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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A mesmerising read, 5 Oct 1999
By A Customer
This is an astonishing and spellbinding book, a triumph of writing and storytelling. The first sentence is sufficient to draw the reader into a journey from a father's deathbed to the wild plains of the American West. But the time could be the present with its drab towns, unemployment and men either too intelligent or too stupid for the lives they are trapped in. The author can describe the American landscape with an honesty and lyricism that echoes the finest ancient literature. He does this in a unique style that sounds like the voice of a hardened cowboy who understands deeply his horses and his land. This book leaves Hollywood versions of the west behind in the dust. For McCarthy's world is tragic and poetic, blackened with brutality and rotten justice as much as it sparkles with the beauty of nature. Its heroes are tough, battered and compelling to the last page.
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14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A wonderful book full of rugged but beautiful prose, 15 April 2001
By A Customer
In the first instalment of his border trilogy, Cormac McCarthy has distanced himself somewhat from the bleak and dark themes and characters he created in his first novels, such as The Orchard Keeper and Outer Dark, and reset his prose in western America, in the border country that divides America from Mexico. Into this landscape of harsh beauty, he puts John Grady Cole, our protagonist, and his friend Lacey Rawlins, two old school cowboys who see the western life that they love changing, and decide to leave for Mexico in search of work as 'Vaqeuros', ranchers. On their way they encounter Blevins, a dangerous young boy with a keen shot riding a stolen horse. Their experiences shape the story into what i believe to be one of the finest books written by an American author in decades. McCarthy's prose is a joy to read, and the dialogue is often poignant and hilarious. And he also delivers what is probably the greatest fight scene in contemporary literature. Poetic, beautiful, funny, and at times almost unbearingly sad, read this.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Once upon a time in Mexico, 6 April 2006
I'd never been greatly compelled to read a book in such a typically cinematic genre, but this is incredible. It combines the bloodthirsty epic sweep of the great Sergio Leone spagetti westerns with the harsh realism of later revisionist works such as Unforgiven. All this described in a language born of the genre - McCarthy has developed a kind of pure-Western prose seeped in the rugged, open country, the tough men trapped in their interior worlds, their bleak fatalism and capacity for violence. Its envisioning of Mexico as the new frontier for a dying breed of ranch men (ie., cowboys) is realised with unromanticised poeticism. The writing - like the cowboy dialogue - is economic yet vast in its capacity to evoke the landscape and its protagonists deep respect for it. McCarthy also has a great ear for dialogue that enriches what might otherwise be perceived to be rather clichéd characterisations, such as the ruthless Mexican captain. The first in McCarthy's Border Trilogy - this has also been adapted into a movie by Billy Bob Thornton that I haven't yet seen.
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