All the Pretty Horses is the first book of McCarthy’s
critically acclaimed Border Trilogy (the other two books are The
Crossing and Cities of the Plain). It is a book and
trilogy I have been looking forward to reading.
Whether or not you enjoy this book will depend more on whether you enjoy literary fiction than on the author’s skill. Cormac McCarthy is beyond dispute an award-winning and very skillful author, and the book was a national bestseller.
First,
the strengths. I like the tale itself: set in the early twentieth century, two young men decide they’re
going to cross the river and head south into Mexico on horseback. On
the one hand they are runaways, but on the other they are competent
young men, skilled in ranch work and back country living, wanting to
live the life of the Old West. With no destination in mind (other
than south) , they wind their way through Mexico and end up breaking
horses on a ranch far south of the border. Their various adventures
are interesting and very believable.
The
setting seems very authentic, especially regarding the Mexican
ambiance (it helps if you speak Spanish—I don’t). In
many passages I felt like the author was himself experiencing what he
was writing about—it seemed viscerally real. The
book is gritty with the dust and dirt of the desert south—there is
nothing romantic about the portrayal.
The
English dialog is quite strong for
the most part. It fits well with the way McCarthy has
constructed the characters. I don’t recall reading a single line of
dialog and thinking, “John Grady Cole would never say that!” Same
for the rest of the characters. I love the laconic drawl of the
cowboy character, and McCarthy has captured it
exquisitely.
The
strongest part of the book is
the characters and their development. McCarthy
has just the right touch, and the growth of the characters through
the tale is very well done and,
again, very believable.
Unfortunately
the weaknesses of the book are significant, in my opinion. I am not a
fan of
literary fiction, finding it at times pretentious, and Pretty
Horses is no
exception. He has many paragraphs of high-flying description, composed of really,
really long run-on
sentences that are occasionally near to incoherent. Sometimes the
similes he employs seem to be constructed of words picked at
random—they don’t contribute to the picture being painted in your
mind by the rest of the narrative.
For
me (and I realize this is just my opinion and other readers may
vociferously disagree), Pretty
Horses became simply
tedious in the middle of the book. I put it down for several weeks
because it had become boring. Finally I made myself finish the
volume (and I must confess
to skimming), though
the story does pick up with better pacing toward
the end.
I
love McCarthy’s minimalist style in The
Road, an
outstanding story. Some of that fine, tight, minimalism persists in
No Country for Old Men.
These are his later works. Pretty
Horses is a different
story and for me, a little
disappointing. Three
stars.
