All The Pretty Horses

Rating:
Summary: a book that is better-written than even this review!
Review: Cormac McCarthy's "All the Pretty Horses" was critically acclaimed as one of the better works of modern American fiction. After reading the book, I can't help but agree with the reviewers. McCarthy has created a classic, a must-read for anyone, regardless of personal taste. For one thing, there is a little bit of everything - a heartbreaking love story, violent action sequences, realistic portrayal of mid-20th century plains life, and inclusion of even the most minute details of setting. The careful attention to detail can get tedious (it's almost reminiscent of Dickens -- "oh no!") but the landscapes McCarthy creates are beautiful enough to make the descriptions worth your while. The violent scenes are created so bluntly, as if McCarthy is talking about the weather as of late, that they seem all the more shocking to the reader. And the love story - wow. I've never read anything that seemed more real; McCarthy took some of the most trite and often-used ideas of romantic stories (the girl being the most beautiful thing the man had ever seen, the man being out of breath when he saw her) and created a tragically beautiful story that was startlingly realistic. His descriptions of the ordinary events that transpired in the novel were anything but trite or commonplace; McCarthy used fresh, thought-provoking similes and metaphors alongside deep psychological character analysis to pursue the realistic aspects of his character and plot. In short, I highly recommend this book to anyone, even those who don't particularly like "westerns", because to call it a western would be to shortchange this novel. It is a profoundly emotional yet soft-spoken tale, highly entertaining and edifying.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful Story but a Difficult Read
Review: Every professional critic lauded this book as a great modern day western classic and perhaps it is.

I was looking forward to reading this acclaimed novel by Cormac McCarthy, but found the going extremely difficult on a number of counts. Some of the sentences are over half a page long so that by the time you reach the end, the beginning has faded into the distant past. The absence of inverted commas to denote the spoken word was hard to get used to, often requiring a revisit to check if the passage just read was conversation or narrative. The final obstacle for me, even though it helped to conjure up the surroundings, was the frequent use of Spanish.

Now for the positives. The story has a good plot with two charismatic leading characters who head off into a foreign land in search of freedom, but who discover adventure, romance, violence, hardship and tragedy along the way. The descriptions of the mountains, plains, storms and rivers of Mexico are excellent, so the atmosphere of that land is always floating there alongside the developing story. The love scenes and the prison scenes provide contrasting moments of relaxation and tension for the reader. Reading is a wonderful way to discover new words and even though it is purely imaginative, the word "blivet" on page 46 of the paperback edition, is now part of my vocabulary, albeit changed to suit the person with whom I am talking.

"All the Pretty Horses" has only recently been released as a movie and I would expect this to be one of those very rare exceptions where the movie is better than the book. I look forward to finding out.

Rating:
Summary: Stunning Novel
Review: I thoroughly enjoyed this novel. I loved the main character and, unlike some other McCarthy books, the plot is easy to follow. The rhthym of his writing is amazing and after a while you get into a steady pace when you read it. This is by far his best...

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Summary: A boy coming of age
Review: There is probably a little of John Grady Cole in all of us. At 16, Cole sets out to define the world for himself. With buddy Lacey Rawlins, the pair leave Texas on horseback for Mexico and new adventure. Cole has the desire many have to have been born in an earlier, simpler time. He and his traveling companion quickly find themselves in situations that today's young man couldn't handle and he winds up fighting for his life while, both physically and emotionally. His fight is to stay alive and return to his new love.

McCarthy's writing has the ability to make you feel you are listening to John Grady Cole tell his story. McCarthy's decision to use the uneducated grammar patterns of a youngster from West Texas and his ability to describe both feelings and impressions leave you seeing the trails Cole rides and imaging the people he is fighting for and against.

McCarthy's writing style and the story itself makes it easy to understand why this book won national awards. It's easier still to understand why everyone will enjoy reading this great story of a young man growing up painfully hard and fast.

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Summary: Encompassing book!
Review: This first novel in Cormac McCarthy's "Border Trilogy" is not one's typical Western tale of Indians and cowboys. I originally began to read All the Pretty Horses very reluctantly for my AP English Literature class in high school. However, the plot washed away all of my qualms. The protagonist, sixteen-year-old John Grady Cole, loses his father to illness and his beloved ranch to legal pettiness. With his friend Lacey Rawlins, he travels by horseback across the Rio Grande into Mexico in search of work and adventure. While they finally find work breaking horses on a hacienda of a wealthy hacendado, Cole and Rawlins also find romance and great trouble. While the plot is exciting, the actual story is not merely centered on horses and danger. It focuses more on a boy's coming of age and how he comes to terms with the choices he has made. McCarthy's style paints a wonderful picture of hacienda life in Mexico without using florid language and makes John Grady's tale an absorbing one. I recommend this National Book Award winner to anyone.