The best Mccarthy novel to read first

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	• All the Pretty Horses Cormac Mccarthy Vintage, 1993 - 320 pages average customer review:based on 294 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Hemingway Western

All the Pretty Horses is what I would imagine it would be like if Ernest Hemingway wrote a modern-day Western. Very rich language and vivid imagery, yet simple and direct dialogue. Not an especially complex plot and nothing unnecessary throughout, yet very deep emotionally. I'm eagerly making my way through the rest of the Border Trilogy and finding McCarthy a little more verbose and allegorical in The Crossing, but All the Pretty Horses has no wasted words in telling a fantastic story.

The best Mccarthy novel to read first

A lot has already been said about this novel, so I'll address my review to those unfamiliar with Mccarthy's work. If you've never read Mccarthy before, this is a great place to start. The plot is tight, engaging, and easy to follow, and the language is gorgeous. If you enjoy this book and want to move on to others, read the others in the border trilogy before tackling "Blood Meridian."

Some people will take issue with Mccarthy's grammar, sentence structure, use of Spanish, and punctuation (or lack thereof). Mccarthy takes a lot of poetic license with his writing, and chooses words as much for their sound as for their meaning. The sentences are written with attention paid to rhythm and "breath," meaning that they don't always look or sound like conventional prose. This will be displeasing to some. As an example, the first line of the book reads: "The candleflame and the image of the candleflame caught in the pierglass twisted and righted when he entered the hall and again when he shut the door." Now, Mccarthy could have just as easily said "the candle flickered when he entered the room," or something like that, but the effect, aurally, is just not the same.

Read the first page of the book. If you don't catch fire at the beauty of it, then maybe this book, and Mccarthy's work in general, is not for you.

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Pretty Horses, 3rd reading

It is seldom that an author can move his reader to the actual place where the sights, sounds, feel and even smells are real and in your face. This book does it. The Crossing [his next installment in the Border Trilogy] does it even better and the third combines the lead characters of each of the first two, John Grady Cole and Billy Parham, with an ending that is as brutal and tear jerking as any read out there. McCarthy has gone on to write No Country for Old Men [soon to be filmed by the Coen brothers], The Road and a new short play Sunset Limited. This is writing at its very best. No contemporary author is even close.

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A modern masterpiece

Dispossessed and alienated by the death of his grandfather, the divorce of his parents, and the imminent sale of the ranch where he grew up, 16-year-old John Grady Cole heads for Mexico with his friend Lacey Rawlins to pursue the lives of traveling horsemen. They find a hard, Darwinian world where the weak and foolish suffer. Cole is scrupulously ethical and strong-willed, and he needs to be. Every time he shows love or compassion for another, he is made to suffer for it, and only his own strength of character allows him to persevere.

Cormac Mccarthy's prose style is challenging at first, but I soon grew accustomed to it. His long galloping sentences effectively emulate the rhythm of travel, and his simple yet often startling turns of phrase bring the landscape of the Texas/Mexico border region to vivid life.

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reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, page 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17

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