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Critics' Opinion:
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First Published:
Apr 1992, 401 pages
Paperback:
Nov 2002, 301 pages
The first volume in the Border Trilogy - the tale of John Grady Cole, who at sixteen sets off for Mexico on a sometimes idyllic, sometimes comic journey to a place where dreams are paid for in blood.
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.
The candleflame and the image of the candleflame caught in the pierglass twisted and righted when he entered the hall and again when he shut the door. He took off his hat and came slowly forward. The floorboards creaked under his boots. In his black suit he stood in the dark glass where the lilies leaned so palely from their waisted cutglass vase. Along the cold hallway behind him hung the portraits of forebears only dimly known to him all framed in glass and dimly lit above the narrow wainscotting. He looked down at the guttered candlestub. He pressed his thumbprint in the warm wax pooled on the oak veneer. Lastly he looked at the face so caved and drawn among the folds of funeral cloth, the yellowed moustache, the eyelids paper thin. That was not sleeping. That was not sleeping.
It was dark outside and cold and no wind. In the distance a calf bawled. He stood with his hat in his hand. You never combed your hair that way in your life, he said.
Inside the house there was no sound...
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