All the Pretty Horses

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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: 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: All the pretty Horses
Review: McCarhty paints a wonderful landscape across the border In All The Pretty Horses. This book by Cormac Mccarthy is a great book about the coming of age of 16 year old John Grady Cole. Like most coming of Age stories it is not particulary fast pased or thrilling. It is instead a book that slowly draws you into the characters journey and lets you along for the ride.It dosen't take long for you to cheer for the good hearted characters the McCarthy brilliantly portrays in his book. a would recommed this book to anyone as long as you have a little patience, as they will find that could things come to those who wait in all The Pretty Horses.

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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.

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Summary: A masterpiece that explores the depths of human existence.
Review:

All the Pretty Horses backs life into a corner, to truly experience it at its core. A book of strength and power, it is profound to the last word. The struggle of man and nature are forver present, from John Grady Cole's intuitive sense about horses, to the landscape of the rugged south. The theme of man and horse is stressed throughout the novel, and is unlike any description ever written. Man and horse, like man and nature, have a connection that goes back before time was ever recorded. This theme plays out through the entire novel, from John and Rawlins taming of the wild horses in Mexico, to their bonds with their own trusty steeds, and to John's dreams of horses. The friendship between the two teens is one of deep trust and comraderie, a mirror of their souls. As John discovers life in it's true, and at times harsh form, he comes of age, finding himself among the desolate plains of Mexico. Through struggles and reality, John survives, his spirit changed forever. The end of the book breathes new life into the battered hero, laying the world to come before his feet. A book full of unique romance, struggle, triumph, and all that is western, All the Pretty Horses takes a dramatic look into the soul and spirit of all that is man.

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Summary: Cormac McCarthy's Teenage Fantasy
Review: Over the weekend, I determined to read this National Book Award winner. The first 100 pages were about as much fun as a forced march with the Marines through a swamp.

Mc Carthy, the author, introduced characters by pronoun, created mystery by obscurity, and chose to thumb his nose at Strunk and White. Quotation marks were absent, capitals, nearly so, apostrophes hit and miss in his contractions. He writes: cant, couldnt, but restores the ' in I'll, I've. He sprinkled Spanish over the desert description, which made me wonder how a reader from Wisconsin without an "enchilada" in his vocabulary might lose the picture. All the Pretty Horses relies on a comic book plot of teen-age fantasy. Tough, abandoned 16 year old boy and his cousin meet up with Annie-Oakley-sure-shot idiot who's some kind of a metaphor for Del Rio religious lightning, grunts his was to romantic tryst with Mexican beauty who slides into his bed nightly without waking up the hacienda, then finds himself an incarcerated horse thief, knives a Mexican hit man in the heart, is rescued Mexican style (jailer paid off) by feminist angel who lectures him in a 10 page monologue.

His girl calls it quits in deference to her family but gives him one last lusty bed bounce in Zacatecas before a tearful goodbye.

Our hero recovers his horses, fights his way home, is absolved by father-figure judge and I felt like the Indians when he passed the Yates Field, "They had no curiosity about him at all."

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Summary: Wonderful Western
Review: As most of the reviewers have said, this is a terrific book. Cormac McCarthy has a unique writing style that is perfectly suited to the Western genre and he knows how to pace a story. It is a very well written book and well worth reading it for that reason alone.

What really makes this book special to me though is the theme of the book. It is the early 1940s and the Wild West has been fenced in, cars have taken over from horses and even the sprawling ranches of Texas are converting to large oil fields. John Grady Cole is a young man who longs to be a rancher and make a living taming horses and herding cattle, but he is prevented from doing this by his mother and the changing nature of his home, so he rides to Mexico with a friend to find the life he always wanted. Along the way, they have many adventures and relationships that keep the book lively, but I love the image of a boy standing on the border of what he has always known (Texas) and what he thinks he wants (Mexico) and hurdling that line and going after his desires. It is a very romantic idea, but one that McCarthy really makes come to life in the book.

I can not recommend this book highly enough and I think any lover of good writing, Westerns, coming of age tales, or just great fiction will agree that it is worth the short time it takes to read it.

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Summary: All The Pretty Horses.
Review: I found the book "All The Pretty Horses" by Cormac McCarthy to be an exciting and compelling story of a young boy going out into the world and doing what he loves best, and that is to ride horses. On his journey, he comes across dangers, love, and friendship, as he learn that the new world he has come and love is not what it always seems to be.

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Summary: A book I won't soon forget
Review: This book contains the qualitites that make up a good book to me, horses, a cowboy and a romantic love story. Cormac McCarthy does an excellent job of telling this comming of age story of a young boy who has lost everything of meaning to him and a mother who has lost interest. The pain that he has to go throung not just physically but mentally, that shapes him from a young boy into a man. The way that he can connect with the horses and train them truly is remarkable and the love that he feels for a certain girl will make your heart long for the same feeling.

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Summary: Everything you want all in one story!
Review: This book is great. It isn't just your normal epic love story, they put horses in there, and they also pu adventure and suspence in it. I would recomend it to anyone who enoys reading about love, cowboys, or horses. I can honestly say that there was no point in the book when i ever wanted to put it down. I wanted to read it all day if i could. I woudl read it before i went bed until i was falling asleep, then i woudl read it in all of my classes anytime that i had a chance. It pulls you right in, you feel like you are in the story with them, you are going through the same things, and you always want to know what happens next. I would definetaly recomend this book.