Cormac McCarthy

After reading “The Road,” I thought I would enjoy another gritty and frightening Cormac McCarthy story. I remember some friends who read one that made them afraid to sleep, and thought I picked that one. While “All the Pretty Horses” won’t frighten you with blood and gore, it will make you feel the desolation of the Mexican landscapes.

The first few pages were a mess of characters, but if you plod on things will sort themselves out and you’re left with two characters you can easily follow, John Grady and Rawlins, on horseback through Mexico.

The thing I love most about this book is that McCarthy trusts the reader can figure things out for themselves. Who the hell needs quotation marks for dialogue, you can tell when someone  is sayin’ something and when someone ain’t, right? You want me to repeat the characters’ names a billion times? Don’t think so, I’ll use pronouns and you’ll just have to use the context to make up your mind on who’s doing what. You think I’m going to translate the spanish for you? No way, Jose – remember what you can from high school.

And in that way, McCarthy forces us to mature as readers just as John Grady matures as a tough sonofabitch.

And even though it’s not as outright physically chilling as “The Road,” it’s psychological message just might be:

…and he said that is was good that God kept the truths of life from the young as they were starting out or else they’d have no heart to start at all.