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The Border Trilogy #1

All the Pretty Horses

cormac mccarthy

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Teenager John Grady Cole, the last of a long line of Texas ranchers, has nothing left to stay for. Across the border Mexico beckons—beautiful and desolate, rugged and cruelly civilized. With neighbor Rawlins, and scruffy boy, he rides toward an idyllic, sometimes comic adventure, to a place where dreams are paid for in blood.

302 pages, Paperback

First published January 1,1992
Series
The Border Trilogy
Literary awards
national book award, national book critics circle award, 
Places
texas, mexico, 

This edition

Format
302 pages, Paperback
Published
January 1, 1992 by Vintage
ISBN
9780739412534
ASIN
0739412531
Language
English
Characters More characters

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, 99 votes)
5 stars
36(36%)
4 stars
26(26%)
3 stars
37(37%)
2 stars
0(0%)
1 stars
0(0%)
99 reviews All reviews
Profile Image for Kimberly .
verticalsea
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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n  
“A goodlookin horse is like a goodlookin woman, he said. They're always more trouble than what they're worth. What a man needs is just one that will get the job done.”
n

Okay, so this has many of the qualities I enjoy in a book, a well-developed sense of time and place, complex characters/situations, a sense of loss for unfulfilled desires, and several quote-worthy passages.

Very atmospheric, which can be a plus if that's the kind of thing you enjoy or dense and distracting if not. I happen to enjoy it here.

My only complaint...there were a few action scenes where I had a hard time visualizing what was going on. Both involved horses and rope, so maybe it's simply a personal problem. That said, it didn't detract from the story as a whole.

Would recommend to fans of Southern Gothic fiction.
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DJMilez
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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You think God looks out for people? said Rawlins.
Yeah. I guess He does. You?
Yeah. I do. Way the world is. Somebody can wake up and sneeze somewhere in Arkansas or some damn place and before you’re done there’s wars and ruination and all hell. You don’t know what’s goin to happen. I’d say He’s just about got to. I don’t believe we’d make it a day otherwise. (PG 92)

I’ll be honest and say this started out confusing and boring. I don’t know why I even continued and actually wanted to finish it. But I’m a bit glad I did. Once John Grady fell in love with the wrong rich girl it got a lot better. The drama began and man was it awful! But he was warned…

The writing was good and now I’d like to watch the movie.

Was not my favorite Cormac McCarthy but his talent is evident.





(Side Note::: Read in San Miguel de Allende)
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Atlas_707_
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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Nie potrafię się oderwać od książek tego chłopa. Piękna sprawa, tylko książek do przeczytania coraz mniej.
Recenzja: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vHKm...
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doubtfullemming
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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Due ragazzi, giovanissimi. Un viaggio a cavallo per arrivare in Messico. Un viaggio reale, ma anche un viaggio iniziatico. E lungo il percorso la scoperta di odio, violenza, ingiustizie, soprusi, sconfitte, ma anche l’amore, la passione e poi, ancora, il male, la morte. A fare da sfondo alle vicende umane una natura splendida e selvaggia, madre e matrigna.

”Sdraiato sotto la coperta, John Grady contemplava il quarto di luna sulla cresta delle montagne. In quella falsa alba blu le Pleiadi sembravano elevarsi nell’oscurità sopra il mondo trascinando con sé tutte le stelle, mentre il gran diamante di Orione, Cepella e il marchio di Cassiopea sembravano una rete da pesca gettata nel buio fosforescente. Rimase là a lungo ad ascoltare il respiro degli altri e a contemplare la natura selvaggia fuori e dentro di sé”.

In McCarthy la descrizione di vite quotidiane diventa metaforica, si fa senso tragico, di destino, di totalità.

”John Grady attraversò la strada ed entrò nel cimitero passando davanti alle vecchie cappelle di pietra, alle piccole lapidi con brevi epitaffi, ai fiori di carta sbiaditi dal sole, a un vaso di porcellana, a una Vergine di celluloide sbrecciata, ai nomi più o meno noti. Villareal, Sosa, Reyes, Jesuita Holguín. Nació. Falleció. Un uccello di ceramica. Un vaso bianco sbrecciato. Sullo sfondo si vedevano i prati verdi e i cedri scossi dal vento. Armendares. Ornelos. Tiodiosa Tarìn, Salomer Jáquez. Epitacio Villareal Cuéllar.
Si fermò col cappello in mano davanti alla terra smossa priva di lapide… le disse addio in spagnolo, poi si voltò, si rimise il cappello, alzò la faccia umida al vento e per un istante tese le mani come se volesse trovare un 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”.

Per me un romanzo immenso.

https://youtu.be/93nq1-w524Y
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SenseiDaichi
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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Well, how to even review this book. Admittedly, I went in with high expectations, and with Cormac McCarthy passing away a couple of months ago, there was plenty of chat round his books.

As McCarthy is known for his sparse punctuation, graphic violence and use of Spanish dialogue, I went in with some expectation of what I would be faced with. Being monolingual (well, I am generalising, but New Zealanders are not known for their grasp of languages), the only of the three I struggled with was the Spanish. In many cases there was just enough that it was evident what was happening, but I suspect I might have lost some key information at times. Where really confused I did resort to typing sentences into google translate, which did disrupt the flow of my reading. Luckily MCarthy sticks with short punchy sentences in his dialogue!

McCarthy's trilogy is a modern cowboy story, known as the great American novel, and that is pretty hard to argue with. I enjoyed it, and regularly had trouble putting this down (and going back to work).

I loved it, it was great, and I look forward to the other books in the trilogy.
5 stars
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Synthoen
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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Cormac McCarthy, in his 1992 novel, (which begins his Border Trilogy) has again conjured up dark and somber images of the verges of human civilization both literally and metaphorically in Mexico.

John Grady Cole and his friend leave 1949 Texas and cross the border into Mexico and in some respects goes back in time as the tone and setting could be a hundred years earlier. Cole works on a horse ranch and then because of his skill with horses is invited into the ranch house where he begins a prohibited romance with the rancher’s daughter Alejandra.

McCarthy’s prose is lean and muscular and is reminiscent of the stripped down to fighting weight language of Hemingway. The setting of the young men traveling into an idyllic setting, though written simply and plainly, is evocative of a mystical quest tale.

But this is after all Cormac McCarthy, creator of The Judge and Anton Chigurh, and so violence and darkness of the human soul are examined in minute detail. Compared to these other McCarthy stories, All the Pretty Horses is not as forbidding, and this more optimistic perspective (relatively speaking), makes for a good story, with McCarthy demonstrating how Cole represents a dying epoch, a lost ideal.

There is a way that everyone knows where a young woman can be the center of attention, but more subtle and more powerful is a way that an older woman can demand, grasp and take our notice. A woman who has been a girl, a daughter, a lover a mother, a wife, a grandmother and a widow whose beauty is blurred only as in an imperfect mirror and who knows all the spectrum of life better than anyone. There is a way that this woman can take the stage, if only in a supporting role, with but a few lines, who can steal not just the scene, but the whole show. Some will think of Olympia Dukakis in Moonstruck or Meryl Streep in August, but I think of Geraldine Page in The Pope of Greenwich Village. This woman who knows life, whose eyes have seen it all, speaks and we all listen.

In this way Alejandra’s great aunt Alfonsa, and especially her dialogue with John Grady, is the character in this excellent novel that I will remember the most. McCarthy, who has created and crafted so many memorial players, has again in Alfonsa produced a character that will stay with us after the last page is turned.

One of the better works of one of our most talented writers.

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MILFloli
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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It's a sad and beautiful world

“Dicono che chi non conosce la storia è condannato a ripeterla, ma io non credo che conoscerla serva a qualcosa. L’avidità, la follia e l’attrazione per il sangue sono una costante della storia, e questa è una cosa che persino Dio - che sa tutto quel che si può sapere - sembra incapace di modificare.”

Sella, cavallo, pistola, briglia, staffe, fucile, cavallo, sangue, sudore, polvere, un altro cavallo, campo lungo sulla mesa. Scrittura secca e cinematografica che riesce a rendere benissimo un’atmosfera western “alla Sergio Leone”. Dal punto di vista dell’atmosfera e della scrittura è un romanzo praticamente perfetto. Al di là della perfezione stilistica la trama ha forse qualche forzatura, qualcosa di poco verosimile, ma a un western si perdona tutto. Persino quel filo di buonismo che trapela nel finale. Per il resto, la visione del mondo che il romanzo offre è durissima e spietata, anche se non del tutto negativa. It’s a sad and beautiful world.

“[...] si sentì solo come non gli era più capitato da quando era bambino, totalmente estraneo al mondo che pure continuava ad amare. Pensò che la bellezza del mondo nascondeva un segreto, che il cuore del mondo batteva a un prezzo terribile, che la sofferenza e la bellezza del mondo crescevano di pari passo, ma in direzioni opposte, e che forse quella forbice vertiginosa esigeva il sangue di molta gente per la grazia di un semplice fiore”.
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elmonosuke
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 17,2025
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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.
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