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Summary: All The Pretty Horses
Review: All the Pretty Horses is a story about a boy who is in distress and thinks that leaving home will help him deal with the problems that he faced throughout his life. The boy John Grady Cole was mourning over the death of his Grandfather and since the grandfather only had one child, a daughter, the family name would be gone forever. The ranch that his grandfather owned was now in possession of the boys' mother, which was an idea she wanted nothing to do with it. With this news John decides that he needs to get away. This decision composed of him meeting with his friend Rawlin to embark on a journey that they would remember for the rest of their lives, a journey that involved traveling on their own to Mexico. While riding they meet a young boy who is about the age of 13 and asks the men if he could join them on their journey to Mexico. They respond by saying, "You aren't riding with us", "You will get us thrown in jail with that stolen horse of yours." Even with these situations the men still allow him to travel with them but under a close watch.
Through this journey all the people in this close knit community are exposed to many situations and feeling such as love death and especially welcoming something that many experiences for the first time. This book expresses with great emphasis the changes that the characters went through in a way that different people can relate to.
I would recommend this book to anyone who like's reading books when you don't know what is going to happen next. There are many different parts of the story that don't make sense in the beginning but all come together by the end of the story. Cormac McCarthy puts many of the problems that humans face today in a storyline that everyone can enjoy. This is a classic story that will be in our hearts and on our shelves for many years to come.
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Summary: All the Pretty Horses
Review: All the Pretty Horses
Cormac McCarthy
Vintage International
June 1993 A true classic adventure novel of life, injustice, love and freedom. The adventure of two friends as they travel on horseback to Mexico. As they meet the true life of Mexico. As love, deceit, and adventure collide in this great novel. As John and Rawlins brave Mexico they get tangled with a horse thief and assassin. While in Mexico they work at a ranch and saddle break five hundred horses. John also fell in love with Alejandra the ranch owner's daughter. They get thrown in jail for a crime committed by a man named Smith who looks like Rawlins. As they travel to Mexico a land where dreams are paid for in blood. They have the time of their lives dealing with what Mexicans deal with every single day 365 days a year. Alejandra and John fall in love against the wills of Alejandra's father and her divorced mother. Alejandra attends college in Texas but comes home to visit her father on break. One night Alejandra and John ride off to the upper part of the ranch and spend the night with the horses under the starry sky of Mexico. John sleeps with Alejandra the next night in his cabin but she has to pretend that she just got up early with John so her Dad doesn't find out about their love. Alejandra's father hired John and Rawlins to saddle break and ride over five hundred horses. Little did he know that his daughter would end up falling in love with John. Horse and adventure lovers a like will fall into this book and never put it down. All that read it will fall in love with All the Pretty Horses. Romance novel lovers will also like this book because of the sensual romance of Alejandra and John. All book lovers will like this book. This book has won the National Book Critics Circle Award. It is a great book for everyone to read and treasure.
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Summary: As real as it gets
Review: This is not a John Ford western. The setting could not be more real if you walked or rode a horse through it. McCarthy is a master of subtle nuance in his characters. West Texas and Mexico are hard, unforgiving places and he fully portrays that in his descriptions of the land, not to mention the people. Take a journey with McCarthy in any of his work and you will visit the very heart of life, raw, gritty and dangerous. I dare you to search out and visit the places he writes about, they do exist!
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Summary: A Beautiful Novel
Review: At first I was worried that I would have to read "All The Pretty Horses" slowly to understand what was going on, but I quickly got into it, reading perhaps seventy pages in the first sitting and read the rest in less then a week. The simple, yet long sentences do require some adjustment and it can be frustrating to go through the Spanish dialogue, though usually enough clues are given to let readers figure out what is going on. McCarthy's use of dialogue is brilliant, especially his use of dialect and realistic conversations. I really wanted to know what would happen to Grady and Rawlins to the very end. Page turners are a rare occurence in contemporary novels. I was a little disappointed with the ending, I couldn't understand why Grady would risk his freedom to go get his horse. For a few pages it seemed like he was going to repeat the fatal mistake of Blevins. All it all, "All the Pretty Horses" is an excellent novel, well worth picking up and enjoying McCarthy's writing that often nears poetic, especially in his description of horses, which he seems have have an innate understanding of.
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Summary: Horse Opera on a Grand Scale
Review: McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses offers the reader an homage to the great westerns of an earlier time. This like McMurtry's Last Picture Show is the western of the dying American West. In a landscape now filled with cars and highways, John Grady Cole sets out the find the West of the past that he cherishes so much. After the death of his grandfather and the sale of the ranch that means so much to him. Cole sets out on a journey to Mexico with his friend Lacey Rawlins to find the land and western adventure as cowboys they have always dreamed of. Along the way they pick up another youth, Jimmy Blevins, and the true adventure begins. The narrative reads like a wierd hybrid of Ernest Hemingay meets William Faulkner but the careful reader will have no real problem following along. In addition, McCarthy's descriptions of the Mexican countryside can only be described as breathtaking. The horsebreaking scenes alone are woth the price of admission. This is not to say that there are no flaws in the novel. The characters have a tendency to act on a level way beyond their years. The minor characters are not developed as well as they should be. In fact the affair between Cole and Alejandra feels like it was added as an afterthought and goes nowhere. Perhaps the biggest flaw in the book is its ending. It seems that McCarthy tried to make his book too much of an adventure. The reclamation of the horses and capture of the captain scenes feel to Rambo like to be a part of so beautifully written a book. But overall this is an extremely well written narrative that deserves a read.The flaws feel like defects in fine leather. Yes there are flaws but overall the picture is superb.
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Summary: Wonderful and mesmerizing
Review: Beautiful writing, wonderful characters, superb plot and story line. I just wish Cormac McCarthy lived next door so he could read it to me himself.
I loved this book.
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Summary: All the Pretty Horses
Review: All the Pretty Horses In McCarthy's novel, he uses well written description in areas to explain the people around the main character and death or dying. 'He looked at the face so caved and drawn among the folds of funeral cloth, the yellowed moustache, thee eyelids paper thin. That was not sleeping. That was not sleeping.' The books point of view for this novel is in second person. The main character of the story is John Grady Cole. John Grady is a dynamic person because he changes from a quiet kind of guy to a murderer and then falls in love that changes his personality.
The major conflict of the book is that John is running away, along with his friend, Rawlins, from Georgia to seek a better life in Mexico, so they thought. After reaching Mexico John falls in love with a girl named Alejandra, whose family disapproves him and Alejandra leaves him. Because of this John becomes broken hearted and gets drunk and is thrown into jail. The captain of the jail house takes John out into the desert intending to leave him there, but John finds his pistol and shoots the Captain and leaves him there to die.
John goes to a judge and tells him everything that he has done. John tells him about the first man he murdered, his love towards Alejandra, how he left the captain in the desert to die and that he helped the captains dislocated shoulder.' He reached up and grabbed his arm as if he'd reclaim it but John Grady had felt the coupling pop into place and he gripped the shoulder and rotated the arm again while the captain tossed his head and gasped.'
This novel is enjoyable for readers who love action, death, and romance. McCarthy wrote this book with ferocious energy and puts other writers having their noses looking down on the ground. It gives people other thoughts of Mexicans and Mexico's culture and lifestyles. However, some areas of the book drag and are dull, but overall it is a well written book.
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Summary: All the Pretty Horses
Review: All the Pretty Horses In McCarthy's novel, he uses well written description in areas to explain the people around the main character and death or dying. "He looked at the face so caved and drawn among the folds of funeral cloth, the yellowed moustache, thee eyelids paper thin. That was not sleeping. That was not sleeping." The books point of view for this novel is in second person. The main character of the story is John Grady Cole. John Grady is a dynamic person because he changes from a quiet kind of guy to a murderer and then falls in love that changes his personality.
The major conflict of the book is that John is running away, along with his friend, Rawlins, from Georgia to seek a better life in Mexico, so they thought. After reaching Mexico John falls in love with a girl named Alejandra, whose family disapproves him and Alejandra leaves him. Because of this John becomes broken hearted and gets drunk and is thrown into jail. The captain of the jail house takes John out into the desert intending to leave him there, but John finds his pistol and shoots the Captain and leaves him there to die.
John goes to a judge and tells him everything that he has done. John tells him about the first man he murdered, his love towards Alejandra, how he left the captain in the desert to die and that he helped the captains dislocated shoulder." He reached up and grabbed his arm as if he'd reclaim it but John Grady had felt the coupling pop into place and he gripped the shoulder and rotated the arm again while the captain tossed his head and gasped."
This novel is enjoyable for readers who love action, death, and romance. McCarthy wrote this book with ferocious energy and puts other writers having their noses looking down on the ground. It gives people other thoughts of Mexicans and Mexico's culture and lifestyles. However, some areas of the book drag and are dull, but overall it is a well written book.
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Summary: A cowboy story with a bold, but believable hero
Review: The era of the cowboy is gone, though some refuse to accept it. This novel is about two young boys who are desperately trying to hold on to the cowboy way of life, whose search for independence and the freedom to work with horses leads them to Mexico. But this is more than a simple book about horses--in Mexico the boys encounter a corrupt system of law and a firmly-rooted social hierarchy with which they must do battle.
John Grady, the hero of the novel, falls in love with a rich man's daughter, but is unable to formally court her because he is poor and American. One of the focal points of this book is the social structure of Mexico, the rigid differences of class and the separation of the hierarchy (most of whom claim to be of pure Spanish blood) from the lower classes. More than just a love story, this book deals with the difficult aristocratic-like social structure which could not even be fully done away with in the Revolution of 1910-1917 (of which the book makes mention as well).
This book is very valuable for its historical content, as well as for its compelling narrative, its very believable and truly remarkable characters, and for its excellent story. The one major complaint I have is that McCarthy's syntax and grammar are very poor. Don't expect any punctuation marks, and be ready for both fragment and run-on sentences, the former of which sometimes is only a few words without a verb or subject, the latter which sometimes goes on mercilessly for half a page without any commas or punctuation of any kind. I know this is a new stylistic preference which many authors use, but it is very annoying. A vivid description loses most of its savor when it composes only one sentence and the word 'and' appears fifteen or so times.
Despite the horrid style of writing (which some, admittedly, may find appealing), this is a wonderful book, well worth the time to read for both its narrative and its historical value.
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Summary: Journey from innocence to manhood
Review: All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy takes the reader on a journey to the depths of change within mankind, witnessed through the thoughts and actions of John Grady Cole.
A boy of sixteen, John realizes his purpose in life and sets off with his "pardner" on horseback to a country that neither of them know anything about. The pace picks up when John and Rawlins take the newest member of their party, Jimmy Blevins, a boy even younger than they are. Blevins provides comical relief, but ends up being more trouble than he's worth when he gets them mixed up with the Mexican law enforcement. Recognizing the trouble that he's now in, John experiences a "coming of age," a change from boy to man. He must look out for himself, provide for himself, and even fight for himself in his battle for survival in the harsh environment of northern Mexico.
Cole's journey takes place in the untamed desert in southern Texas and northern Mexico. Sometimes following a trail, sometimes creating their own, Cole and Rawlins ride horseback through the desert, stopping to marvel at the small haciendas and the hospitality of the Mexican people. Their journey seems to end, at least for a time, at the ranch where they're offered work. John Grady Cole is a disillusioned young man who, unlike most people, knows the life that he's supposed to lead, and watches it slowly slip away. Not content just watching, he follows it to a simpler place. His buddy, Lacey Rawlins, won't let him go on his journey alone however, and helps to keep John Grady on his path. The bond that these two boys share is only enhanced by the presence of their horses, which they rely on and care for throughout the entire story. Enter Jimmy Blevins, a boy who gives them a few laughs and yet is a deadly marksman. Blevins has not yet come of age when he's brutally killed by Mexican law enforcement.
The twists of the plot come with the addition of Blevins to the party. When his horse, gun, and clothes are lost after a thunderstorm, he's more than determined to get them back. Riding into the nearest town, raising hell and reeking havoc, he "steals" his horse back and the three of them are off, now fugitives of the law. Blevins splits from the two older boys, and Cole and Rawlins chance upon a ranch. At their inquiry, the hacendado gave them work around the ranch, mostly breaking and training horses. The tempo escalates when the police come and take Rawlins and Cole away, falsely accusing Rawlins and Cole of being accomplices to murder and the theft of a horse. They're thrown in jail where they rejoin Blevins, before he's taken out back and shot. The ending, while not surprising, still holds a few more hidden cards as the two boys are dealt justice the Mexican way.
This book is easy to relate to because there is a part of John Grady Cole in all of us, even though most of us aren't so sure of our positions in life. I'd highly recommend this story as a way to peer into the journey so many of us are forced to take. This is a softened version of the story, one that we can stare at without worrying about being blinded. There are harsh realities faced and uncovered, but with the innocence of a sixteen-year-old boy concealing them.
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