Description:

Now a major motion picture from Columbia Pictures starring Matt Damon, produced by Mike Nichols, and directed by Billy Bob Thornton.

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.

From the Trade Paperback edition.

Amazon.com Review

Part bildungsroman, part horse opera, part meditation on courage and loyalty, this beautifully crafted novel won the National Book Award in 1992. The plot is simple enough. John Grady Cole, a 16-year-old dispossessed Texan, crosses the Rio Grande into Mexico in 1949, accompanied by his pal Lacey Rawlins. The two precocious horsemen pick up a sidekick--a laughable but deadly marksman named Jimmy Blevins--encounter various adventures on their way south and finally arrive at a paradisiacal hacienda where Cole falls into an ill-fated romance. Readers familiar with McCarthy's Faulknerian prose will find the writing more restrained than in Suttree and Blood Meridian. Newcomers will be mesmerized by the tragic tale of John Grady Cole's coming of age.

From Publishers Weekly

Muller's straightforward, unembellished reading suits the spare drama of McCarthy's acclaimed novel, which has recently been released as a movie as well. John Grady Cole and his pal Lacey Rawlins set off on horseback for Mexico in the late 1940s in search of work and adventure. Along the way they are joined by another man, named Blevins. On a hacienda in Mexico, Cole displays his uncanny gift for working with horses, and he and Alejandra, the beautiful daughter of the hacienda's owner, fall in love--a love that is displeasing not only to Alejandra's father but also to her imperious but not unsympathetic great aunt. Muller's accent in conveying Mexican voices is as convincing and unforced as his others, and he evokes equally well a distinctive personality for each character--the laconic and stalwart Cole; the more emotional and impatient Rawlins; Blevins with his concomitant braggadocio and fear--and yet this tale is perhaps not best suited to the unabridged audio format. Long stretches of text convey slow-moving action or no action at all, but rather McCarthy's lush evocation of the wild landscape. Listeners may opt for the abridged audio version of this National Book Award winner.