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A review by thekingcrusoe
All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy
3.0
As I've been writing these reviews for the books I read here on Goodreads over the past couple years, I have noticed that with time comes more frequent occurrences of my personal callout saying "This is more like a 3.5 star, but I'm rounding it up to 4 stars for x reason." Other times, I round that half-star down for y and z reasons. But my point remains. I used to be pretty easy to draw and line and just straight up rate books with the full stars because it's cleaner that way...but as I said, that's been gradually changing.
All the Pretty Horses is yet another such book. I would prefer to rate this 3.5, but I am rounding that down for the purpose of this review.
After heavily disliking The Road, followed by a shockingly intense satisfaction with No Country For Old Men, I had no idea what to expect going into All the Pretty Horses - or the Border Trilogy more generally - besides the broad expectation from friends that I would at least enjoy this more than The Road, or "The Book That Shan't Be Named" as an inside joke amongst my friend group. Fortunately, this turned out to be the case, and landed truthfully. But I also did not like this near as much as No Country For Old Men, though I admit the reasons for that are actually pretty easy to define.
The long story short is that I'm a bit more mixed on All the Pretty Horses. Though there were instances that I was invested in the characters and their journeys, the actual journeys (in essence, the mostly non-existent "plot") of ATPH weren't quite thrilling or eventful enough to keep me engaged the way I hoped to be. That's not necessarily a bad thing, mind, but that expectation was there, and it left me a little bit underwhelmed at times.
For example, I really liked the back half of Part I because of "the trio", who I thought was going to be the primary crew of the novel. Instead, I was disappointed to find that the late addition to the trio basically disappears in Part II, and is off-page for damn near the entirety of the remainder of the novel, and so I was just left with the duo, whom I was unfortunately significantly less invested in than the trio. Weird how that happens right? Those same 2 characters are there that whole time, but I cared more when the 3rd one was too. Additionally, a number of events occur in Part 2 that I found to be generally a bit too slow and meandering, even more so than the more casual tone and storytelling already was in Part 1 (again, mostly compared to NCFOM).
Part 3 does pick things up a bit, and actually takes the book to the most action-packed, thrilling, and disturbing places it goes (which in this case, was shockingly not really that objectionable, even when just compared to NCFOM or the brief glimpses of such material in The Road; don't get me started on what I've heard of Blood Meridian). With that said, Part 3 does some unexpected things that both had me on-edge in the best ways, but then also causes the 2nd part of the trio-now-duo to be off-page the rest of the book. So Part IV is basically just the 1 character. I wasn't personally the most on-board with this, though there were still great moments sprinkled throughout.
But since ATPH is less concerned with the thrills and more with the general living situation of the characters, I will say that most of the character-based drama was definitely engaging and fun.
John Grady Cole has interactions and altercations with various people, from Rawlings and Blevins (the other two of the "trio" as mentioned), a girl named Alejandra, and that girls' father and great-aunt. These are the principle characters I recall, because the interactions between John Grady and all these others were generally my favorite parts. Sometimes the plot was a bit hard to follow for me a la my experience with The Road, but at least I liked the characters enough to find their interactions engaging and interesting.
I think the novel is solid, and has some good stuff in it, but I think I need to see how the remainder of the trilogy goes before I know with 100% certainty how I feel about this entry overall. I found myself to be generally less hooked and to the story and the characters and the setting in ATPH than I wanted to be, and so even though I didn't actively dislike very much if anything about it, I still found myself rather mixed.
I do have decently high expectations for The Crossing though. Many of my friends cite it as their favorite of the trilogy, so maybe I will too. Who knows?
All the Pretty Horses is yet another such book. I would prefer to rate this 3.5, but I am rounding that down for the purpose of this review.
After heavily disliking The Road, followed by a shockingly intense satisfaction with No Country For Old Men, I had no idea what to expect going into All the Pretty Horses - or the Border Trilogy more generally - besides the broad expectation from friends that I would at least enjoy this more than The Road, or "The Book That Shan't Be Named" as an inside joke amongst my friend group. Fortunately, this turned out to be the case, and landed truthfully. But I also did not like this near as much as No Country For Old Men, though I admit the reasons for that are actually pretty easy to define.
The long story short is that I'm a bit more mixed on All the Pretty Horses. Though there were instances that I was invested in the characters and their journeys, the actual journeys (in essence, the mostly non-existent "plot") of ATPH weren't quite thrilling or eventful enough to keep me engaged the way I hoped to be. That's not necessarily a bad thing, mind, but that expectation was there, and it left me a little bit underwhelmed at times.
For example, I really liked the back half of Part I because of "the trio", who I thought was going to be the primary crew of the novel. Instead, I was disappointed to find that the late addition to the trio basically disappears in Part II, and is off-page for damn near the entirety of the remainder of the novel, and so I was just left with the duo, whom I was unfortunately significantly less invested in than the trio. Weird how that happens right? Those same 2 characters are there that whole time, but I cared more when the 3rd one was too. Additionally, a number of events occur in Part 2 that I found to be generally a bit too slow and meandering, even more so than the more casual tone and storytelling already was in Part 1 (again, mostly compared to NCFOM).
Part 3 does pick things up a bit, and actually takes the book to the most action-packed, thrilling, and disturbing places it goes (which in this case, was shockingly not really that objectionable, even when just compared to NCFOM or the brief glimpses of such material in The Road; don't get me started on what I've heard of Blood Meridian). With that said, Part 3 does some unexpected things that both had me on-edge in the best ways, but then also causes the 2nd part of the trio-now-duo to be off-page the rest of the book. So Part IV is basically just the 1 character. I wasn't personally the most on-board with this, though there were still great moments sprinkled throughout.
But since ATPH is less concerned with the thrills and more with the general living situation of the characters, I will say that most of the character-based drama was definitely engaging and fun.
John Grady Cole has interactions and altercations with various people, from Rawlings and Blevins (the other two of the "trio" as mentioned), a girl named Alejandra, and that girls' father and great-aunt. These are the principle characters I recall, because the interactions between John Grady and all these others were generally my favorite parts. Sometimes the plot was a bit hard to follow for me a la my experience with The Road, but at least I liked the characters enough to find their interactions engaging and interesting.
I think the novel is solid, and has some good stuff in it, but I think I need to see how the remainder of the trilogy goes before I know with 100% certainty how I feel about this entry overall. I found myself to be generally less hooked and to the story and the characters and the setting in ATPH than I wanted to be, and so even though I didn't actively dislike very much if anything about it, I still found myself rather mixed.
I do have decently high expectations for The Crossing though. Many of my friends cite it as their favorite of the trilogy, so maybe I will too. Who knows?