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   Summary and Book Reviews

All The Pretty Horses: Summary and book reviews of All The Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy, plus links to an excerpt from All The Pretty Horses and a biography of Cormac McCarthy.

All The Pretty Horses

All The Pretty Horses
by Cormac McCarthy
Hardcover: Apr 1992,
401 pages.
Paperback: Nov 2002,
301 pages.

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Author Biography
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Critics' Opinion:   good
Readers' Rating:  Five Stars
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BOOK SUMMARY

The national bestseller and the first volume in Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy, All the Pretty Horses is the tale of John Grady Cole, who at sixteen finds himself at the end of a long line of Texas ranchers, cut off from the only life he has ever imagined for himself. With two companions, he sets off for Mexico on a sometimes idyllic, sometimes comic journey to a place where dreams are paid for in blood. Winner of the National Book Award for Fiction.

Nominee 1992 - National Book Awards
Nominee1992 - National Book Critics Circle Awards
Winner - ALA Best Books for Young Adults
Now a major motion picture from Columbia Pictures starring Matt Damon, produced by Mike Nichols, and directed by Billy Bob Thornton.

BOOK REVIEWS

Media Reviews

Average  Kirkus Reviews
Like the late D.H. Lawrence at his worst and most pretentious, all blood-voodoo and animistic design, McCarthy makes an awfully unconvincing lot of a little here.

Good  Publishers Weekly
This is a novel so exuberant in its prose, so offbeat in its setting and so mordant and profound in its deliberations that one searches in vain for comparisons in American literature....Though some readers may grow impatient with the wild prairie rhythms of McCarthy's language, others will find his voice completely transporting.

Good  Library Journal
Before this beautifully written novel, McCarthy's sixth and most accessible, won last year's National Book Award and became a best seller, its author was one of the least known of great American novelists.

Good  Newsweek
Rambunctious, high-spirited...All the Pretty Horses is a true American original.

Good  New York Times Book Review
McCarthy puts most other American writers to shame. [His] work itself repays the tight focus of his attention with its finely wrought craftsmanship and its ferocious energy.

Good  Esquire
. . .[A] grand love story, an education in responsibility.

Very Good  Boston Globe
McCarthy puts most other American writers to shame. [His] work itself repays the tight focus of his attention with its finely wrought craftsmanship and its ferocious energy.

Recent Reader Reviews

Rated 5 of 5 of 5 by Katherine
One of my favorite books ever!
This book, and the other two in the Border Trilogy, captured my heart from the beginning. McCarthy does a fabulous job with character development, so you feel like you really know the main character and understand how he thinks as he comes of age....   Read More

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