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4.15 AVERAGE
4.15 AVERAGE
My least favorite McCarthy novel. Some truly excellent passages but found it lacking the stark clarity of his other works. Perhaps too much "stranger sharing" moments for me to consider it as cohesively as I'd like as a novel, but those moments, at the same time, are very good. So I am left unsure where this book aimed to go, what it aimed to present. Not an easy read but it is worth the time and effort. McCarthy is the best living writer.
adventurous
challenging
dark
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
This second volume of McCarthy's border trilogy covers some of the same narrative and thematic ground as [b:All The Pretty Horses|469571|All the Pretty Horses (Border Trilogy, Vol 1)|Cormac McCarthy|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1204745310s/469571.jpg|1907621], but is definitely its own thing, a sprawling and more meditative book. Each of Billy Parham's crossings into Mexico has a distinct tone, although there is a powerful cumulative effect. The first section, Billy's travels with an injured wolf, is dark, carnivalesque and borders on the supernatural at times. It recalls the harrowing relentlessness of early McCarthy books like [b:Blood Meridian|394535|Blood Meridian Or the Evening Redness in the West|Cormac McCarthy|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174413525s/394535.jpg|1065465]. The second, longest, section gives the reader, in the relationship between Billy and his brother, some of the rootsy, good-natured bonhomie of [b:All The Pretty Horses|469571|All the Pretty Horses (Border Trilogy, Vol 1)|Cormac McCarthy|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1204745310s/469571.jpg|1907621]. The final section is a dusty elegy whose philosophical ghostly figures reminded me of Rulfo's [b:Pedro Paramo|38787|Pedro Páramo|Juan Rulfo|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1169187552s/38787.jpg|1786290], or even something out of Garcia Marquez's [b:Leaf Storm|31721|Leaf Storm and Other Stories|Gabriel García Márquez|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1168282012s/31721.jpg|3444333].
I loved the first chapter of this—it reads like its own entire book and was both beautifully written and emotionally rich. There is a dreamlike quality to the story from the beginning that works especially well in the first chapter. From there the writing remains mostly stellar but I gradually stopped feeling attached to the characters and therefore stopped being particularly interested in the book. I still enjoyed the way McCarthy explores the theme of humans and writers reliving and rewriting ancient stories over and over again. Billy’s struggle to find out what actually happened to his brother because his brother’s life became one with an already established tale, told slightly differently over decades throughout Mexico, is really well done. McCarthy is obviously doing this same kind of retelling himself here with a book about a young man’s journey and subsequent loss of innocence. The final scene is compelling. But I wish that that this book had moved along a little more and I found some of the philosophical scenes almost corny rather than compelling.
I was really hoping to love this like All The Pretty Horses and I just wasn't as engaged. There is still plenty to like here and I'm looking forward to reading Cities Of The Plain and maybe it will click then. Just not my favorite McCarthy - but that still means it is in the upper echelon in American Fiction for me, just not top tier.
adventurous
dark
emotional
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Might be McCarthy's best novel--though he has so many. The work is magnificent in so many ways. I savored every sentence.
My review/What I learned from this book:
I learned that the only thing that matters is the story. That all is dust. I learned that the transient life is a tenuous experience and very rarely pleasant.
And I learned that every woman in Mexico is likely to feed you or pray for you or both but that is all the comfort you get. While every man in Mexico is likely to rob you of your last possessions or tell you a story that ends with all being dust and illusion.
A difficult read, when read alone. I suspect this is the sort of book a book club was meant for. It is one I've tried to discuss with the only other person I know who has read it. He didn't answer a goddamn thing for me.
I learned that the only thing that matters is the story. That all is dust. I learned that the transient life is a tenuous experience and very rarely pleasant.
And I learned that every woman in Mexico is likely to feed you or pray for you or both but that is all the comfort you get. While every man in Mexico is likely to rob you of your last possessions or tell you a story that ends with all being dust and illusion.
A difficult read, when read alone. I suspect this is the sort of book a book club was meant for. It is one I've tried to discuss with the only other person I know who has read it. He didn't answer a goddamn thing for me.
Wow. I've read McCarthy before and so know of his amazing talents, his incomparable mastery of language, his tone at once without hope and silently hopeful. But I was not prepared for the impact of The Crossing, and I don't think I'm likely to come across anything like it again, unless another of his novels does an even better job of it.
I've noticed that the author tends to explore certain themes, many of which should maybe not speak to female readers as strongly as men; yet for whatever reason they affect me so profoundly. In this second installment of the Border Trilogy, a series loosely connected by its postwar setting in the American Southwest where it meets the Mexican border, these themes come off as more pronounced, more adult, more severe, more painfully human...
The Crossing follows the young Billy Parham, whose transition from adolescence to manhood is divided into four acts, each one terminating upon a point in his life where some great loss is suffered and some great change in spirit is affected. Only a writer as skilled as McCarthy could take a reader's heart in his hands, break it four times over, and yet have them take away from the experience some deep-seated sense of hope and absolution; some feeling of crawling out naked and crying and new into the world, not a stronger being, but perhaps one that is more aware of its world and the things that exist within it.
Through Billy Parham the reader comes to see some fundamental, natural beauty within the inevitable chaos of the universe. Through the kind and wise people he meets along his journeys, the reader learns of the nature of God and his creations-- never once does the author lean on dogma to make these points either; his characters talk of God in the more spiritual sense that speaks to anyone who has ever stopped to know a tree or a river or a horse. Ultimately, McCarthy once again shares with his audience, in prose so haunting and shrewd that it cuts to the quick and often demands pause, the darkness of the world, to be at once feared and admired. Those who make it through taking every piece to heart, though they had to be broken to do so, emerge with something more than they went in with. Putting a name to that something, however... I'll let you know when I figure that out.
I've noticed that the author tends to explore certain themes, many of which should maybe not speak to female readers as strongly as men; yet for whatever reason they affect me so profoundly. In this second installment of the Border Trilogy, a series loosely connected by its postwar setting in the American Southwest where it meets the Mexican border, these themes come off as more pronounced, more adult, more severe, more painfully human...
The Crossing follows the young Billy Parham, whose transition from adolescence to manhood is divided into four acts, each one terminating upon a point in his life where some great loss is suffered and some great change in spirit is affected. Only a writer as skilled as McCarthy could take a reader's heart in his hands, break it four times over, and yet have them take away from the experience some deep-seated sense of hope and absolution; some feeling of crawling out naked and crying and new into the world, not a stronger being, but perhaps one that is more aware of its world and the things that exist within it.
Through Billy Parham the reader comes to see some fundamental, natural beauty within the inevitable chaos of the universe. Through the kind and wise people he meets along his journeys, the reader learns of the nature of God and his creations-- never once does the author lean on dogma to make these points either; his characters talk of God in the more spiritual sense that speaks to anyone who has ever stopped to know a tree or a river or a horse. Ultimately, McCarthy once again shares with his audience, in prose so haunting and shrewd that it cuts to the quick and often demands pause, the darkness of the world, to be at once feared and admired. Those who make it through taking every piece to heart, though they had to be broken to do so, emerge with something more than they went in with. Putting a name to that something, however... I'll let you know when I figure that out.
The novel trails off into over-long sadness in part IV but it's still an all-time favourite. The story of the wolf is gripping, the quests of Billy and Boyd are compelling, and the tales of the priest and the blind man make it all evocatively theological.