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The Border Trilogy #1-3

The Cormac McCarthy Value Collection: All the Pretty Horses, The Crossing, Cities of the Plain

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ALL THE PRETTY HORSES
The first volume of the Border Trilogy–tells of young John Grady Cole, the last of a long line of Texas ranchers. Across the border Mexico beckons–beautiful and desolate, rugged and cruelly civilized. With two companions, he sets off on an idyllic, sometimes comic adventure, to a place where dreams are paid for in blood.

THE CROSSING
In the late 1930’s, sixteen-year-old Billy Parham captures a she-wolf that has been marauding his family’s ranch. But instead of killing it, he decides to take it back to the mountains of Mexico. With that crossing, he beings an arduous and often dreamlike journey into a country where men meet like ghosts and violence strikes as suddenly as heat-lightening–a world where there is no order "save that which death has put there."

CITIES OF THE PLAIN
It is 1952 and John Grady Cole and Billy Parham are working as ranch hands in New Mexico, not far from the proving grounds of Alamogordo and the cities of El Paso and Juarez. Their life is made up of trail drives and horse auctions and stories told by campfire light. They value that life all the more because they know it is about to change forever.

null pages, Audio CD

First published January 1,1998
Series
The Border Trilogy
Places
texas, mexico, new mexico, sonora, chihuahua, 

This edition

Format
null pages, Audio CD
Published
August 23, 2005 by Random House Audio
ISBN
9780739320679
ASIN
073932067X
Language
English

More editions

About the author

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cormac mccarthy

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Cormac McCarthy was an American novelist and playwright. He wrote twelve novels in the Southern Gothic, western, and post-apocalyptic genres and also wrote plays and screenplays. He received the Pulitzer Prize in 2007 for The Road, and his 2005 novel No Country for Old Men was adapted as a 2007 film of the same name, which won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. His earlier Blood Meridian (1985) was among Time Magazine's poll of 100 best English-language books published between 1925 and 2005, and he placed joint runner-up for a similar title in a poll taken in 2006 by The New York Times of the best American fiction published in the last 25 years. Literary critic Harold Bloom named him one of the four major American novelists of his time, along with Thomas Pynchon, Don DeLillo, and Philip Roth. He is frequently compared by modern reviewers to William Faulkner. In 2009, Cormac McCarthy won the PEN/Saul Bellow Award, a lifetime achievement award given by the PEN American Center.

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Community Reviews

Rating(4 / 5.0, 100 votes)
5 stars
33(33%)
4 stars
29(29%)
3 stars
38(38%)
2 stars
0(0%)
1 stars
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100 reviews All reviews
Profile Image for Kimberly .
Eahtas
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
July 15,2025
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Well, I've finally completed it.

I first read All the Pretty Horses more than a decade ago. Back then, I was a wide-eyed and baby-faced college freshman, naively believing that I was going to be the next Raymond Carver. However, I soon realized that I didn't have enough empathy for most people to write about them convincingly. As a teenager, I firmly believed in the supreme value of sincerity and authenticity in art.

So, I re-read All the Pretty Horses and still loved it. Then I moved on to The Crossing. Although it didn't have the profound impact on me that I had hoped for, the scene with the fallen airplane at the end was truly breathtaking. (Sidenote: My Spanish is so rusty that I probably should have had a dictionary handy for most of the book.) Finally, I read Cities of the Plain, where McCarthy's protagonists are thrust headlong into the modern world. It becomes a Southwestern version of Taxi Driver, with a sad-eyed prostitute, a nasty pimp, and a man who struggles to come to terms with the world we live in.

The entire experience was quite overwhelming, and I'm not sure how I feel about reading all three books as a single volume instead of spacing them out as I usually do. But, it's McCarthy, and you can't really go wrong with his work.
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PavIixx
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
July 15,2025
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L'amore fino alla morte


This is a truly beautiful trilogy. It explores love in all its forms. In the first book, it delves into the love of friendship. The bonds of friendship are portrayed with such authenticity and warmth.

In the second book, the focus shifts to fraternal love. The relationship between siblings is shown to be complex and yet deeply affectionate.

Finally, in the third book, we encounter the love for a woman. This is a passionate and intense love that drives the characters to great lengths.

However, this trilogy is not just about love. It also shows the harshness of life. There are many difficult and challenging situations that the characters have to face.

It is a very sad, tough, and dramatic work that takes place in a nature filled with beautiful landscapes. The descriptions of the wild and unspoiled nature are so vivid that they make us dream of a life of freedom and unrestricted movement.

Overall, "L'amore fino alla morte" is a remarkable trilogy that will touch your heart and make you think about the true meaning of love and life.

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xNo_va
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
July 15,2025
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1037 Pages, phew.

I found the laconic characters' ability to find a wide selection of plains philosophers, who like to talk at great length, quite remarkable.

I enjoyed some parts of it, but I also found the writing style quite peculiar.

Particularly, the idiosyncratic punctuation really stood out.

There were other oddities as well.

For example, the author named the character several lines into the scene.

At the beginning, the author mostly referred to the character as 'him', whether it was Billy or John Grady.

This meant that on many occasions, the reader had to work it out for themselves.

Overall, it was an interesting read, but the unique writing style and oddities made it a bit of a challenge at times.

However, I still managed to appreciate the story and the characters within it.

It was a different kind of literary experience that made me think and engage with the text in a new way.

I'm glad I took the time to read it, despite its length and the challenges it presented.

Maybe with a second read, I'll be able to understand and appreciate it even more.
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kkaras
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
July 15,2025
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Every man's death is a profound and significant event. It is as if each death is a substitute for every other.

Since death is an inevitable part of life that comes to all, there seems to be no easy way to reduce the fear that it instills within us. However, one possible way to find some solace is to love that man who symbolizes and stands in for us.

We are not passively waiting for his history to be written. In fact, he passed through this world long ago. That remarkable man, who represents all of humanity, has stood in the dock on our behalf. He has endured until our own time arrives, and then it will be our turn to stand for him.

So, the question arises: Do you love him, that man who embodies the essence of all of us? Will you show honor and respect for the path he has taken? Will you take the time to listen to his story and learn from it? These are important questions that make us reflect on our own connection to the greater human experience.
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tam5509
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
July 15,2025
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After the recent passing of Cormac McCarthy, I was determined to read 'The Road', the novel for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2007. However, thanks to my wife, it was first the hefty Border Trilogy, a collection of three novels that McCarthy wrote from 1992 to 1998, that landed on my reading table. A thousand pages long. A challenge, but what a joy to read!


Cormac McCarthy shows himself in these three bundled novels as a master storyteller who in an unparalleled way sketches a world that no longer exists and that perhaps we can only assume in our dreams that it ever really existed. Everything takes place in the 1930s and 1940s in the unparalleled landscape of the border between Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona on the one hand and Mexico on the other. John Grady Cole (in 'All the Pretty Horses') and Billy Parham (in 'The Border') and both together in the last novel ('Cities of the Plain') are two young cowboys who both, each driven by their own motives, cross the border into Mexico to land in a world that has both new horizons and gruesome challenges to offer.


McCarthy gets deep into the skin of his main characters. Their search, their desires, their loves, their doubts, their disappointments become those of the reader as well. And not only can you empathize with them but also with the animals, horses and wolves, with which they deal, you get an almost physical bond. You just have to be able to put something like that into words. And then I almost forget here his sensual description of that beautiful nature in which all this takes place.


McCarthy sometimes peppers this, especially in the second book and at the end of the third book, with philosophically profound stories of random passers-by who as a reader take you out of your comfort zone for a moment and that you may have to read a few times to really let them penetrate you.


But be careful, don't be mistaken, of this universe that is sketched, gruesome cruelty is also part. After all, this is also part of the human image that McCarthy sketches for us.

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ionelHeredia
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
July 15,2025
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It took me a while to get through this trilogy, as I took a break between the second and third book. However, I'm extremely glad that I finally completed it.

All the Pretty Horses was, without a doubt, the strongest and most consistent one, in my view. McCarthy introduces his epic hero, John Grady Cole, and it's nearly impossible not to fall in love with him from the very beginning.

The Crossing, which presents the trilogy's second protagonist, was my least favorite among the three. The narrative frequently wandered into philosophical discussions for several pages at a stretch, making it challenging to remain engaged with the story.

Cities of the Plains brings both protagonists together and provides a fitting conclusion to their intertwined tales, except for a highly unsatisfying epilogue that makes an unbelievable 50-year leap and descends into another dreamlike philosophical tangent.

So, why five stars? The language, oh my goodness, the language of these books is simply beautiful. There are passages and descriptions that I have reread numerous times, thinking that I would never have made such observations or thought to use such analogies, yet they convey the scene with such perfection. For instance: "Narrow spires of smoke standing vertically into the windless dawn so still the village seemed to hang by threads from the darkness."

Moreover, McCarthy writes some of the best dialogue I've ever come across. When I read the exchanges between characters, I can vividly hear their voices come to life. Growing up in West Texas, I can attest that he truly captures the way people talk.

Despite the fact that these stories can be bleak at times, he has a subtle yet wicked sense of humor. I often find myself laughing out loud while reading.

He is an incredible writer.
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miccah
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
July 15,2025
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Cormac McCarthy and Richard Ford are like two distinct yet interconnected entities in the literary world.

McCarthy, with his penchant for描绘 the South, crafts prose that is both poetic and gritty. His works are a vivid portrayal of the blue collar life in the southern regions, filled with rich descriptions and profound insights.

Ford, on the other hand, focuses on the North. His writing also has a poetic quality, but it is shaped by the different landscapes and cultures of the northern areas.

It's almost as if they had an unspoken agreement, dividing the country into their respective literary territories. Their voices are rich and authentic, and their attention to detail is remarkable.

Despite the similarities in their writing styles, the geographical implications give their works a unique flavor. Both have achieved great success, having won the Pulitzer Prize. And it would be only fitting if one day they were to share the Nobel Prize as well, a final accolade to cap off their illustrious careers.

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Mohireza
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
July 15,2025
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Wow...

It took me as long as two months to get through these three books.

I can definitely say that perhaps I should have read just one at a time,

really chewed on it and digested it for a good while before starting the next one.

I truly enjoyed the stories and the unique writing style.

However, it seemed that I wasn't able to fully and completely grasp every single message that Cormac was trying to convey to the reader.

Nevertheless, I will admit that while reading, he was able to evoke strong emotions within me,

and for me, that is the mark of a successful story.

It makes me want to go back and re-read them again,

hoping to gain a deeper understanding of the profound ideas and themes that he has presented.

Maybe with a second or third reading, I will be able to unlock the full potential of these wonderful works.

Overall, it has been a great reading experience,

albeit a challenging one at times.

But that's what makes good literature so rewarding.

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