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All the Pretty Horses (Border Trilogy #1)

by Cormac McCarthy

3.87 · rating details · 23,607 ratings · 2,227 reviews

The national bestseller and the first volume in Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy, All the Pretty Horses is the tale of John Grady Cole, who at sixteen finds himself at the end of a long line of Texas ranchers, cut off from the only life he has ever imagined for himself. With two companions, he sets off for Mexico on a sometimes idyllic, sometimes comic journey to a place ...more

Paperback, 302 pages

Published June 29th 1993 by Vintage (first published 1992)

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Community Reviews

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May 22, 2011

Kemper rated it

Shelves: 2011, modern-lit, western

All the Pretty Horses isn’t quite as grim as other Cormac McCarthy work that I’ve read but considering that this includes The Road, Blood Meridian, No Country For Old Men and watching the HBO adaptation of his play The Sunset Limited, it's still so bleak that your average person will be depressed enough to be checked into a mental ward and put on suicide watch after finishing it.

John Grady Cole is a sixteen year old cowboy in Texas a few years after World War II who was raised on his...more

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Dec 09, 2009

Bram rated it

Shelves: 2009

Despite my great love for The Road, I’d argue that my enjoyment of All the Pretty Horses was far from predetermined. To begin with, I’ve recently been made aware (in discussions with fellow Goodreaders) that I’ve never seen a single Clint Eastwood movie or even a non-Clint Eastwood Western. And although I grew up in the South (sort of), I’m now an East Coast city guy who’s never even gone camping if you don’t count that college freshman orientation trip. Not only do I know jack-shit about hor...more

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Jun 24, 2007

yana rated it

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 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...morei boycotted this book for years because of the title... it sounded too girly, and i had no desire to read a book about 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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Nov 05, 2007

Lara rated it

Shelves: 2007, national-book-award, very-favorites, before-you-die-1001

McCarthy pares his descriptions down to the purest bones, and then, as if all that surrounded it was the shrapnel of a shattering revelation, lays down a jaw-droppingly astonishing sentence that sums up good, evil, man, God, love.

The best and worst in men are inseparable in McCarthy's worlds, which are so exactly imagined as to be indisputable.

John Grady Cole is one of the most memorable heros in contemporary literature.

This one makes me want to ride out a...more

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Jun 25, 2008

Martine rated it

Shelves: did-not-finish, film, north-american, modern-fiction, disappointing

I seldom abandon books after reading just a couple of pages, but in this case I had no choice. Two pages into the book I was so annoyed by McCarthy's random use of apostrophes and near-total lack of commas that I felt I had better stop reading to prevent an aneurysm. I'm sure McCarthy is a great storyteller, but unless someone convinces me he has found a competent proof-reader who is not afraid to add some four thousand commas to each of his books, I'll never read another line he's written. I ca...more

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Oct 12, 2011

Marco Tamborrino rated it

· review of another edition

[...] poi si voltò, si mise il cappello, alzò la faccia umida al vento e per un istante stese le mani come se volesse trovare l'equilibrio o benedire la terra o forse rallentare il mondo che correva veloce senza curarsi di nulla: dei giovani o dei vecchi, dei ricchi o dei poveri, dei bianchi o dei neri, dei maschi o delle femmine. Delle loro battaglie, dei loro nomi. Dei vivi e dei morti.

Se non l'avessi letto non ci avrei creduto. Insomma, è davvero un essere vivente colui che scriv...more

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Aug 25, 2008

Gary rated it

Ascent into Hell

You read the first sentence of a Cormac McCarthy novel and you know that this is not Grisham or Connolly or Child or Crichton or King, certainly not Patterson, or anyone else writing fiction today. And before the first page is turned he has launched into one of his frenetic poetic riffs that lurches and rambles and stops and starts and doesn't care about punctuation and you can almost hear your high school English teacher scolding about grammar and run-on sentences b...moreAscent into Hell

You read the first sentence of a Cormac McCarthy novel and you know that this is not Grisham or Connolly or Child or Crichton or King, certainly not Patterson, or anyone else writing fiction today. And before the first page is turned he has launched into one of his frenetic poetic riffs that lurches and rambles and stops and starts and doesn't care about punctuation and you can almost hear your high school English teacher scolding about grammar and run-on sentences but you know that she could never even hope to string words together like this even if she dared. And then you realize that maybe you've actually never really understood the English language at all because no one before has ever ripped it and bent it and twisted it as beautifully as McCarthy does while making it all look so easy.

So were it not for McCarthy's ferocious prose, "All the Pretty Horses" may have been just another coming of age story. But in McCarthy's special corner of hell, along with the obligatory introduction to "young love", passage to adulthood may include exile in a foreign country, being hunted on horseback across a barren desert, variously stabbed, shot, tortured, or imprisoned. John Grady Cole is a sixteen year-old son of a Texas rancher who, up until his grandfather's death, worked the ranch and developed an uncommon kinship with horses. With his grandfather gone, his father dying, and his mother flitting around the cultural scene in post-WWII San Antonio, John Grady sets out on horseback for Mexico with buddy Lacey Rawlings. What follows is an odyssey of restless youth across a rugged country, a bleak and sometimes bloody journey that is not without the humor and easy banter of young teenagers on their own; the "road trip" that turns nightmarish and accelerates the process of growing up into hyper drive.

John Grady is an endearing character; there are no Holden Caulfields in the Texas borderlands. A stoic young cowboy, he has had the youthful innocence to which he is entitled ripped out too early, replaced by a work-hardened cynicism and homespun wisdom of the Texas plains. The reader cares for John Grady in the way of the classic Greek heroes, watching helplessly as the protagonist stone-by-stone lays the foundation of his own downfall. This is Cormac McCarthy, and therefore not a fairy tale; the reader would be naïve to expect an ending with a smiling John Grady riding into the sunset with his girl's arms around his denim shirt. But since it is Cormac McCarthy, you can expect unparalleled prose that delivers its message with the power and subtlety of a cattle prod. An American classic - required reading.(less)

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Feb 10, 2009

Ben rated it

Shelves: fiction, read-2009, western

Starting to think that I really like McCarthy. I didn't really know what I was getting into with this one. First of all, the title is all full of wuss. However, I was pretty sure that it wasn't going to be a girly horse story like the title implies. I was not incorrect. This is a gritty western adventure full of manliness and blood and bullet wounds and knife wounds and other miscellaneous wounds. All in all, very good. I'm leaning a bit towards a 5 star rating.

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Jun 20, 2008

Libby Cone rated it

A young hired hand is warned against getting close to the beautiful, haughty daughter of his ranchowner employer, but her haunting beauty zzzzzzzzzz.........

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Aug 08, 2011

Patrick Reinken rated it

Shelves: reviewed

I gave some thought to doing a “two-sentences-and-one-word” review of Cormac McCarthy’s All the Pretty Horses – winner of the National Book Award – but I decided not to. Don’t get me wrong, it could be done that way. It’s just that I didn’t think I could do it justice that way.

The reason for that isn’t the characters. They are few, and they are finely drawn.

It’s also not the story. That’s stripped down to some classic essentials.

In 1949, following the death of...more

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Jan 02, 2010

Jason rated it

Do you have a sub-clinical fear of commas and, especially, quotation marks? Then Cormac McCarthy's your author and All the Pretty Horses is the book for you! There's not a quotation mark in 302 pages and very few commas. It's an interesting and stylized type of writing, and McCarthy uses it in some of his other books. Here's a typical sentence:

He dismounted and unrolled his plunder and opened the box of shells and put half of them in his pocket and checked the pistol that it was loaded

...moreDo you have a sub-clinical fear of commas and, especially, quotation marks? Then Cormac McCarthy's your author and All the Pretty Horses is the book for you! There's not a quotation mark in 302 pages and very few commas. It's an interesting and stylized type of writing, and McCarthy uses it in some of his other books. Here's a typical sentence:

He dismounted and unrolled his plunder and opened the box of shells and put half of them in his pocket and checked the pistol that it was loaded all six cylinders and closed the cylinder gate and put the pistol into his belt and rolled his gear back up and retied the roll behind the saddle and mounted the horse again and rode into the town.(. 257)

The limited use of commas, I think, makes the story develop organically. In other words--like a plant uses a minimum but perfect balance of nutrients--the writing uses only a minimum of grammar, punctuation, and narration to achieve a natural, living story, uninhindered by needless stops or pauses, unencumbered by inconsequential thoughts or ideas, unburdened of superficial style or format. The writing is pure, essential. The writing is simple, but not simple-minded. It's free to grow naturally, like vines across a fence. The writing occurs as if it was happening now, and when you experience something 'now,' you aren't cognizant of commas or quotations. It appears like stream-of-consciousness literature, but it goes farther. It's not random; instead, it grows purposefully, in a direction, like new growth extending last year's reach. Every word is certain, purposeful, clean.

I enjoy this type of writing, but it must be used for a specific kind of story. The story has to be tied to the land. It has to be imbued with life, with organism. It has to show how nature both constrains and restrains character action and development. In this way, the writing bursts forth out of the story and is not simply a vehicle--using words, commas, and quotations--to tell the story. McCarthy uses horses, the living desert, the verdant jungle, water and scent to drive his story. The story is certain, purposeful, clean, and is, consequently, natural and believeable.

McCarthy does something else with his writing that I haven't read anywhere before. He combines two words into one. It's an adjective-noun combination and it's systematic throughout the book. Here's some examples, pervasive, as I simply thumb though the book in reverse and spot them immediately: sidestreet, huntingknife, fieldhands, bankside, doorkey, gaslamps, orangewater, trenchspoon, roadsign, motorsmoke, windowlights, nickleplating, beltholster, violetcolored, oilportrait, thighbones, streetsweepers, creampitchers, fineboned, holdingpens, tortoiseshell, hotsauce, shavingbrush. At least one adjective-noun combination per page.

Why? Why combine these words? Well, to make them a specific noun. It's like using the article 'the' instead of 'a;' for example, the toy versus a toy. It makes the toy more specific. It's not just a door key, but a doorkey; it's not just motor smoke, but motorsmoke; it's not just an oil portrait, but an oilportrait.

This book is also stuffed with descriptive Spanish words that, unless you're willing to continuously consult a dictionary, you accept in context without really knowing exactly what it means. It's just another way McCormack selects an exact word. Regardless of interpretation, it's as if he'll chose a Spanish word when an English word is insufficient. It's a book about Mexico, so this is to be expected on some level. But, instead of translating and easing the reader through the book, it's as if McCarthy wants his reader to do a little homework and learn some Spanish along the way. If there was a character from Italy or Poland, I wouldn't put it past McCarthy to break out some Italian and Polish, just because there are words from these languages that would lose exact meaning in translation to English.

I award 4-stars because, although it was well-written, genuine, and timeless, it didn't provide the page-turning action that I usually require for 5-star novels.

New words: traprock, stereopticon, abrazo, increate
(less)

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Dec 25, 2007

YangYi rated it

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 imagin...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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Aug 09, 2007

LeAnn rated it

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 Ho...more

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Sep 23, 2008

Angela rated it

(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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Nov 28, 2007

Dustin rated it

Recommends it for: people who don't mind bad writing

I want to like Cormac McCarthy. But he bugs me. What bugs me about him is the sentiment many of his readers have that goes basically: "I was worried this was going to be a Louis L'Amour western but was pleasantly surprised that it wasn't." Well, people, it IS a western, but McCarthy is too pretentious to just write a western. He lifts out all the punctuation, drops in verbose descriptions and senseless figurative language and some faux-philosophical musings on horses and calls it "...more

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Dec 01, 2008

Lisa rated it

...and the boy rode into the parched land beyond the river, his breath steaming in plumes out of his nose into the cold, his horse grunting beneath him, and he wished it were a woman grunting, ok sighing maybe, ok he had no idea what a woman grunting under him would feel like, he was still a boy, he had felt once a girl's breast flutter and knew it was nothing like the cow teat he'd pulled the milk out of back at the barn but what else was there to think about there out on the plains, waiting fo...more

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Jul 28, 2008

John rated it

· review of another edition

I read this a long time ago, and was somewhat underwhelmed. I found it hard to really care about most of the characters.

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Sep 05, 2008

Karen rated it

Westerns do not appear to be my thing.

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Apr 21, 2011

Jamie rated it

Shelves: all-time-faves, favorites, the-wild-west

I’ve been sitting on this book review for weeks, needing to chew so many things over before I put it into words. I started the book and finished it and started it again, because it was the only thing I knew to do. It’s wrecked me, a little. Pushed things knotted up deep down inside to the surface, like coming up from under a waterfall for air. There’s something visceral here, not just in the story itself but in the reading of it, more akin to eating and breathing than turning pages of a book. It...moreI’ve been sitting on this book review for weeks, needing to chew so many things over before I put it into words. I started the book and finished it and started it again, because it was the only thing I knew to do. It’s wrecked me, a little. Pushed things knotted up deep down inside to the surface, like coming up from under a waterfall for air. There’s something visceral here, not just in the story itself but in the reading of it, more akin to eating and breathing than turning pages of a book. It’s so good on so many levels and I loved it on each one, but it was more than that too. It’s that recognition you can have with a stranger that some part of you heretofore unrealized has known them all your life. That if there’s any kind of fate or mathematical probability involved in the universe you have been meteors intent on collision.

Everything is pretty simple here. It’s just a story about a boy and another boy and Jimmy Blevins. The same story as all the stories, all the good ones anyway. Newborn and old as time. Life and death and boredom and youth and horror and adventure and the kind of sweetness and beauty where beauty is too pale a word. All the darkness of it. All the comedy of it. The things that claw to the surface of us to breathe. And us, whittled and raw and scarred up and healing.

At a technical level it’s brilliant, the way McCarthy puts every word together. But what I possibly love more than that is how McCarthy wrote this story to write this story. Not for you or me or anyone. There’s something pure here that tends to not exist outside of old books, far removed from the wants and lives of their writers. But McCarthy’s wants and life are all here. You only need to see a minute of the man talk to know that. And he’s just telling a story, the story he’d want to hear and about the only things that interest him. Life and death and wildness. It’s the only kinds of things that interest me these days too. The only kinds of stories I crave. It’s there, for and not for us, for you or me to read or not read, for me to come alive or for you to pass it by. It’s no matter. It’s just there. It’s there for anyone the same way.

But I could say two thousand words and it wouldn’t be enough, wouldn’t come near to what I want to say. So I’ll let McCarthy say it instead. All of his words, like coming up for air.

He rode with the sun coppering his face and the red wind blowing out of the west. He turned south along the old war trail and he rode to the crest of a low rise and dismounted and dropped the reins and walked out and stood like a man come to the end of something.

There was an old horseskull in the brush and he squatted and picked it up and turned it in his hands. Frail and brittle. Bleached paper white. He squatted in the long light holding it, the comicbook teeth loose in their sockets. The joints in the cranium like a ragged welding of the bone plates. The muted run of sand in the brainbox when he turned it.

What he loved in horses was what he loved in men, the blood and the heat of the blood that ran them. All his reverence and all his fondness and all the leanings of his life were for the ardenthearted and they would always be so and never be otherwise.

He rode back in the dark. The horse quickened its step. The last of the day’s light fanned slowly upon the plain behind him and withdrew again down the edges of the world in a cooling blue of shadow and dusk and chill and a few last chitterings of birds sequestered in the dark and wiry brush.

And if that was too wide, too earnest, too far removed from the sixteen year old boy and the place it belongs, here’s this:

When they went down to the bunkhouse for dinner the vaqueros seemed to treat them with a certain deference but whether it was the deference accorded the accomplished or that accorded to mental defectives they were unsure.

Maybe like Rawlins or Blevins or John Grady might say, this or any of this is full of shit after all. Read it and then tell me so if you want. But read it.(less)

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Jun 11, 2010

Sydney rated it

This is Cormac McCarthy's first novel in the border trilogy. It is the story of two young Texans who set off on their horses to Mexico for an adventure. This is no "On the Road" Jack Kerouk bohemian adventure - it is a the tale of a nearly extinct species of man who connect more with their horses than with the automobile, and who know how to survive in harsh terrain and work hard for their pesos. One young man falls in love with a wealthy Mexican rancher's daughter, and pays a heavy ...more

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Oct 29, 2007

Michelle rated it

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 remin...moreWow, 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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Oct 26, 2007

Mark rated it

Recommends it for: Stu

Shelves: recentlyread

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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Sep 16, 2007

DumDum rated it

Recommends it for: western/south-of-the-boarder lovers

Shelves: hardtostart

It took me forever to finally sit down and read this western drama of love and horses I was put off by McCarthy's non-punctuation style if that's what you call it Call me old fashioned but I like those little things called quotation marks
I'm not sure what the purpose of leaving out those conventions was/is but I found it very disconcerting That being said once I got over that I enjoyed this western which is saying a lot because I don't as a rule like western anything except perhaps a s...more

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Jan 08, 2008

Lisalit rated it

I learned that I like Cormac McCarthy.

I didn't think I would. At first, his endless sentences, while poetic, seemed to swim in my head like madness. And dialogue without quotations????? But I started reading, and before I knew it I realized that I no longer noticed the lack of quotes, and that I had fallen into the ever-flowing descriptive prose. This is a book that is somehow dry and reserved yet passionate and rich at the same time. At first the characters seemed remote and ha...more

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Jun 10, 2008

Adam rated it

Recommends it for: People who aren't retarded

WOW.

I read the Border Trilogy in Senior Year of High School for AP English (my teacher went to school with McCarthy, and got advance copies of Cities of the Plain - I had NO idea how lucky we were). I honestly didn't remember much of it, probably due to my ADD-addled brain.

Now that I'm drugged-up enough to settle down and concentrate for a minute or two on writing? WOW. This book made me interested in the West, and Horses, and all that other crap that seemed so remote and...more

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Aug 18, 2007

Jess rated it

Recommends it for: Cowboys.Texans.Teenagers.The Elderly.Infants.Revolutinaries.Malcontents.Lovers

This was my first foray into the world of Cormac McCarthy. I'm glad I went.

The title, as others have noted before me, is a bit of a misnomer. The main character is a 16-year-old Texas cowboy who runs away from home with a friend and becomes a horse breaker in Mexico. He falls in love and gets thrown in jail and almost dies a few times and--well, I can't give the whole story away.

The writing is beautiful. It's dark and solemn and occasionally exuberant and glorious, ...more

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Jun 04, 2007

Sam rated it

I read this book several years ago. I remember at first taking a little while to get used to McCarthy's style of writing. His use of punctuation is, shall we say, unique. But after becoming accustomed to it, you can really sink yourself into his writing, which is truly beautiful and spectacular. And in case anyone has the audacity to bring it up, please, please, PLEASE do not compare this to the movie. It's not even on the same level--it's something else completely. The book is amazing, an...more

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Nov 15, 2011

Jeanmccoy rated it

At last, a step away from the mediocre! Having being completely gripped by The Road from the second I picked it up, I have been eagerly awaiting reading All The Pretty Horses since I swooped on it when I was home in Edinburgh. What I found wasn't quite up to my expectations, but a pretty good read none the less. All The Pretty Horses tells the story of John Grady as he escapes his mundane and depressing family life for a life of freedom south of the border. He takes along his friend Rawlins, and...more

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Jan 29, 2009

Lanny rated it

I started off liking this book, thinking that it had the potential to be a classic work of fiction, but then that feeling gradually faded as I read more. I prefer a more minimalist writing style (like he used in The Road) than the overly descriptive style found here. Due to the lack of quotation marks, I couldnt always tell who was talking when characters were having a conversation, or what was dialogue and what was not. También tenía una dificultad el distinguir o el agarrar de quién eran los...more

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Jan 17, 2009

Patrick Gibson rated it

Recommended to Patrick by: met the author - I get it

Shelves: contemporary-literature, the_west

The foundation of the Western lifestyle is the Cowboy Code of Honor which consists of self-discipline, unswerving purpose, application of knowledge, skill, ingenuity and judgment. Also, the capacity to continue in the face of exhaustion and overwhelming odds. This is a Just and Revered code passed from father to son—or grandfather to grandson following the Civil War. John Grady Cole has enveloped his sense of purpose with the Cowboy Code and in order to live by it, needs to leave the United Stat...more

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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.

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All the Pretty Horses (Border Trilogy #1)

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