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    All the Pretty Horses
    All the Pretty Horses
    All the Pretty Horses
    Audiobook10 hours

    All the Pretty Horses

    Written by Cormac McCarthy

    Narrated by Frank Muller

    4.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Cormac McCarthy is a quiet, unassuming presence in American fiction today, but like the slow, measured voices of many of his characters, he speaks with an authority and conviction that demands an audience. All the Pretty Horses, McCarthy's sixth novel, is a cowboy odyssey for modern times. Set in the late 1940s, it features the travels and toils of a 16-year-old East Texan named John Grady Cole, caught in the agonizing purgatory between adolescence and adulthood. At the start of the novel, Cole's grandfather has just died, his parents have permanently separated, and the family ranch, upon which he had placed so many boyish hopes, has been sold. Rootless and increasingly restive, Cole leaves Texas, accompanied by his friend Lacey Rawlins, and begins a journey across the vaquero frontier into the badlands of northern Mexico. In spite of its hard realities and spare telling, All the Pretty Horses is a lyrical and richly romantic story, chronicling-along with the erosion of the frontier-the loss of an era.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateAug 30, 2013
    ISBN9781470381622
    All the Pretty Horses
    Author

    Cormac McCarthy

    Cormac McCarthy was the author of many acclaimed novels, including Blood Meridian, Child of God and The Passenger. Among his honours are the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. His works adapted to film include All the Pretty Horses, The Road and No Country for Old Men – the latter film receiving four Academy Awards, including the award for Best Picture. McCarthy died in 2023 in Santa Fe, NM at the age of 89.

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    Reviews for All the Pretty Horses

    4.5/5

    194 ratings57 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Still not quite done, but I had this reflection:Just came across a very effective turn of phrase in Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses. I have been reading this book very slowly so as to savor all the amazing passages.Page 226 of this edition, the main character has been riding past the ruins of an old cabin:"There was a strange air to the place. As of some site where life had not succeeded."

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Not quite as good as Blood Meridian (which isn’t as good as Suttree) but still exceptional. McCarthy has the ability to meander within a tightly confined space and his style evokes, more than any other writer I’ve encountered, the savage stillness and silence of nature and life.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      I am now officially a member of the Church of Cormac McCarthy, just as I am of the Churches of Steinbeck, of Atwood, of Twain, of Nabokov. Writers who for me can do no wrong.

      In this book we meet John Grady Cole, a cowboy of sixteen years. In 1949, his mother has sold off the family ranch, leaving John Grady to his own devices. He sets off from Texas to Mexico with his friend Rawlins, riding their horses through the now fenced and parceled land, carefully dismantling and reattaching fencing as they go. The two end up reluctantly taking on a companion, the younger Jimmy Blevins, a loose cannon, who'll cause them a lot of trouble. South of the border, the country is unfenced and wilder. John Grady and Rawlins end up working as ranch hands. Part of their responsibility is to capture and break wild horses. John Grady ends up in a dangerous love affair, before the two young men run afoul of corrupt officials.

      I'd call this a coming of age novel, except John Grady is already as seasoned, decent, and mature as any adult you're likely to meet. It's more a story of how the world itself doesn't measure up to the best of us. How the world is harsh. How it tends to knock the good right out of us. Well, it doesn't knock the good out of John Grady. By the end of the story he's troubled by guilt, though, even though he's blameless. He takes on guilt for the way the world is, how it makes a good man feel uneasy and out of place.

      John Grady doesn't talk much. But there are three characters who are given a soapbox to speak fascinatingly for several pages. One is a wealthy man who runs a crime cartel from his prison cell. One is an old woman, a free thinker whose revolutionary ideas about her nation have narrowed into preservation of those nearest to her. The other is a judge who, like John Grady, has taken on guilt for things he shouldn't have, and knows it, but still can't shake it.

      Strange to say it, but the best among us are the most troubled. They're the ones that are always second guessing themselves.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      Cormac Mccarthy writes in a very uniquely sparse and beautiful language. In fact, I think I like his unique writing more than I liked the plot of this book. The plot is realistic and definitely earnest, but just doesn't whack me in the face with intrigue. I think I might like Elmore Leonard's plots a little better. Perhaps the plot will grow on me. It might be just one of those books. I think I'll try Blood Meridian next.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      I enjoyed No Country for Old Men a little bit more because I'm more familiar with rednecks in pickups trucks than I am cowboys on horses, but this book was still great. I'm not sure what to think about the climatic scene with the Aunt. She represents so much moral ambiguity. Nothing in life is cut and dry. Frank Muller nails the voices perfectly. I've been cussing in the cadence Lacey Rawlins for weeks.
    • 5/5
      The plot is really quite simple. After his Texas family farm is sold John Grady Cole sets out with friend Lacey Rawlins for Mexico. As teenagers they are quite mature in their knowledge of the landscape and how to survive the elements. Along their journey they meet a young boy with a horse and gun too mature to belong to him. This boy, Jimmy Blevins, only brings Cole and Rawlins trouble. I can see why All the Pretty Horses was made into a movie. It would appeal to animal lovers - Cole is an experienced horseman. He understands even the wildest beast. There will be sex - it isn't long before he falls in love with a rancher's older daughter and seduces her. And violence - Cole and Rawlins are thrown into prison accused of stealing horses. Americans in a Mexican prison. Nothing good can come from that. I'm sure the sweeping vistas of the southwest afforded the film some amazing scenery as well. McCarthy does such a beautiful job with description and dialog you won't need to see the movie, just read the book.
    • 3/5
      John Grady Cole and his buddy, Lacey Rawlings, are horse backing from their homes in San Angelo TX across the border to Mexico. There they find work as hired hands on a horse farm. They break horses and earn their keep.
      Then John falls in love with the beautiful, Alejandra.. a forbidden romance. Upon finding this out, her family sends her away and has John and Rawlings arrested by the Mexican police. Thrown in prison they must fight for their lives.


      There is so much going on throughout these pages. The detail is awe worthy. Cormac McCarthy is one of my favorite authors. I’m not a huge western fan, but I usually enjoy his work.
      Some parts were a bit slow for me, but then there were parts I had to listen to over again because it was so intense.
    • 3/5
      Book is good but didn't care for narrator. Cormac is a legend.
    • 5/5
      The best western I have ever read.
    • 4/5
      Boy's yarn with added metaphysics. Rather like reading a Western movie - but a good one. Landscape and the horses infuse the whole with something like the Pathetic Fallacy. Reminiscent of Hardy in mourning a passing way of life and the tiny nobility of man. Style sometimes strives for grandeur and falls a touch short, could easily be parodied, as Alan Coren did for Hemingway. And Papa sure lurks in the background, perhaps envious of a man doing it better. Will read more of CM, this was my first.
    • 2/5
      I struggled to get into this after thoroughly enjoying The Road and No Country For Old Men. It's certainly not as easy a read as those two books though I'm glad I persevered. I might enjoy it more after a second read but for now it's not high on my list to re-read.
    • 3/5
      This is a book & an author to whom other authors & books are often compared, so I thought I should see what makes it such a model. I don't see it yet, though it could make a pretty good modern western movie, with its appealing hero, a 16-year-old quiet Texas cowboy who, in the years between the two world wars, makes a harrowing journey by hoseback deep into Mexico, along with a loyal friend.
    • 4/5
      This is one of Those Books by which I can chart my Borders career--bestsellers atop the NYT list for ages--and it's the first of Those Books I've read (it's not likely I'll pick up The Bridges of Madison County, Tuesdays With Morrie, The Notebook, etc any time soon). I've read other earlier Cormac McCarthy and enjoyed them a great deal, but avoided All the Pretty Horses out of a misguided literary pretense; if the herd were buying it in droves it couldn't possibly be good.It's true that I'd recommend the earlier novels ahead of this one, but McCarthy manages here to re-cast his luminous dark vision into a more conventional Western narrative without diminishing its scope or intensity a bit. Two teenaged ranch hands in the 30s head south from Texas to Mexico to test themselves in a chaotic and barely comprehensible landscape. As with all McCarthy, the result is gorgeous violence and subsequent renewal.
    • 4/5
      Cormac McCarthy is an amazing writer. His descriptions, word choice, and inclusion of Spanish, add considerably to the power and realism of the story. His characters are both believable and yet (in the case of John Grady) larger than life. I have never met anyone, yet alone a 16 year old, as tough or hard as this book's protagonist. This is not a typical, flat YA Adventure written for Middle School students. This book should be reserved for older High School students. The complexity of the language and the darkness of the themes are not appropriate for younger readers. Also, as is true of all Cormac McCarthy novels, there are no quotation to indicate when someone is speaking. This would be very confusing for younger readers.
    • 4/5
      McCarthy's fast becoming one of my favorite escapes. This is my third McCarthy since September, following "The Road" and "No Country for Old Men". I love his writing style as much as his stories. Clean, descriptive, enticing. McCarthy makes it hard to put his books away for the night. The sweeping descriptions of the northern Mexico desert; his use of spanish dialogue interspersed with English; his characters that explode out of the page. Another great book...and just the first of a "border trilogy", of which I'll pick up the other two soon.
    • 5/5
      One of my all-time favorite books and a gorgeous reading.
    • 4/5
      It took me a little while to get into this book. I felt a little lost at the beginning; I wasn't really sure what was going on. Once I grew used to the author's style of writing, I really enjoyed it. Wonderful "cowboy" story.
    • 4/5
      I don't know why, but I think this is the second time that I've read a McCarthy book immediately after reading part of Proust's, In Search of Lost Time. It isn't the smoothest of transitions from one style to another.I think part of the reason that I've done this twice, though not consciously, is because of this quote that I heard about McCarthy...from Wikipedia:"McCarthy is described as a "gregarious loner" and reveals that he is not a fan of authors who do not "deal with issues of life and death," citing Henry James and Marcel Proust as examples. "I don't understand them," he said. "To me, that's not literature. A lot of writers who are considered good I consider strange."I can only think that he hasn't read Proust. It is about life and death. Sure it isn't as visceral as McCarthy, but what other writer is? This quote puts a bad taste in my mouth, and leaves me wanting to not like McCarthy's writing, but I don't.On to the actual book review...His language is so sparse, bleak, and beautiful that I find it hard to believe that his earlier books were not set in the west as well. I can't picture this style as working in Appalachia...though I suppose The Road was set there as well...but it's different when it is post apocalyptic. I haven't read any of his before Blood Meridian, but I will eventually.This is another one of those books where I've already seen the movie, and that to some extent ruins the book. Not nearly as badly as No Country for Old Men...which I read just a few months after seeing the movie. In this case, I saw the movie many years ago, and only remember a few random bits.
    • 4/5
      When a young man learns that his family ranch is being sold, he sets out on horseback with a companion on a journey down to Mexico. There they not only find work as ranchers, but they meet a fellow traveler who brings them trouble and the boy finds love with the daughter of a hacienda owner. Both of which bring the two men insurmountable trouble. The novel modernizes the Western by setting it in the '50s and using literary language. Along with horseback riding through open countryside, gun fights, and outrunning posses, the most notable Western trope is the main character himself, who though young and born outside the age of the Wild West takes on the persona of the stoic, no nonsense cowboy, one who ultimately rides off into the sunset. Mixed with this Western sensibility is a nostalgia for the Wild West and the imagined romance and freedom of a frontier, which is long gone, both for the boy of the story and for us as readers. Though the boy seeks this frontier in Mexico, a place where there are less fences around things, what he finds it a place both more and less free than he hoped it would be. Despite the rich beautiful language in which it is written and my overall enjoyment of the storyline, I found myself emotionally detached from the characters and events. So, I find that while I like this book, I don't quite love it.
    • 3/5
      I liked one of the blurbs on this book, which summed up a lot of the enjoyment of the novel for me, namely that McCarthy's cowboys can say more by spitting on the ground than most other novelists can achieve with dialogue in a whole book. True. The plot did sometimes seem as leisurely and laconic as a three day ride in the desert, and there is no doubt that the vision and vistas of the American West were poetically portrayed, giving the novel a style a character of its own. Whether I'll rush to read the second and third books of the trilogy remains to be seen.
    • 4/5
      Great story full of conflict, though some might not enjoy the Faulknerian style of writing (long rolling sentences that mimic stream of consciousness, minimal punctuation such as omitting quotation marks in dialog, and experimenting with compound words).
    • 5/5
      John Grady Cole runs away with his best friend, Lacey Rawlins, and they to go Mexico to start a new life. Along the way they meet Jimmy Blevins, a train wreck of a boy, and later they end up working at ranch, where Cole falls in love with the daughter of the ranch's owner, Alejandra. The relationship is discovered, Cole and Rawlins have to flee for their lives, and along the way they encounter severe injustice. So much for the basic plot. This is a hard novel. The writing style is...well stylistic. (It helps if you can read Spanish.) CcCarthy's style is direct and immediate, and throws you into the center of the action, which, sometimes, is exactly where you do not want to be. This is not a lite read, but it is a rewarding read.
    • 3/5
      Not my favorite of his works. I read blood meridian first and was hoping for more of the same... No such luck. This one is more of a straight forward romantic western.
    • 5/5
      John Grady Cole is a 16-year-old boy who leaves his Texas home when his grandfather dies. He and his friend Lacey Rawlins ride their horses south into Mexico. The boys suffer truly harrowing encounters with corrupt Mexican officials, enigmatic bandits and treacherous desert weather. McCarthy's prose is perfectly paced and richly evocative.
    • 5/5
      Certainly destined to be an American classic.
    • 5/5
      After years of not being able get past page 2 (a personal reading comprehension issue), I buckled down and made it. Partly because I'm spending time in Texas, and not being from there, I still sort of assume that this kind of cowboy-reading could provide me some useful historical context for the modern day rodeo, complete with small, helmeted children clutching terrified sheep.
    • 3/5
      Somewhat in the vein of Larry McMurtry, but without the fleshing out of the characters, except for John Grady Cole. I felt that the book was reminiscent of Zane Grey. Not one my favorite books!
    • 5/5
      Cormac McCarthy is an incredibly precise writer, and his immense talent is showcased in this novel, which — while bleak — is not as unremittingly bleak as his other novels that I have read (Blood Meridian, No Country for Old Men, The Road). When McCarthy writes about the deserts and ranches of Texas and Mexico, those vast, beautiful spaces open up before the eye of the reader’s imagination. In this coming-of-age novel, he is able to completely evoke a place, a feeling or an idea with only a few well-chosen words.The story is about a teenage boy, John Grady, and is set just after World War II. The ranching life is all he knows, and horses are his reason for existence. When his grandfather dies and his absentee mother decides to sell the ranch where he has lived all his life, John Grady heads for Mexico on horseback with his best friend, Lacey. Along the way, they meet up with another kid riding what has to be a stolen horse and going under what has to be an assumed name, Jimmy Blevins. This happenstance meeting sets off all the events to come like a lit fuse. But first, John Grady and Lacey find employment on a Mexican ranch, and John Grady finds his first love in the rancher’s beautiful daughter, Alejandra.The characters are the strength of this novel. McCarthy uses his spare prose to fullest effect to transform these characters into fully realized human beings. Even in just a few lines of dialogue, we can hear the cadence of their speech, picture how they must look, understand what they must feel. The only drawback is that there is a lot of Spanish dialogue, and if you don’t speak Spanish, you may feel like you’re missing a vital part of the story. (I’m not sure if this is true, as I don’t speak it, but I was able to get the gist from context most of the time.)Every writer seems compelled to write a coming-of-age story, I guess because everybody has one, and often it is the greatest story of a life. Sometimes I feel like I don’t want to read any more of them, that I’ve had enough to last me a lifetime, thank you. Then I get hold of a really good one, like this one, and I am swept away again by how powerful this age-old story can be.All the Pretty Horses is the first novel in the Border trilogy and the winner of the National Book Award.
    • 3/5
      All the Pretty Horses is the bastard offspring of a mating between Ernest Hemingway and Zane Gray, with some William Faulkner apparent in the DNA. “It was his horse. And it was a good horse. And he rode the horse. When it was night, he hobbled the horse by a stream and both boy and horse drank from the cold water of the stream . . . .” So, maybe that is not a direct quote, but it captures the essence.Not that it is a bad book. There is plenty of exciting plot to keep it moving along, at least after the plodding first chapter. The story of John Grady Cole’s adventures in Mexico is riveting, involving vagabonds, a lovely senorita, her rich rancher father, Mexican prisons, murder, escape, and lots and lots of horses. But the characters, with the exception of the fascinating aunt, are one-dimensional. Cole is a particularly wooden hero. It is apparent that McCarthy intended him as an archetype, but his approach of always doing the right thing, damn the consequences, becomes wearily repetitive. By the time he reaches his final soul-searching scene with a sympathetic judge back in Texas, he has become a stoic goody two shoes. All the Pretty Horses is the first of the three novels in McCarthy’s oft-praised “Border Trilogy,” followed by The Crossing and Cities of the Plain. Hopefully, the later books will keep the same spirit of adventure, but drop the Hemingway parody and add character development.
    • 5/5
      His grandfather dies, giving his father the chance to sell the ranch. His mother leaves to become an actress. For 16-year-old John Grady Cole, this gives him impetus to travel with his best friend Lacey Rawlins to Mexico for a life change. They set out from San Angelo on horseback, traveling the rough stark rugged country that creates the broder between the U.S. and Mexico, sleeping at night in the tall grasses trekking through arroyos and crossing streams. Before reachign the border, a young sharpshooter named Jimmy Blevins catches up with them and joins them for a short while as they venture into Mexico. Until during a storm, Blevins loses his horse and sets out to find him. John and Rawlins continue on, eventually finding work at a hacienda rounding up and breaking in wild horses. John also finds himself attracted to the hacendado's daughter Alejandra. And the attraction seems to be mutual.But this new easy life is not as idyllic as John would hope, once the police come looking for him and Rawlins. The boy Blevins found his horse and killed a few people along the way and implicated John and Rawlins as well. The hacendado gives them up to the police, and they soon learn hard lessons about life and justice in a Mexican prison.I only recently began to enjoy McCarthy's works, with my reading of The Road last year. Very easy-going with his style which hearkens to Faulkner -- only much more readable. Dialogue and scenic descriptions flow very naturally in a very vivid manner, and I found myself getting caught up with this young cowboy trying his luck in a new country. I felt along with him as he discovered his love for Alejandra his pain during the fight in the prison and his guilt at killing someone, all the while remaining true to himself and to his beliefs. And though the story is set in the 1940's-1950's, it reads as though it were a traditional Western set in the late 1800's with very few mentions of cars or electrical lights or other modern conveniences.A quiet but powerful novel about coming of age and a great introduction to McCarthy's Border Trilogy.