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The Border Trilogy: All the Pretty Horses / The Crossing / Cities of the Plain
  
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The Border Trilogy: All the Pretty Horses / The Crossing / Cities of the Plain (Paperback)

by Cormac McCarthy (Author)
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The Border Trilogy: All the Pretty Horses / The Crossing / Cities of the Plain + The Road + No Country for Old Men
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  • This item: The Border Trilogy: All the Pretty Horses / The Crossing / Cities of the Plain by Cormac McCarthy

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  • The Road by Cormac McCarthy

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Review

'In these three fierce, desolate, beautiful novels, McCarthy has created a masterpiece' Sunday Times 'A landmark in American literature' Guardian


Product Description

The Border Trilogy chronicles the coming-of-age of two young men in the south west of America.

John Grady Cole and Billy Parham, two cowboys of the old school, are poised on the edge of a world about to change forever. Their journeys across the border into Mexico, each an adventure fraught with fear and pain, mark a passage into adulthood, and eventual salvation.

McCarthy's clean, hard language evokes the physicality of an unforgiving landscape, the determination of the characters who roam within it, and the vanishing world of the Old West, where blood, violence and dying are conditions of life. Beautiful and brutal, filled with sorrow and humour, The Border Trilogy is both an epic love story an exhilarating elegy for the American Frontier.

'In these three fierce, desolate, beautiful novels, McCarthy has created a masterpiece' Sunday Times

'A landmark in American literature' Guardian

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The Border Trilogy: All the Pretty Horses / The Crossing / Cities of the Plain
61% buy the item featured on this page:
The Border Trilogy: All the Pretty Horses / The Crossing / Cities of the Plain
£6.58
The Road
21% buy
The Road 4.2 out of 5 stars (390)
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Blood Meridian: Or, the Evening Redness in the West (Picador Books)
8% buy
Blood Meridian: Or, the Evening Redness in the West (Picador Books) 4.4 out of 5 stars (73)
£4.78
All the Pretty Horses: Volume One of The Border Trilogy
6% buy
All the Pretty Horses: Volume One of The Border Trilogy 4.4 out of 5 stars (31)
£4.78
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Not enough stars to do this justice, 2 Dec 2008
To try and do justice to these wonderfully original works in a few lines is an impossibility. The three books together make up what turns out to be a magnificent odyssey. It is a strange but ultimately rewarding journey you make with these characters. You get to know the characters well and enjoy their dry laconic wit. But the most striking feature is the main characters are so likeable. They are the best of American manhood. They stand up for all that is good in the star spangled banner. In fact they simply stand up for all that is good. If I could ride, which I can't worth a damn, then these are the young cowboys I would be happy to ride with if they'd have me.

In "All the pretty horses" we meet young John Grady Cole who with his companero set off South of the border on a whim. They meet a character called Blevins who seems like trouble and sure enough turns out to be trouble with a capital T. A mexican ranch and a pretty senorita are involved but the spectre of young Blevins comes back to haunt the good old boys. They end up suffering under Mexican justice. The rest I will not spoil other than to say it is a rollicking good read.

In "The Crossing" we meet the equally likeable Billy Parham and his younger brother. This is my personal favourite of the three books. The material is unpromising but McCarthy weaves magic with it. The boy Parham captures a wolf and decides to return it across the border to old Mexico where he stays for a bit longer than intended. On his eventual return he finds his parents have been murdered. He pauses briefly to pick up his brother and they head back over the border to hunt for the murderers. The book takes up an epic feeling as the journey takes on a never ending quest. Parham becomes a strange Quixotic figure in an alien landscape. Although he speaks perfect Spanish he and his brother seem like " Strangers in a strange land". The finale is a heart rending affair.

In the final book "Cities of the plain" Billy Parham and John Grady Cole are brought together in a magnificent story of tragic doomed love and friendships that run deep. Again much of the story takes place South of the border. It is a fitting finale to the trilogy.

All three books are breathtaking in their scope and ambition. One reviewer I read compares McCarthy with Hemingway. I will commit heresy here by saying that McCarthy is far better. His examinations of friendship, family ties and a love that crosses boundaries of state and the human heart simply amaze. All the characters are heart rendingly real. They are all too human. McCarthy will one day be recognised in the pantheon of the Worlds great writers. I love these three books as I grew to love the characters in them. That is the effect they have on you. This is a remarkable trilogy.

Be warned that Spanish is used liberally in all the books. My only knowledege of the language is through watching too many Westerns. So it would not get me far in old Mexico. Personally I found this only enhanced the feel of the book. I would also add that some knowledge of the American West is an aid, although not essential. The ghosts of the past loom quite large in his books.

My recommendation is to read this trilogy before you die.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars strangely compelling trilogy of the west, but not a western!, 1 Feb 1999
By A Customer
This review is from: The Border Trilogy (Audio Cassette)
The border in question is the Mexico/USA border in the first half of this century, but don't let any impression that these books are westerns put you off! There are indeed horse thefts, ranchers and gunfights, as you might expect, but the atmosphere is far from Shane, or indeed Blazing Saddles. I've already reviewed the first book under its own name. The second book, The Crossing, concerns 16 year old Billy Parham, who leaves home and crosses into Mexico with a wolf he has captured alive, intending to release it into the wild, only to return to find his parents murdered. He and his brother spend the rest of the book attempting to regain possession of their father's stolen horses, and meet with both friendship and brutality on the way. The third book brings Billy Parham together with the main character of the first book, John Grady Cole. All three are written in a spare prose style entirely devoid of emotion or overblown description. McCarthy does not attempt to enter his characters heads or make us empathise with them, yet by the end you do. The style is just right for the material, and for the reader. Brad Pitt reads well, in a soft smokey emotionless drawl just right for the characters.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Great literature, 29 Oct 2008
People who say the novel is dead, or that no one writes great literature anymore should read Cormac McCarthy, and the Border Trilogy in particular. Having read all of his books, these are clearly his best for the writing, themes and storytelling. Like all great literature, the context is involving, and the subtext thrilling. I would single out The Crossing (the middle book) as one of the best books I have ever read. Instead of giving the Nobel Prize for Literature to obscure Romanian poets, why not a thought for the elderly McCarthy?
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars EXCELLENT
The condition of the book was better than described.The transacion was painless.I would not hesitate to recommend this seller or this item. Thank you !
Published 2 months ago by T. Cooper

5.0 out of 5 stars The Crossing
Cormac McCarthy is a truly great writer. Be warned, though, it will be very hard to read anything after him that doesn't seem trite, contrived or totally pointless. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Ms. P. Waugh

5.0 out of 5 stars What a read
I was first introduced to Cormick McCarthy after watching the film of his book "No Country for Old Men" which I subsequently read after coming accoss it in my local Tesco store... Read more
Published 9 months ago by Lawrence H. Bland

5.0 out of 5 stars Just plain wonderful
As others have said the lack of punctuation is odd to begin with but does make sense.
The stories just flow and you find yourself "held" as with all good books... Read more
Published on 10 May 2007 by Clive Williams

5.0 out of 5 stars The Border Trilogy
Cormac McCarthy is a unique voice in American fiction. His flowing polysyndetic prose forms a poetic vision of the American West that is almost Biblical in its rythmns. Read more
Published on 11 Feb 2007 by Demob Happy

5.0 out of 5 stars one of my best books ,ever!
all the pretty horses is incredibly irritating at the beginning- a lack of all punctuation -but you very quickly get used to this, and subsequently all the other books you read... Read more
Published on 30 Jan 2001

5.0 out of 5 stars A handsome edition of a major American work
This handsome edition of McCarthy's completed Border Trilogy in one volume gives the reader one of the most important works of American fiction of the last decades. Read more
Published on 22 Nov 2000

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