treat it like a piece of rock. All the Pretty Horses is an ‘experience capsule’ of the McCarthy’s Border Trilogy world. McCormick writes in a way to pass on the reader with the facts and the chronology as they unfold, and leave the reader to see for him/herself what’s going on.
Such minimalist novel as this has a tendency of being impersonal and empty compared to other more involved novels. On the other side, such detachment frees the novel from depending on sympathy of the reader. Anna Karenina works because Tolstoy wrote so well from the ground up to make the reader identify with the Protagonist Anna. He provides such full personality, such comprehensible thought patterns to completely win over the reader. All the Pretty Horses works in a whole different way. It tells the story like it is without prejudice on author’s part, hidden agenda on author’s part to hook up the reader with the protagonists. McCarthy’s book works not because he makes a hero out of his character. It works because the reader is left free to interpret for himself or herself the life of John Grady. It works because the reader sees that he/she is trusted to judge for his/her own from the “one truth[, …] the truth [that] is what happened[, not] what come out of somebody’s mouth” (page 168). I used to think that Minimalism and Deconstructionism are roads toward nihilism. I now see that they can be roads to free expression and unbound communication. What I found in this novel after reading it again this time is that, after accepting the significance of ‘truth’ in the book, it is clear that McCarthy has similar attitude toward the realness of dreams and lucid insights as mine: dreams are just as real as the existence of sleep, and lucid insights are just as real as the existence of facts. I found that the book is all in all extremely honest and therefore optimistic.

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Pato rated it:

01/23/08

bookshelves: recently-read

recommended to Pato by: Miguel Santiago
recommends it for: Everyone, but especially writers

Cormac McCarthy is, in my opinion, doing for novels what Raymond Carver did for the short story 30 years ago. His style of breaking the rules works not only because it effectively sheds extraneous formatting to create a more immediate, visceral reading experience, but also for his carefully constructed and insightful metaphors that offer a musical balance to the format, without which the storytelling would eventually feel dry and uninspired. He trusts the reader in a way that few writers do, str...more Cormac McCarthy is, in my opinion, doing for novels what Raymond Carver did for the short story 30 years ago. His style of breaking the rules works not only because it effectively sheds extraneous formatting to create a more immediate, visceral reading experience, but also for his carefully constructed and insightful metaphors that offer a musical balance to the format, without which the storytelling would eventually feel dry and uninspired. He trusts the reader in a way that few writers do, striking the right balance between showing and letting our imaginations fill in the blanks.

It's a style that will be copied for decades. I could be projecting, but I'm going to pretend my opinion is the one that will be adopted universally by the literati. But maybe we don't even need to look beyond the fact that the guy just won the Pulitzer, and while the genius of the Cohen brothers certainly had a lot to do with it, a film adaptation of one of his lesser known novels is probably going to sweep the Oscars (if everybody forgets about "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" Such a manly year for movies...).

All the Pretty Horses has an imagination that is more subdued and traditional than The Road - Two young men wander the wilds of Mexico, get into some trouble because of their reluctant association with an unpredictable third, hide out, find the trouble catch up to them because of a forbidden love. It's a clear fantasy with inserted conflict. The themes - what it is to be a man, the passion of youthful love - are dealt with so vividly and sensitively that it was difficult to not read the author's longing for his own youth between the lines.

I enjoyed this book more for the character interactions than for the plot elements, as interesting as those were. For example, there are several characters who exist in the novel for a grand total of three or four pages - a crooked police captain, a patron on a Mexican ranch, a Mexican field hand - and yet it was their conversations with the protagonist, John Grady, that I remember most, that I found most riveting, because each clearly, thoroughly represents the world that they live in and that he had come at odds against, which I'm wondering now whether that should be the sole purpose of a satellite character. The romance was particularly beautiful, doing what romance is supposed to do - remind us of our most passionate moments while showing the story unfold. And there's lots of untranslated Spanish, which was fun to read and figure out. Good read. ...less

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Ryan rated it:

12/06/07

bookshelves: to-read

recommends it for: Those in need of a mature Western

I'd never heard of McCarthy until early this fall. A couple of fellows that I work with were really singing his praises with words like dark, bloody, punctuation-less and visceral (one of those words I nod my head about, but am unsure of how I use it, and even more unsure about the use of others). Then, and this usually seems to happen, I began to hear about him everywhere, and now the Cohen Bros. have adapted and directed one of his stories! I'm excited about that.

This book is good. It's th...more I'd never heard of McCarthy until early this fall. A couple of fellows that I work with were really singing his praises with words like dark, bloody, punctuation-less and visceral (one of those words I nod my head about, but am unsure of how I use it, and even more unsure about the use of others). Then, and this usually seems to happen, I began to hear about him everywhere, and now the Cohen Bros. have adapted and directed one of his stories! I'm excited about that.

This book is good. It's the first book of a trilogy. The characters develop slowly and they really develop through their actions and interactions with each other. This character development goes hand in hand with the unique narration style, and this combination is one of my favorite things about the book. It seems like so many books will offer the reader a subtle hand through the use point of view,narration, or maybe incredible characters that capture your attention/imagination. This subtle hand encourages the reader to move forward. I may not be explaining this properly, but I think that McCarthy's book is distant and this hand is out of sight, maybe in a pocket. It almost seemed like my desire to move forward into the book was sort of a result of being ignored. This is especially interesting because it sort of parallels the way the characters act among themselves. Distant, but there. Actually, most of the setting could be described in this way too.

There are also some humorous zingers exchanged betweeen the characters; the frontier/Western style of wit I became so drawn to in McMurty's novels is similar to this, but the setting and tone of the books are quite different. The book is, without a doubt, moving. The words that my friends used to describe the style were correct (and as far as "blood" goes, it shows up a lot as an adjective for the sky, oh, U noticed that 2?).This is a story that involves a couple young guys coming of age and crossing borders. I'm happy to have read this book, and plan on reading the next in the series after this semester.

First review, long time reader. Please pardon the prolixity....less

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Michelle rated it:

10/29/07

Read in October, 2007

Wow, I was really surprised by how much I liked this book. My dad gave it to me while he was cleaning out his bookcase to donate read books to the library, and I thought, Oh, Cormac McCarthy, he's one of those I should read. I read most of it either on a plane or in an airport, which I don't recommend because of all of the noise. You need to concentrate with this one. Focus on the words. Maybe reread a couple of parts to really let it sink in.

Cormac McCarthy is lovely. He reminds me of...more Wow, I was really surprised by how much I liked this book. My dad gave it to me while he was cleaning out his bookcase to donate read books to the library, and I thought, Oh, Cormac McCarthy, he's one of those I should read. I read most of it either on a plane or in an airport, which I don't recommend because of all of the noise. You need to concentrate with this one. Focus on the words. Maybe reread a couple of parts to really let it sink in.

Cormac McCarthy is lovely. He reminds me of Hemingway (only read one of Hemingway's though, so I'm not the expert)-- takes his time, very manly characters and story, and there are just sometimes when, wow, he just really nails it and you think, That was beautiful, Cormac. And even better, when there are slow parts, I wasn't thinking, Blow the damn bridge, Robert Jordan!, as I did with Hemingway, but was just kind of clip-clopping along on a horse. That's always nice.

Favorite part (on page 23 of this edition): They scarcely spoke all day. His father rode sitting forward slightly in the saddle, holding the reins in one hand about two inches above the saddlehorn. So thin and frail, lost in his clothes. Looking over the country with those sunken eyes as if the world out there had been altered or made suspect by what he'd seen of it elsewhere. As if he might never see it right again. Or worse did see it right at last. See it as it had always been, would forever be. The boy who rode on slightly before him sat a horse not only as if he'd been born to it which he was but as if were he begot by malice or mischance into some queer land where horses never were he would have found them anyway. Would have known that there was something missing for the world to be right or he right in it and would have set forth to wander wherever it was needed for as long as it took until he came upon one and he would have known that was what he sought and it would have been.

Lovely, Cormac.

I do have to add that I wanted to give this a 4.5 instead of a 5, just because the last section threw me off a little. My dad agrees....less

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LeAnn rated it:

08/09/07

Read in August, 2007

recommends it for: Lovers of finely crafted language

I confess that I'd heard about this book a while back,but like others on this site, mistook it for a Louis L'Amour kind of book. I'm glad to finally come around and read it, even if Westerns aren't naturally my type of story.

I just finished it, and as with every book I review here, these are my initial thoughts. Sometimes, after some time has passed, I find that I've sifted the story and writing unconsciously and don't like it as well as I did just after finishing. All the Pretty Horses...more

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Great Cthulhu rated it:

01/19/08

Careful readers will observe that not only does Cormac steal his best lit tricks from Faulkner (and he does it quite well; speaking as someone who spent many years doing a bad job of stealing from Faulkner I applaud Cormac's achievement in this regard) but his plots from George Miller. I shit you not, George Miller, two different Geoge Millers who both happened to be Australian film directors. The Road is derived of Geroge Miller's great Road Warrior movie, though without Mel Gibson, Toady, Wez,...more

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Mark rated it:

10/26/07

bookshelves: recentlyread

Read in October, 2007

recommends it for: Stu

A perfect western, a perfect homage (or should that be "chevalage"?) to horses, and one of my new all-time favorite novels... Sixteen-year-old John Grady Cole journeys into la frontera to seek that fenceless freedom promised but never fulfilled in western fantasies in which the dream is always "vanishing" or vanished, from J.F. Cooper to Louis L'Amour to Annie Proulx (if she didn't read Cormac McCarthy before writing "Brokedown Mountain" and her other Wyoming storie...more

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Aloysius rated it:

08/27/07

Read in August, 2007

All the Pretty Horses is a beautiful and brutal book told in a simple, matter-of-fact tone, and it marks my first encounter with Cormac McCarthy. A friend of mine told me before I'd read it that McCarthy continues in the masculine tradition of Hemingway and Melville, and I agree that this is an apt comparison. John Grady Cole, the central character in this novel, is the strong silent type, who lives by a the code of honor with which he was raised on his grandfather's cattle ranch (a code which p...more

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Tyler rated it:

05/14/08

bookshelves: favorites

Read in May, 2008

McCarthy's writing is just as tough, laconic, and authentic as the prematurely grizzled ranchboys he writes about here. To cite two over-mentioned authors, his prose is a strange amalgam of Hemingway's lyrical, repetitive terseness, and Faulkner's blend of Biblical brimstone, nihilist philosophizing, and more supernatural elements.

I also noticed some interesting parallels between this book and No Country For Old Men. I'm sure ...more

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Joseph rated it:

(review of isbn 0394574745)

01/30/08

bookshelves: fict

Read in January, 2008

The writing is a bit too 'choppy' to get a five star rating; events are either expanded upon a bit too much or sometimes not quite enough (particularly in Part I). Overall though, the book is brilliant - deep themes, strong characters, a nice mix of gore and love...

How can you not be blown away by paragraphs like this one?

"He thought about Alejandra and he remembered her the first time he ever saw her passing along the cienga road in the evening with the horse still wet from her r...more

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Ryan rated it:

04/29/08

Read in April, 2008

"First of all, thank god we speak fluent Spanish." -Chet Kicking and Screaming

I went into this book skeptical. I'd heard the hype, expected nihilism, and honestly just didn't want to like this book. I started out cursing the lack of quotation marks. I wrote off the style as "too Faulkner." I scoffed at the hetero-normative dynamic. But somewhere near the end of part one or maybe the middle of part two I got into it and my inner cynic shut up and gave in to th...more

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Mitch rated it:

04/30/07

bookshelves: favorites, fiction

Read in September, 2007

All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy is one of the best books I have read in a very long time. I'm sorry that I waited so long.

I didn't read the book because I thought it was in the same genre as Louis L'Amour. Then the movie with Matt Damon and Penelope Cruz didn't help the cause. But I started getting second thoughts when I saw a heaping of Cormac McCarthy books in my friend Marty's bookcase. Not one for Louis L'Amour (or at least bragging about it) or Matt Damon westerns, Marty's libr...more

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Josh rated it:

03/31/08

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

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Angela rated it:

04/21/08

bookshelves: recentlyread

Read in April, 2008

(Sorry, Coy, you already heard this.) I had to take a seminar once on how to teach. The guy who led the seminar, speaking in a monotone while staring gloomily at the floor in front of him, said: "When you teach, it is veeeeeeeery important to be enthuuuusiassssssstic. If you aren't exciiiited... (gloomy pause) your students will have no interest in what you have to say." Well, the way I felt about this book is the way I felt about that teaching seminar. What gets said is alright; i...more

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Sam added it

11/01/07

Read in November, 2007

I'm beginning to sound like a broken record with Cormac McCarthy reviews, but All the Pretty Horses is yet another fine piece of work. It's probably the most well-rounded of his books that I've read, mixing a great story, great characters, great writing, a great mixture and handling of genres, and great thematics.

Compared to The Road, No Country for Old Men, and Blood Meridian, All the Pretty Horses feels the most subtle to me, and it is probably the most accessible because it operates so...more

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Craig rated it:

02/12/08

Read in March, 2008

cormac McCarthy is earmarked as one of the great writers of our era. I thought this book was really good. I didn't fully get why the girl was into this guy, the book didn't really give me an idea why he was so great, other than that he is faithful to his friends and his ideals. I guess chicks dig that.

Then again, the whole thing made me think of me. Not that I'm totally faithful to my friends and my ideals, but that I got the girl anyways, and I'm nothing special. I'm still working this...more

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Martin rated it:

12/31/07

Read in January, 2007

recommends it for: Everyone

Cormac McCarthy's style takes a bit to adjust to. His books are almost completely void of any sort of proper punctuation; he is your high school English teacher's worst nightmare.

However once you get your mind to conform to his style you fall in to the world that he creates. Being a desert dweller for most of my life (28 years) I can from a first hand point of view tell you how well he captures this tiny part of the world. Where most people see dust, death and unending monotony Cormac pul...more

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Evil_Dead_Junkie rated it:

02/16/08

bookshelves: literature, western

Cormac McCarthy never fails to amaze me. If I ever met the gentleman I'd probably shake his hand and then wrestle him to the ground and devour his brain.

There's something in his writing that's good for the soul and I mean that in a very literal way. He's not usually thought of like that as his subject matter is dark and his world view is borderline nihilistic (though I think that Nihilism is too simplistic to contain McCarthy). Indeed Blood Meridian is probably the most thorough catalogue o...more

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