All The Pretty Horses - McCarthy

I come by it innocently enough, my love of great American western novels. I can remember my mother picking out books and sending them to her dad – all but the last ten pages, which she held onto until he had read the rest of the novel in an effort to make sure he didn’t read the ending first.

I read All the Pretty Horses years ago, but never the following two novels in the Border Trilogy. I thought I would re-read this one before following up with the other two. I wasn’t far into it when the plot and characters came flooding back and my heart rate quickened. I am certain I have also seen the movie (Matt Damon, perhaps cast as Grady?)

In All the Pretty Horses, McCarthy introduces us to Grady and Rawlins, two teens set out from Texas, crossing the border to Mexico to escape a life they would rather leave behind. They know little of Mexico, other than that it isn’t Texas. En route, a young man named Blevins befriends them and joins them for a short while on their travels. While Grady and Rawlins have their reservations about Blevins, they are unable to shake loose their moral sense of doing right by him and at the very least, helping when they can.

Eventually, we see the heart of Grady’s character when they are taken in by a rancher and Grady’s talent and natural gift with horses comes shining through. There is little time for the reader to relish the beauty of the horses, or to become engrossed in the plan for the ranch, or even to follow the complicated romance of Grady and the rancher’s daughter, as Grady and Rawlins are arrested and thrown into a Mexican jail.

It is here where the heart of the story comes alive. There is so much cultural influence, of matters of justice and legality that we are forced to reckon with in our own minds as Grady and Rawlins struggle in theirs.

The novel comes around full circle, bringing Grady around to face his own sense of justice and righting the wrongs in his journeys. As readers, we are left with the keen understanding that while this novel (and movie) can (and did) stand on their own accord, a sequel is a much welcome gift and I look forward to following this journey onward.