All the Pretty Horses (The Border Trilogy, Book 1)

Customer Reviews:

Ascent into Hell

By Gary Griffiths - November 19, 2005

You read the first sentence of a Cormac McCarthy novel and you know that this is not Grisham or Connolly or Child or Crichton or King, certainly not Patterson, or anyone else writing fiction today. And before the first page is turned he has launched into one of his frenetic poetic riffs that lurches and rambles and stops and starts and doesn't care about punctuation and you can almost hear your high school English teacher scolding about grammar and run-on sentences but you know that she could never even hope to string words together like this even if she dared. And then you realize that maybe you've actually never really understood the English language at all because no one before has ever ripped it and bent it and twisted it as beautifully as McCarthy does while making it all look so easy.

So were it not for McCarthy's ferocious prose, "All the Pretty Horses" may have been just another coming of age story. But in McCarthy's special corner of hell, along with the... read more

Grand Tale, Wonderfully Rendered

By Bruce Kendall "BEK" - January 16, 2001

I didn't realize until I looked at the Amazon site that Frank Muller has narrated so many books. They have 84 Muller listings here, primarily for Stephen King, John Grisham and other best-selling authors. The only other Muller audio-book I was familiar with was his rendition of King's <The Green Mile>, which was excellent. Muller surpasses that here, however, as he renders McCarthy's prose faultlessly. He captures the accents, whether they be Texan or Mexican, faithfully and unaffectadly. This is a great acting-job, natural, unassuming, perfectly in-flow with the narrative. His shift from character to character is seemless. Muller is the latter-day role model for anyone wishing to narrate books. There is ample reason why he is so prolific. The story itself lends itself to being told orally. It is a myth of the west, but I mean that in the greatest sense of the word. Mythic here does not mean unrealistic. Far from it. It is mythic because it represents higher truths, but... read more

All the Pretty Horses

By Ginger - May 15, 2000

Since the early 1900's, America has greatly progressed industrially and technologically, thus causing the early 1990's publication of the western novel, All the Pretty Horses, to seem out of place. This untimliness, however, is no indication to the quality of the book. Cormac McCarthy demonstrates all the characteristics of a traditional Western: adventure, love, damsels, murder, horses, and a hero, while still maintaining the elegant language and style of writing he has created. Set along the Texas-Mexican border in the late 1940's, All the Pretty Horses relates young John Grady Cole's discoveries about religion, love, and life as he runs away from home and becomes a man. The idealistic Cole embodies the desires of all young adults, freedom and understanding, and sets out to satisfy them. Through several experiences that an average teenager would not have encountered, he realizes that reality can be cruel but maintains his amazing determination to live his life... read more