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Summary: Too challenging and provocotive to put down unfinished.
Review: I happened to have read this McCarthy novel within days of exploring the southwest Texas-Mexican border region, down to Langtry. The trip offered a certain familiarity with the journey portrayed in two cowboy's trek into Mexico. The artistic prose, longer than necessary adjectives of grass lands and hills slows the reading down, but captures the essence of the era and locale. The reality of this fiction is quite close to home as the potential for tragedy always lies around the corner from impetuous decision making. In this case, two teenage cowboy partners made the decisions of the heart that brought tragedy and an ill fated love affair with a Mexican heiress. There are parts of the novel that are built on simplicity and humor, and even within tragic moments McCarthy uses simplistic conversation and somehow paints the image of the pain and hope in the hearts of the two cowboys. Friendship, sadness, loneliness, abandonment, hope and attraction are all woven into this well planned story line. An excellent choice if you are interested in a modern western that paints a story of life in the southwest area, without famous bank robbers and fancied pistol touting lawmen.
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Summary: McCarthy redefines the Homeric hero in this great novel.
Review: McCarthy redefines the Homeric hero in ALL THE PRETTY HORSES, a novel which places him in the company of Melville, Faulkner, Twain, Morrison and Hemingway. McCarthy's protagonist, John Grady Cole, understands completely the lesson of Santiago in Hemingway's greatest work, THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA: to transcend time and experience, you have to journey beyond your deepest fears, embrace your destiny, and carry your dream. Even when the journey places you in imminent danger of losing your life, it is the truth of the journey which teaches lessons that are profound and life-transforming, lessons which can only be learned once we, like Odysseus, make the journey. To see beyond you have to go beyond, and once you go beyond, the vision before you will change your life completely. The ancient Greeks believed that a Homeric hero must have "arete," meaning excellence in all things--see ZEN AND THE ART OF MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE for Pirsig's brilliant interpretation of arete in the modern era. And in ALL THE PRETTY HORSES, McCarthy does many things masterfully, but, quite possibly, none so masterfully as his portrayal of John Grady Cole, who is convincing, selfless, and truly in the Homeric tradition. Of course, many a literature professor will say there is no such thing as a Homeric hero in modern literature. And that's why they are paid to teach novels, not write them. Five stars is not enough. Cole's journey is no accident, and neither is McCarthy's command of the American language in this novel. Nowhere in contemporary American fiction is there a voice as compelling and lyrical as McCarthy's. Viva McCarthy!!!
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Summary: Lacks romance!!!
Review: This was a great book, very detailed on all aspects except on the romantic side. He used more words to describe plains and grasses than Cole and Alejandra's relationship. However, the moral lesson was very realistic and moving.
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Summary: Ride with the protagoist in long forgotten southwest
Review: This is a stunning book. McCarthy does not make a false step. Sustaining the tension- filled narrative of danger and forbidden love, he pulls out all the stops on lyrical writing. Laconic, with integrity, we are won over immediately with the protagonist. And, choosing horses compete with choosing women and ultimately, one's life.
Rating: 
Summary: A bloody-good book
Review: I took the time to read many of the reviews that were posted on this page before I decided to add my own. What shocks me most about it, is how many described the plot being boring or whimsical. I was apalled, nauseated, sickened,by this book. Yet the whole time I was captivated. I think it was a great story, and McCarthy's elements of intense description, which may have turned off some, only helped plunge me deeper into the surroundings of the time and place of this novel. The characters were very strong and I agonized through this novel,empathizing with their dashed hopes and dreams, their successes and failures. When Blevins met his face, I put the book away and declared that I had read enough,it was just too morbid for me. A couple hours later I picked up the book and finished it off. I admit I am a bit of an emotional reader, but I have never encountered a book with this force. I do plan to read the other 2 novels in the border trilogy with a better understanding of what to expect. I also will eagerly await the motion picture expected for Spring 2000, directed by Billy Bob Thornton, and starring Matt Damon (John Grady Cole)(would prefer a younger actor, like within 10 years of 16), with Henry Thomas as Rawlins (E.T. kid) and Lucas Black as the wild Blevins (Slingblade)
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Summary: Searing coming of age story set in Texas and Mexico i
Review: A wonderful book. Cormac McCarthy's writing reminds me of Jim Harrison's books. Echoes of Faulkner and Thomas Wolfe as well with the exuberant stylized prose. The conversation between John Grady and his lover's grandmother is one of the most vivid conversations I have ever read. Another scene involving a red hot pistol and a bullet wound will live in my memory forever. If you love beautful writing you will enjoy this book. If you are a fan of Jim Harrison's books you will find this trilogy a delight.
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Summary: I love this book enough to teach it to my students!
Review: I am a young, female, high school teacher. I am always on the look-out for excellent novels to read with my junior/senior all-boys AP Composition class; I have found such a novel in All the Pretty Horses. This "coming of age" story contains all of the elements I need: adventure, sexual exploration, (appropriate) violence, friendship, father/son struggles, and mother/son struggles just to name a few. The prose is difficult and begins slowly, but with determination, this novel can carry ANYONE away. I hope that my students will enjoy this novel as much as I do. As for the people that gave this novel ONE star....you need to start reading literature. This is not an Oprah book....it takes a little more patience than you allowed and more than 45 minutes to decipher. Give it another shot....it is better the second time around, as are many great novels.
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Summary: Cole...John Cole
Review: What can't this young feller do? Break twelve wild horses in one day? No problem. Perform surgery on himself? No sweat. (Well, some sweat.) Sleep with the beautiful daughter of the most powerful man around? Without even trying. Play chess like a master? Shucks, yes. Drink his coffee black? You bet. Single handedly steal back stolen horses despite all odds? Out knife fight a professional knife fighter? Smash S.P.E.C.T.R.E? Ah, isn't it great to have a writer who honestly tells us how the West really was.
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Summary: So Simple, So Powerful a Metaphor
Review: All the Pretty Horses is a deceptive book. The three norteamericano boys in Mexico are so innocent, yet so knowledgeable for 16 and 17. The world is too much with them. With this worldliness comes a tactile bridge between heaven and hell. Rawlins predicts the hell to come, but there is a bliss in the knowing. The lost boy Blevins is a pathetic character out of a Fagan experience. He isn't even himself. He's not known to us at all, yet we know him all too well. As we move though the northern Mexican landscape the richly drawn characters become part of the land; they blend into the earth and are just as brown and dusty as the land itself. Even though the evil that is done, we never know them as evil. What we do is not evil, but can set off a chain of evil that renders us hopless and helpless. As Blevins removed his clothes to avoid the electrical storm, he was to die as if the hand of God's lightening reached from the billowing thunderheads themself. McCarthy has woven into this tapestry the politics of Mexico, the politics of friendship, the poltics of gender relationships, and politics of horses. As the book takes us back to Texas and the XEW radio preacher on the Rio Grande shores, we now know that we are blessed in a strange way; there is no magic to the blessing. If we wait for magic only coffins will arrive at our doorstep.
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Summary: One of the greats
Review: Judging from the on-line reviews, there seem to be two major schools of thought about All The Pretty Horses (excluding the kids who wrote a review for extra credit). Some consider it one of the finest, most beautifully written novels of the past several decades. Others found it "boring," with "too much Spanish," or not conforming to their own experiences of cowboy life in Mexico fifty years ago. I'm of the first camp. I think McCarthy is one of the very best novelists writing today, and All The Pretty Horses is possibly his best work (certainly my favorite of the Trilogy). He shows us the difference between writing and (as another great writer described On the Road) typing. Those who prefer E-Z reading best sellers or like to crack their bubble gum while they brush the sand off their latest Stephen King paperback probably should go for something a little less challenging (not that this is Finnegan's Wake or anything). Those who want to have their hair stand up on the back of their neck from great art that is also very entertaining need look no further.
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