The Crossing

The world cannot be lost. We are the ones. About 15% of this book is in Spanish, which can be frustrating for non-speakers like me. McCarthy's beautiful prose makes it all worth it though.

I consider my expectations might have been set too high, having enjoyed All the Pretty Horses when I read it last year.

All the Pretty Horses, while descriptive and slow in its own way, felt like a racehorse compared to this Clydesdale. Over 400 pages, it read like 500 pages (despite me reading it in three days - circumstances allowed this). It certainly had its moments, and the primary narrative - Billy Parham's story was on par with John Grady Cole (from ...Pretty Horses); and yes the Spanish conversations stunted my reading (there was so much more than in book 1, and I had to bend to use Google Translate with camera for translation); but really for me it was the long, detailed side stories which I couldn't find relevance with that made this less enjoyable - if you have read it you will know them - the priest, the blind man, Gypsies & carnies etc. For me, they broke the narrative, and seemed unrealistic that these strangers would spill their life story to Billy Parham the way they did (although the Gypsies and carnies less so, as they dove-tailed in a bit better). The theological aspects, of course, are wasted on me. I thought overall it lost focus after the wolf narrative ended.

McCarthy is all about bleak, about flawed, naive characters with morals that extend beyond their capacity to back them up. The sparse nature of the conversations, lack of punctuation and ability to sustain the suspense for long passages are characteristic.

For me, this was less successful than book 1, but was still well worth the experience of reading. I look forward to the two primary characters from book one and two coming together in book three, and seeing whether McCarthy can wrap it all up.
4 stars

Serious, heavy book. It's a tough world on the frontier. McCarthy is a master story-teller, though his writing style is like Saramago's - it requires some getting used to. Fortunately this new Finnish edition includes translations for most of the Spanish phrases heavily used in the book. Looking forward to the third part of the trilogy!

Bleak. But gripping imagery and language.

Cormac is brilliant. Loved the second book of the Border Trilogy almost as much as the first... but not quite.