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Summary: This book is greatly detailed!
Review: I thought this book was very well written. The detail was tremendous. I had fun trying to figure out the spanish in the book. The spanish was the hardest part. But other than that I enjoyed it!
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Summary: It moves me every time
Review: I've read the entire Border Trilogy at least three times now, and I've read each of McCarthy's other novels at least once. Now, I'm dying to see what he writes next. The language is lyrical and poetic, sometimes short and choppy in the language of McCarthy's young cowboy protagonists, sometimes long and surreal in his descriptions of horses, landscape, and dreams. The language finally emerges as a living character of the novel, equally shaping the narrative and its power, separate from the plot line and journey motif. His storytelling ability is unmatched as he weaves storytelling characters into the bildungsromanesque journeys of John Grady Cole and Billy Parham. These interlocutors relate intricate stories that allow us to witness tales being both told and witnessed, creating a double effect on us through our connectivity to the characters. McCarthy uses his own wonderful narrative to reflect on the power of the narrative event and the act of storytelling. He truly raises the standard for today's writers, for not only does his language transcend the pitter-patter of most so-called literature, his ability to weave marvelous stories and reflect on his role as narrator makes him a writer worth reckoning with. In fact, I just completed a thesis based on this set of three novels for my MA in English at BYU. Read them in order, or read them separately, "All the Pretty Horses" will draw you in with its sometimes intense sometimes comical language and bloody violence. "The Crossin" will captivate you in its complexity and depth, as well as its realistic, terribly moving portrayal of a young man alone and lonely. Finally, "Cities of the Plain" will make you laugh and cry as the protagonists are brought together in a domestic setting and move toward their destinies, each preset by McCarthy himself. Read everything he has written. You will ache for more.
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Summary: Looking for the long lost Great American Novel?
Review: In many years of reading and writing, I have never read a novel by a contemporary author and then gone out and purchased five other novels of that same guy. And continued to be amazed, novel after novel. Cormac McCarthy is up there with Samuel Beckett as that unusual modern novelist. He dosen't give interviews, do books reviews, teach writing classes; he's isolated, serious, successfully creating an individual world no one ever dared dream of inventing, and where followers would get lost in his wasteland, just as with Beckett. And God does he have language. If "Art is reality seen through a unique perspective", then read this or any of his books. Other novelists seem to be playing it awfully safe compared to him.
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Summary: A unigue experience
Review: It is hard to know what to say about books such as these. They are beautifully written - though McCarthy's style takes some getting used to - and the characters, especially the young men who are central to the three books, are vividly drawn. The plot(s) seem almost incidental to the imagery of the landscape and internal psychological pain of the protagonists, however. One would have a hard time summarizing the 'story' of these three books, yet it is there. But within the story it is always the moment, as expeienced (though seldom understood) by the central characters, that is important. These books have been characterized as 'coming of age' stories, and that is certainly what they are to some extent. But the overall feeling evoked by the author is not one of coming into something but of loss - not just of innocence but of hope, opportunity, an entire way of life. The contrast between the border country in America and the much more primitive conditions in Mexico serve, in all three books, to highlight the change that is coming to lives that used to be simpler. Each of these books can be read alone. They don't continue a coherent storyline. But read together, with their slight differences in tone and image, the reader is left with a heavy sense that life will now be alientated from the land and the simple imperatives that individual survival demands will be replaced by order and artificiality. McCarthy's hero's sense of tragic loss is believeable and understandable.
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Summary: Devestatingly Good!
Review: It is impossible for me to adequately describe Mr. McCarthy's style, but suffice it to say that my inability to offer sufficient insight is precluded by the fact that we simply don't speak the same language. In the hands of Mr. McCarthy, the english language utterly transcends its common and base usage, and instead becomes truly lyrical. Anyone who's ever traveled the Trans-Pecos region, or been to the Border, will find themselves transported there once more as they follow the stories of John Grady Cole and Billy Parham. Mr. McCarthy describes the area perfectly, and with the expertise of a true native.
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Summary: Welcome to the Canon
Review: It was a privilege to read each volume of the Trilogy as it was published. Taken individually, each book has its strengths and weaknesses -- I find "All the Pretty Horses" the most even and satisfying, "The Crossing" the richest and most profound, "Cities of the Plain" a little less than either, except for its Epilogue -- but as a whole, it stands as one of the 20th century's last great masterpieces and I daresay an entry into the much-maligned but still useful "Canon" of Western literature. Taken as a whole, the structure and symbology of John Grady Cole and Billy Parham become coherent, and challenging, acquiring additional impact. I still think and will always think John Grady and Billy the two greatest heroes I've read in the postmodern world -- not that they were original, but because they weren't. Thinking about whose stories they echo is one of the deepest pleasures of the Border Trilogy.
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Summary: Welcome to the Canon
Review: It was a privilege to read each volume of the Trilogy as it was published. Taken individually, each book has its strengths and weaknesses -- I find "All the Pretty Horses" the most even and satisfying, "The Crossing" the richest and most profound, "Cities of the Plain" a little less than either, except for its Epilogue -- but as a whole, it stands as one of the 20th century's last great masterpieces and I daresay an entry into the much-maligned but still useful "Canon" of Western literature. Taken as a whole, the structure and symbology of John Grady Cole and Billy Parham become coherent, and challenging, acquiring additional impact. I still think and will always think John Grady and Billy the two greatest heroes I've read in the postmodern world -- not that they were original, but because they weren't. Thinking about whose stories they echo is one of the deepest pleasures of the Border Trilogy.
Rating: 
Summary: despite pace, a good story
Review: Like 60 miles of riding fence to finally get home to the beans and bacon, the first story seems to start 60 pages into the book. I'm slowly working through the second. Never, ever have I wanted to read a book that was so difficult to stick with, and yet so ultimately wonderful in the end. I like the people, I like the setting, the accuracy of the language is impeccable, but please, John Grady, put a little bur under that saddle!
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Summary: Couldn't Finish It
Review: Linda Gaines,I have to agree with your review.I could not give it a 3 rating.About 2/3rds through the book,I finally had to close it for good.Out of hundreds of books that I have read (or attempted to read),this book was about the fourth one that I could not finish once I started. There have been several I did not like but was able to "hang in there" until I finished it. I believe in giving any book a chance. I know it must be a good book because so many people gave it a 5 rating, but I could not get into it. I do not understand Spanish,the story is too wordy and I couldn't handle all the
run-on sentences. Simply put,I just did not enjoy reading this book.
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Summary: Hemingway gets even more depressed...
Review: McCarthy is a masterful author. There is no other author who can paint a stark but beautiful vision of what it means to be human and to exist in history. I was first introduced to him in highschool and have since then read every single one of his books. My favorite would be "All the Pretty Horses" followed by "Cities of the Plain". "Blood Meridian" is not in the Trilogy but follows in third. I never saw the movie, "All the Pretty Horses", because I am an utmost purist. There can be no improvements upon this set of books as a whole and certainly Hollywood should not be the first to try. They are too magnificently crafted for even pictures to begin to create the same world as McCarthy does in his own novels. He is a thoughtful and bleak writer and if "The Old Man in the Sea" got to you, then certainly the Trilogy will.
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