Rating: 
Summary: Of hombres and caballos
Review: The Crossing continues, in a way, where All the Pretty Horses leaves off, with the same premise of a young cowboy crossing into Mexico, though this time with Billy Parham at the reins instead of John Grady Cole.The title, at least on the surface, refers to Billy's crossing into Mexico, which he makes a few times with different sidekicks. The Crossing may also refer to metaphorical journeys, such as from boyhood to manhood, from tame to wild, wild to tame. I won't say anything else and ruin the story, as other reviewers are wont to do. A thoroughly engaging and gripping book. At times McCarthy has Billy meet up with strangers who opine for pages on end about the mysteries of life. These intermissions I find excessive and unnecessary to the story, and I almost didn't make it past the first one, though I'm glad I did. By the end of The Crossing your brain will be full of the book, images of horses and guns and senoritas and the Mexican countryside implanted in your head, ideas of mortality, friendship, honor, and duty stuck in your imagination for days. A few notes to the other reviewers: McCarthy has constructed the Spanish dialogue so that we can figure out what people are saying in context. All you have to do is pay attention. Also, if you aren't used to the lack of punctuation by the third page you might as well pick up the classic comics edition instead. The spare dialogue without quotations draw us into the spare, harsh scenery of New Mexico and Mexico. On to The Cities of the Plain!
Rating:
Summary: An epic with many sections of perfect storytelling
Review: Cormac McCarthy is a national treasure. The Crossing begins with a long section where the protagonist, Billy Parham, is tracking a she-wolf, setting traps which she fails to get caught in, finally catching her, then being unable to kill her. So he sets off to Mexico from his home in NM, planning to return her to the mountains where from which she surely came. Things don't quite work out the way he'd planned.
And when he returns home, he finds his world forever changed. He and his brother, Boyd, return to Mexico to try to find his father's stolen horses and the men who stole them. Again, things don't quite work out as planned.
Without saying too much that would reveal the plot line, I'll mention that Billy eventually sets out to Mexico a third time on a mission of reclamation and redemption. And yet again, all does not go according to plan.
Along the way, there are long stretches of other travelers or characters Billy meets who tell their stories: a priest, a blind man, a gypsy, among others. The overall effect is one of melancholy, and of course, having been written by such a consummate master of the art, the eloquence of the language shines through everywhere. As a side benefit, you'll learn or re-learn quite a bit of Spanish along the way. I began by rewinding the tape and doing word for word translations from my rusty memory. By about tape #6 I became aware that I was understanding the Spanish perfectly, scarcely aware he'd shifted into it.
Spectacular book on tape.
Rating:
Summary: Another McCarthy Masterpiece
Review: I loved "All the Pretty Horses" and came to "The Crossing" with high expectations, yet I wasn't disappointed. "The Crossing" begins with teenage Billy Parham attempting to return a wolf, trapped on his New Mexico ranch, to its native home in Mexico. Along the way, the wolf is killed and Billy gets in trouble, and upon his return home he finds it abandoned, his horses stolen and evidence that his family was murdered. It is a violent and dramatic introduction to the book, but the action and description is phenomenal. After this section, Billy finds his younger brother unharmed and they decide to return to Mexico in search of their family's horses. Once they have made their crossing, they face several trials and adventures and they experience everything from love to betrayal to death. All of this is expertly described by McCarthy, who is simply and incredible story teller and writer. This is a superb sequel to "All the Pretty Horses" and again makes the reader long for the days of the open frontier. This is a great book for any reader.
Rating: 
Summary: Richest, most difficult of the trilogy
Review: This book is probably the most difficult of the three in the Border Trilogy. McCarthy pulls out all the philosophical, linguistic, and metaphysical stops in his writing here, to an extent beyond even his other famous work, "Blood Meridian". It was tough going, working through the shifting narrative voices, the textual structure (and lack thereof), the absurd and the profound -- and that's not even considering the tragic plot. McCarthy creates a hero in this book, Billy Parham, quite different from the hero in the first book of the trilogy. Billy is not the elegiac mystery that John Grady Cole, of "All the Pretty Horses", is; rather, we are plunged deep into understanding and compassion for him. He seems to be our viewpoint to the nth degree. This of course makes the things he goes through in the tragic plot of the novel, so much more incisive to a reader's mind and heart. Difficult is the word for this book -- difficult and rich.
Rating:
Summary: a stunning journey into a world of myth, fable and cold real
Review: It seem that occasionaly a writer comes along that is able to take from the great masters that preceeded them and yet make it their own genius. Cormac Mccarthy is the lastest of these, from the whirlwind prose of Faulkner to the depth of character of Steinbeck and the magical realism of Marquez, Mccarthy shows his influences but his vision is a uniquely dark one. In this the second book of the border trilogy Mccarthy meditates on the invisible line that seperates the United States from it's neighbor to the south. This border is used as a significant metaphor within the novel, as Billy Parnham, the main protaganist, crosses this line he also crosses into a world quite foriegn to him and one in which he is never completely comfortable. The Crossing is the beautiful story of two brothers and their adventures in Mexico but is so much more than that. The description of the land is unmatched while the characters seem to slowly enter you as the novel is consumed. I highly reccommend this novel. There doesn't seem to be another current writer who can express so well that place between man and the world
Rating:
Summary: Another McCarthy Masterpiece
Review: I loved "All the Pretty Horses" and came to "The Crossing" with high expectations, yet I wasn't disappointed. "The Crossing" begins with teenage Billy Parham attempting to return a wolf, trapped on his New Mexico ranch, to its native home in Mexico. Along the way, the wolf is killed and Billy gets in trouble, and upon his return home he finds it abandoned, his horses stolen and evidence that his family was murdered. It is a violent and dramatic introduction to the book, but the action and description is phenomenal. After this section, Billy finds his younger brother unharmed and they decide to return to Mexico in search of their family's horses. Once they have made their crossing, they face several trials and adventures and they experience everything from love to betrayal to death. All of this is expertly described by McCarthy, who is simply and incredible story teller and writer. This is a superb sequel to "All the Pretty Horses" and again makes the reader long for the days of the open frontier. This is a great book for any reader.
Rating:
Summary: The best book I have read in many years
Review: First: I read the Border Trilogy this week. I haven't read any other McCarthy literature. I was told that if I liked Larry McMurtry, Steinbeck, and Salinger then I would love McCarthy. The first thing I bought was The Crossing. Upon realizing it was part of a trilogy with All The Pretty Horses as the first installment, I was very disappointed. I had no intrest in a Hollywood western novel. But, I grudgingly purchased All The Pretty Horses and read it. (Have not watched movie). That said... Cormac McCarthy far surpasses any living writer with which I have come in contact. If I had the masterful ability with language that he does, I could express that in a much more emphatic manner. Any reviewer who complains about things such as puncuation, grammer, or spanish-I feel compelled to respond with this:
1. Would you prefer that all painters created exact duplicates of their subject matter? Are we not better, as a society and as a species, for taking our interpretations further and showing those things we are already intimate with in a fresh or different way? Would you say 'cubism', for instance, is too complicated for you?
2. Are you 25 years old or less? Do you have any true ability to surive in a harsh world without parental aide? The struggles depicted in this novel would, of course, be difficult to fathom in that scenario, especially when teamed with non-traditional grammar and punctuation and a lack of a personal translator.
3. If neither of the two applies to a negative reviewer, perhaps your solution would be ritalin. It is supposed to assist in 'focus'. On to the review: The Crossing's main character is just the opposite of the first installment of this triogy's main character. Billy Parnham will never get anything he for which he fights. He will always align himself most closely with a losing cause. It seems that he is completely a-sexual, and the closest bonds he forms almost always precede the demise of said character/animal. There is something striking in the fact that the moral stance, character, sense of justice are nearly identical for John Grady Cole (the main character in All the Pretty Horses) and Billy. Yet John wins, and Billy loses. Repeatedly. Yet it is Billy who survives all contests, all tragedies, all of his closest bonds. Billy's 'heart' is never joined with any group or idea or convention larger than land and animals. At some points his 'heart' is rejected; but is his survival possibly attributed to his lack of truly 'giving' his 'heart' to any passionate cause? The passion Billy gives us in the final scene of The Crossing, the self-realization and anger and utter despairing are so exceedingly rare that your tears are nearly required after finishing this book. The wolf's climax was another section that makes this book stunning and irresistable.
Rating:
Summary: Stark, substantial...Exotic, familiar
Review: I finished the border trilogy this evening.
The final scene of The Crossing which depicts a tragic self-realization for Billy Parnham may leave the reader with a thumping heart, a feeling of bleak despair and a sense of emotional exhaustion--but--unless the reader has untreated attention deficit disorder, it should also do this: Invoke that sated feeling one gets after a stark but substantial, exotic but familiar feast.
As someone who has never read a book twice, this one could be read many more times than that and have deep, new, meaning derived each time.
As stated, if you do not have the focus to enjoy this amazing work, it truly is your own personal loss.
That said, I wish everyone I knew had read it--there is so much to discuss. I recommend the entire Border Trilogy.
Rating:
Summary: keen poetic novel, digs into your soul to leave a mark
Review: In this breath-taking coming-of-age story set on the Mexican border early in the twentieth century, Billy Parham's faith in a Godly natural order of things brings him head-to-head with fate when a pregnant wolf is caught on his family's ranch. Returning from the desolate south after repatriating the wolf to her native mountains, he finds his young brother orphaned and their ranch destroyed. Crossing again into Mexico for refuge, Billy and his brother enter nightmares haunted by a mystical love steeped in blood and drowned in the dust of a landscape that offers them nothing but further loss. Told in spare prose poetry that glitters with an all-observant love of life so tenacious that it cannot recoil from overwhelming grief or resist the blind tug of insane hope, this story is sure to become a lodestar to the souls of readers who have loved the bare expanses of the great southwest and that wild icon of hunted innocence, the lone wolf.
Rating: 
Summary: Heartbreak, heartwrenching tale, emotionally draining
Review: I began to read "The Crossing" with great expectations. I had read so much about the author and his comparison to American masters such as Hemingway and Faulkener. Well, I have finished the novel and my expections were not at all met. What constitutes a "great" novel? What is "great" writing anyway? This novel makes you wonder how to answer that. The novel begins stong; interesting, full of description of nature, the landscape and soforth. Animals and man's relationship to them are often beautifully evocted here. The tale of the indian and then the business of the trapping of the wolf make for a fascinating read. When Billy goes to Mexico with the wolf it is hard to put the book down. The end result of his trek to Mexico with wolf is disappointing and foreshadows the rest of the book. The book then moves on to his next ventures to Mexico. There is some interesting material here but the plot is thin and sadly, poor judgement, often typical of adolescents, is excercised by Billy and tragedy results. Billy is so sensitive and has a basic decency that one of the tragedys here is that he doesnt think things through before acting and his brother does the same thing. In the process of the telling of this tale, the author has some irritating techniques: he diverts from the story at least three times, going on for pages and pages first about the priest, then about the blind man and then about the airplane; I see what he is trying to do but I found it just diverts from the plot and especially regarding the story of the priest, adds new meaning to the word "boring". The short, clipped dialogue without punctuation often left you wanting for more, more elaboration of the character's thoughts. The continual use of untranslated Spanish is also not only annoying but is frustrating. I looked up some of the language in a dictionary and in fact, if one does not understand Spanish, you DO miss out on plot elements. I fail to understand the purpose of this ploy on the author's part. What was his thinking here?
The story ends up being hearbreaking. The reader feels for the loss Billy has suffered, he has lost so much. The novel does have value, however I was glad when I finished it that I would not have to endure the pain , pesimissim and bleak world of the author anymore. The book was anything but enjoyable, and it didnt have to be.
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