Scan barcode
reillyplymail's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Favorite book ever.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Sexual content and Violence
dee_dreams's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
emotional
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
You know what a blivet is?
My senior year English teacher—who insisted we call him Caesar—enjoyed playing the part of a bombastic, talkative, self-aggrandizing sadist. At least, I assume he was just playing a part. There were times when the class would question if he was acting or not: the fury in his eyes if you talked over him in class, his unrelenting homework assignments, his constant narcissistic boasts to the audience of bored 18-year-olds. But one of the most notable times I questioned his sanity, was when he had us read All the Pretty Horses.
Droning run-on sentences with no punctuation. Horses. Microscopically detailed descriptions that I had to reread over and over and over and over again to understand. Horses. Cryptic sayings. Over and over and over again. Español. Guns. Cavallos. It seemed fitting that “All the Pretty Horses” is the name of a lullaby because this book made me want to snooze.
I remember groaning to my friends at the lunch table, slapping the hard cover book down on the table. Ugh. What the hell was this book? The jerk wasn’t even going to test us on it; he just wanted us to read it, and then have class discussions which, aside from the self-proclaimed class clown constantly quipping, “So, how ‘bout them horses?,” were like pulling teeth. How dare he make us read for pleasure?
And then, suddenly, as I was catching up on my reading at the lunch table, my friends witnessed me do a 180. I completely and utterly fell head over heels for this book, and McCarthy’s odd way of writing, and its imagery and spirituality and humor and romance. It was after reading this passage:
[The old man] said that he had seen the souls of horses and that it was a terrible thing to see. He said that it could be seen under certain circumstances attending the death of a horse because the horse shares a common soul and its separate life only forms it out of all horses and makes it mortal. He said that if a person understood the soul of the horse then he would understand all horses that ever were.
Y de los hombres? said John Grady.
The old man shaped his mouth to answer. Finally he said that among men there was no such communion as among horses and the notion that men can be understood at all was probably an illusion.
It seems fitting that “All the Pretty Horses” is the name of a lullaby because this book will lead you vividly and breathlessly through a dream. At times achingly gorgeous, at times utterly absurd, walking the line between deeply meaningful and beautifully pointless. The ending absolutely blew me away, so satisfyingly unsatisfying. It’s like that feeling of profound confusion you sometimes get after waking up from a deep sleep, where you're questioning if what you just dreamt really happened or not.
After our last class discussion over this book, I told Caesar how much I loved All the Pretty Horses and thanked him. The insanity in me bowed to the insanity in him.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence
More...