All The Pretty Horses
Ratings185
Average rating4
Couldn't stand not having punctuation, especially around the dialogue. Took me out of the story
Keep in mind I am just dipping my toes into modern westerns.
Good:
Great prose and storytelling as usual from McCarthy. The plot and characters are consistently entertaining/engaging and well-fleshed-out. Love a good bromance between a few cowboys; John Grady and Rawlins play off each other so well and Blevins plays a great third wheel.
Bad:
Not too much negative to say overall. In essence the weight of the story leaves a little bit to be desired when compared to other McCarthy that I've read in the past such as the Road. I never felt a truly emotionally resonant moment that I've felt before with McCarthy.
Ugly:
The romance subplot felt a bit weak but maybe I'm just a bit of a romance hater.
I grew up in a rural part of the country and didn't like it. And yet, reading Cormac always makes me want to put on double denim and a pair of boots and go horseback through the American Southwest as if I would enjoy that. Also strange given that none of the characters in Cormac's book have a particularly good time in the borderlands.
Here are some lines that stopped me in my tracks, either because I found them beautiful, relatable, or despairing (often all at once):
Blevins rolled down the leg of his overalls and poked at the fire with a stick. I told that son of a bitch I wouldnt take a whippin off him and I didnt.
...I wanted very much to be a person of value and I had to ask myself how this could be possible if there were not something like a soul or like a spirit that is in the life of a person and which could endure any misfortune or disfigurement and yet be no less for it. If one were to be a person of value that value could not be a condition subject to hazards of fortune. It had to be a quality that could not change. No matter what. Long before morning I knew that what I was seeking to discover was a thing I'd always known. That all courage was a form of constancy. That it was always himself that the coward abandoned first. After this all oter betrayals came easily.
I knew that courage came with less struggle for some than for others but I believed that anyone who desired it could have it. That the desire was the thing itself. The thing itself. I could think of nothing else of which that was true.
...the weight on his heart had begun to lift and he repeated what his father had once told him, that scared money cant win and a worried man cant love
He stood at the window of the empty cafe and watched the activities in the square and he said that it was good that God kept the truths of life from the young as they were starting out or else they'd have no heart to start at all.
hates
Well, how to even review this book. Admittedly, I went in with high expectations, and with Cormac McCarthy passing away a couple of months ago, there was plenty of chat round his books.
As McCarthy is known for his sparse punctuation, graphic violence and use of Spanish dialogue, I went in with some expectation of what I would be faced with. Being monolingual (well, I am generalising, but New Zealanders are not known for their grasp of languages), the only of the three I struggled with was the Spanish. In many cases there was just enough that it was evident what was happening, but I suspect I might have lost some key information at times. Where really confused I did resort to typing sentences into google translate, which did disrupt the flow of my reading. Luckily MCarthy sticks with short punchy sentences in his dialogue!
McCarthy's trilogy is a modern cowboy story, known as the great American novel, and that is pretty hard to argue with. I enjoyed it, and regularly had trouble putting this down (and going back to work).
I loved it, it was great, and I look forward to the other books in the trilogy.
5 stars
I hadn't read a McCarthy book since The Road years and years ago and this was terrific. I always thought this was some sort of soapy western based on the the movie adaptation, which I admittedly have not seen. There's a romance aspect to this, and it is indeed a novel with a romantic heart. However, this is a novel more about the love of the West than interpersonal romance.
Great dialog. I'd recommend it if you're already a fan of Westerns.
I ain't afraid to die.
That's good. Helps you die. Doesn't help you to live.
McCarthy is the master of description and dialogue. All the Pretty Horses takes you on an incredible journey with a young man and his best friend seeking escape and adventure and a new life abroad only to find all those things and far more than they bargained for.
This is a coming of age story in a sense, a story of a boy searching for a purpose in a world where the life he knew was just turned upside down.
The story is fantastic. The pacing is perfect. The writing though is what sets this apart. The writing is superb. Some of the best stuff I have ever read.
”[. . .] they smelled of smoke and tallow and sweat and they looked as wild and strange as the country they were in.”
Yes. Yes, they did. McCarthy writes poetry on every page. There is no author in recent memory that can paint a picture, paint a mood, like McCarthy. This particular quote captures the texture of the story. For all your aspiring writers out there. This is masterclass stuff.
All the Pretty Horses is a privilege to read.
It has the sweeping tone of a grand Western like Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry, with a focus on the grandeur of John Grady's journey across the landscape. McCarthy's metaphors and descriptions are beautiful, like reading poetry. Several scenes - mostly of riding through nature, and especially a romantic scene in a lake - are so pretty I read them several times. It's the most beautiful prose I've read since All The Light We Cannot See. It's both romantic (about a love story) and Romantic (anti-cynical), which is exactly like me; coming from his pitch-black post-apocalyptic novel The Road, this is an entirely different feel. It's also pretty funny at times, which I didn't really expect.
I've heard people compare his writing to As I Lay Dying. Although I happened to like that book in its own right, I think that Hemingway is a better comparison than Faulkner. McCarthy's sentences feel stark and clipped, even though sometimes they run on for a whole paragraph, and he doesn't use much punctuation. But they're never deliberately hard to follow, like some of the character chapters in Faulkner. This is just how McCarthy writes.
Cons: he uses a fair amount of technical language about horses and Spanish. Even though I know very little vocabulary for either, I didn't have a hard time following anything.
I loved this book, and whoever you might be, I think you would too.
Damn. What an incredible, incredible book. A more tender book than McCarthy's others, but just as raw, merciful, brutal, and soft as any of his novels.
I am not what you would call the average Cormac McCarthy reader. Yes, I may fit the stereotype—white male with a beard in his thirties—but I defy most stereotypes and hope that someday I may be the poster child for “stereotypes be damned.” (It seems out of place to use quotes in a review of a McCarthy book, doesn't it?) Historically, grisly, romanticized westerns do little for me.
Like everyone else, I've read The Road. That was more than a decade ago and I thought, “eh, it's okay.” It was the first McCarthy I'd read and while I was open to the idea of returning to the author, he wasn't on the top of my list. Two weeks ago, I had no plans of returning to McCarthy anytime soon. I have a long list of books I really want to read, and between those and whatever randomly tempts me on the bookshelf, I have no time for outliers. But a strange thing happened: I wasn't in the mood for any of the books on my list. Nothing seemed right. I experienced something rare: I had no idea what I wanted to read. I spent more than an hour trying to decide what was next. I was tempted to just take a day or two away from reading. Then, as though some conscious entity grew tired of my fit, I picked up All the Pretty Horses and started reading. Divine intervention? Subconscious desire? Likely, I just wanted to surprise myself.
And was I surprised. Within an hour, I found that I was enjoying the story. Thoroughly. And for those who know me and my likes, this may be surprising. I'm an open-minded individual and will try things outside of my comfort zone, but there are some things that have burned me so many times that I expect to be displeased. A book that promises to be filled with horses and gunfights is prone to disappoint. All the Pretty Horses exceeded all my baseless expectations. Much of my appreciation was in the way the main characters, John Grady and Lacey Rawlins, converse. What pulled me in was those two, sitting around a fire and talking, riding through desolate terrain and talking. Oddly, I became very wrapped up in their simple conversation. Even though their relationship seemed unbalanced, even though Grady seemed like a contradiction, and even though I hate heat and horses, I was pulled in. And as others were added to the mix, the dynamics changed, but the conversation remained riveting.
Grady was a wonderful character, though I couldn't quite grasp how much faith I was willing to invest in his authenticity. Although I never thought of Grady as old, I had trouble shaping his image as a sixteen year old. He was far too wise and mature. The more I got to know him, the more I was convinced that such a wise teenager could exist. And, as the story developed, I began to see that underneath it all, he may have not been quite as wise as he seemed (though I'm still not sure). Multi-dimensional character: you've hooked me.
Ironically, it was only when the book picked up speed, reaching its climax, that my interest waned some. An old-fashioned shootout and the getaway on a horse: I find that a bit boring. Overall, this was such a small part of the novel that I wasn't too distracted by it.
Who'd have thought that cowboys sitting around talking would've been such a draw? Divine intervention? I'm a weird one, I guess. Now I'm actually excited to read the next book in the series.
I can finally understand why people read McCarthy. If you haven't read him before, this might be a good one to start with: beautiful evocative language, memorable setting, not too much violence. But OK, that's it. I don't need to read it again, nor read any more of his books. I get it, and I get that I'm not smart enough to really appreciate his style, and that's fine.
Aside: do any women read McCarthy? And enjoy? I'd love to hear your perspectives if so.
Loved the style. McCarthy's writing works well for what is essentially an old western novel set in 1940s Mexico.
Cormac McCarthy is a strong author, and manages to take a rather boring old concept – coming of age, forbidden love, you've read it before – and make something beautiful out of it. His style is bleak, and I like it.
Short review - beautifully written spare story about a teen seeking after what he cannot have. I really like McCarthy's style of writing. Heavy on detail and narrative, but light on dialogue. It works particularly well for the lone western man that this story is about. But I can see how some would find it boring or slow.
As much as I love McCarthy, his is somewhat hard to take because all of his books read like an Old Testament prophet calling down judgement on the world. There is so little grace and hope. But there is truth in the books. Sin and evil permeate the world, they affect the lives of even those that try to do the right things. So I will probably wait about six months before I read another of his books.
My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/all-the-pretty-horses/
The first of a trilogy, but it stands well on its own, and is by far my favorite. A border story, mostly in old Mexico.