All the Pretty Horses

The Border Trilogy, Book One

De: Cormac McCarthy

Narrado por: Frank Muller

Cormac McCarthy is a quiet, unassuming presence in American fiction today, but like the slow, measured voices of many of his characters, he speaks with an authority and conviction that demands an audience. All the Pretty Horses, McCarthy's sixth novel, is a cowboy odyssey for modern times. Set in the late 1940s, it features the travels and toils of a 16-year-old East Texan named John Grady Cole, caught in the agonizing purgatory between adolescence and adulthood.

At the start of the novel, Cole's grandfather has just died, his parents have permanently separated, and the family ranch, upon which he had placed so many boyish hopes, has been sold. Rootless and increasingly restive, Cole leaves Texas, accompanied by his friend Lacey Rawlins, and begins a journey across the vaquero frontier into the badlands of northern Mexico. In spite of its hard realities and spare telling, All the Pretty Horses is a lyrical and richly romantic story, chronicling - along with the erosion of the frontier - the loss of an era.

©1992 Cormac McCarthy (P)1992 Recorded Books, LLC

Reseñas de la Crítica

National Book Award, 1992

"This is a novel so exuberant in its prose, so offbeat in its setting and so mordant and profound in its deliberations that one searches in vain for comparisons in American literature." (Publishers Weekly)

Death of Old West, Cowboys and the Open Range

"Cowboys like smoky old pool rooms & clear mountain mornins,
Little warm puppies and children and girls of the night."
Mammas Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to be Cowboys, Bruce, 1975.


I found this by far the most readable of Cormac McCarthy's novels. All the Pretty Horses is in many ways an elegiac novel about the death of the Old West and cowboys and the western lifestyle as a way of life. Thus it differs substantially from McCarthy's typical view of the world as cesspool.

The novel opens in 1949 with the funeral of the grandfather of sixteen year old John Grady Cole (JG). His grandfather's 2,300 acre cattle ranch has been in the family since 1866. His mom intends to sell it though. His parents have been split for 7 years, since dad returned from WW II. Dad says he and JG's mom shared a love of horses and he thought that was enough to make their marriage last.

In the twilight after granddad's funeral, JG rides out to the edge of the ranch and imagines painted horses and riders pledged in blood and thinks he can hear the heavy breathing and hooves of the horses in the north wind. He pines for the days of the open range and living by the horse and loving the women.

JG and his friend Rawlins (both 16) set out about 130 miles toward the Rio Grande where they cross into Mexico and embark on a romantic (maybe quixotic) journey to live the cowboy life full of cattle, vaqueros, horses, run-ins with the law, burritos and a forbidden love.

If someone has McCarthy on her/his bucket list, but abandoned another McCarthy novel due to the "failure to appreciate" his normal bleak exceedingly abstruse journey into a vortex of violence and despair, you should read this rumbling book of romanticism.


“Scars have the strange power to remind us that our past is real.” McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses

Mesmerizing

I own the paper version of this trilogy but I could not read this book the way Frank Muller reads it. He gets the style and rhythm of Cormac McCarthy's prose and brings it to life perfectly. Each character lives and breaths, the voices given them by Mr Muller fit and I feel that I know them better than I did when I read the book. The landscape is so perfectly drawn I feel as though I have inhabited those places although I have never been to the West or to Mexico.
There are so many passages in this book that take my breath and they were so well rendered by Mr Muller. I am certain I will dive into this story again and again.

I want more!

The love of horses and horsemanship make this story great! Wish there are more good books about real Cowboys.

I loved it!

This is a wonderful book and a terrific performance. I've seen complaints about the Spanish dialogue sprinkled about, but the CormacMaCarthy.com website provides PDF's with translations. That is easy to follow.
The writing is wonderful. The story was great. The reader was terrific.
Can't wait to move into the next book of this series.

Wonderful book and wonderful performance

Going through cormacs books in chronological order.
Certainly my favorite thus far.
Each of his novels i enjoy better than the last.
Not as dark as blood meridian, and with a more traditional story arc.
Looking forward to listening to it again after completing the trilogy

Best book I have ever enjoyed

I have red this book a couple of times and listened to it more times than I can count.
If you want to know what prose can be and how story is told you’ll not find better.

Great Performer for Great American Writer

Frank Muller, gifted performer. I seek out his work. McCarthy, brilliant, satisfying writer. Enjoy!

Action packed McCarthy, but woven w/ a Love Story

The title threw me a little bit, cause it sounds so soft (and there were more moments of softness in this book), but it still had that Rugged Toughness that McCarthy has become known for. And McCarthy Paints the American South-West & Mexican border with words, like Maynard Dixon did with Oil & Canvas.

Wow

I would like to be a man like John Grady Cole!I believe my dad from Oklahoma was

how can such sparse writing be so rich.

The only constant is change. That is surely the message to take from this wonderfully read book.