All the Pretty Horses (Border Trilogy, Vol 1)

by Cormac McCarthy

book data

9,694 ratings, 3.89 average rating, 1,101 reviews (more data...)

rating	frequency	%
5		30%
4		39%
3		21%
2		6%
1		2%

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published

June 29th 1993 (first published 1992) by Vintage

binding

Paperback, 320 pages

literary awards

National Book Critics Circle Award (1992); National Book Award (1992)

isbn

0679744398 (isbn13: 9780679744399)

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

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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 12,852)

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06/25/08

Martine rated it:

bookshelves: did-not-finish, film, modern-fiction, north-american, very-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

Like this review? yes (7 people liked it)

29 comments

06/24/07

yana rated it:

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 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...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 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)

Like this review? yes (5 people liked it)

4 comments

06/27/07

Lara rated it:

bookshelves: 2007, national-book-award, very-favorites

Read in November, 2007

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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3 comments

08/25/08

fbuser1412633581 rated it:

Read in November, 2005

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...more 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 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)

Like this review? yes (5 people liked it)

1 comment

02/03/09

Ben rated it:

bookshelves: fiction, read-2009, western

Read in February, 2009

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.

Like this review? yes (3 people liked it)

1 comment

06/20/08

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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12/25/07

YangYi rated it:

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 act...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.

(less)

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10/10/07

Angela rated it:

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

Like this review? yes (2 people liked it)

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11/28/07

Dustin rated it:

Read in June, 2007

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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12/01/08

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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07/28/08

John rated it:

(review of isbn 0739412531)

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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09/05/08

Karen rated it:

Read in August, 2008

Westerns do not appear to be my thing.

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10/29/07

Michelle rated it:

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 remin...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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10/19/07

Mark rated it:

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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08/09/07

LeAnn rated it:

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 Ho...more

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09/16/07

DumDum rated it:

bookshelves: hardtostart

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

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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01/03/08

Lisalit rated it:

Read in January, 2008

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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04/22/08

Adam rated it:

Read in June, 2008

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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08/18/07

Jess rated it:

Read in January, 2007

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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06/04/07

Sam Kuzma rated it:

Read in January, 2000

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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quotes from this book

"I wanted very much to be a person of value and I had to ask myself how this could be possible if there were not something like a soul or like a spirit that is in the life of a person and which could endure any misfortune or disfigurement and yet be no less for it. If one were to be a person of value that value could not be a condition subject to hazards of fortune. It had to be a quality that could not change. No matter what. Long before morning I knew that what I was seeking to discover was a thing I'd always known. That all courage was a form of constancy. That it was always himself that the coward abandoned first. After this all other betrayals came easily." More quotes...